The other house

THE OTHER HOUSE

BY

HENRY JAMES

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1897

P5

01

IBT1

All rights reserved

BOOK FIRST

I

MRS. BEEVER of Eastmead, and of " Beever and
Bream/' was a close, though not a cruel observer of
what went on, as she always said, at the other
house. A great deal more went on there, naturally,
than in the great clean, square solitude in which
she had practically lived since the death of Mr.
Beever, who had predeceased by three years his
friend and partner, the late Paul Bream of Bounds,
leaving to his only son, the little godson of that
trusted associate, the substantial share of the busi
ness in which his wonderful widow — she knew and
rejoiced that she was wonderful — now had a
distinct voice. Paul Beever, in the bloom of
eighteen, had just achieved a scramble from Win
chester to Oxford : it was his mother's design that
he should go into as many things as possible before
coming into the Bank. The Bank, the pride of
Wilverley, the high clear arch of which the two
houses were the solid piers, was worth an expensive
education. It was, in the talk of town and county,
" hundreds of years " old, and as incalculably
"good" as a subject of so much infallible arithmetic
could very well be. That it enjoyed the services of
Mrs. Beever herself was at present enough for her

4 THE OTHER HOUSE

and an ample contentment to Paul, who inclined so
little to the sedentary that she foresaw she should
some day be as anxious at putting him into figures
as she had in his childhood been easy about putting
him into breeches. Half the ground moreover was
held by young Anthony Bream, the actual master of
Bounds, the son and successor of her husband's
colleague.

She was a woman indeed of many purposes ;
another of which was that on leaving Oxford the
boy should travel and inform himself : she belonged
to the age that regarded a foreign tour not as a hasty
dip, but as a deliberate plunge. Still another had
for its main feature that on his final return he should
marry the nicest girl she knew : that too would be
a deliberate plunge, a plunge that would besprinkle
his mother. It would do with the question what
it was Mrs. Beever's inveterate household practice
to do with all loose and unarranged objects — it
would get it out of the way. There would
have been difficulty in saying whether it was a
feeling for peace or for war, but her constant habit
was to lay the ground bare for complications that
as yet at least had never taken place. Her life was
like a room prepared for a dance : the furniture was
all against the walls. About the young lady in
question she was perfectly definite ; the nicest girl
she knew was Jean Martle, whom she had just sent
for at Brighton to come and perform in that
character. The performance was to be for the
benefit of Paul, whose midsummer return was at

THE OTHER HOUSE 5

hand and in whom the imagination oi alternatives
was to be discouraged from the first. It was on the
whole a comfort to Mrs. Beever that he had little
imagination of anything.

Jean Martle, condemned to Brighton by a father
who was Mrs. Beever's second cousin and whom
the doctors, the great men in London, kept there,
as this lady opined, because he was too precious
wholly to lose and too boring often to see — Jean
Martle would probably some day have money and
would possibly some day have sense : even as
regards a favoured candidate this marked the extent
of Mrs. Beever's somewhat dry expectations. They
were addressed in a subordinate degree to the girl's
" playing," which was depended on to become
brilliant, and to her hair, which was viewed in the
light of a hope that it would with the lapse of years
grow darker. Wilverley, in truth, would never
know if she played ill ; but it had an old-fashioned
prejudice against loud shades in the natural cover
ing of the head. One of the things his cousin had
been invited for was that Paul should get used to
her eccentric colour — a colour of which, on a certain
bright Sunday of July, Mrs. Beever noted afresh,
with some alarm, the exaggerated pitch. Her
young friend had arrived two days before and now
— during the elastic interval from church to luncheon
— had been despatched to Bounds with a message
and some preliminary warnings. Jean knew that
she should find there a house in some confusion, a
new-born little girl, the first, a young mother not

6 THE OTHER HOUSE

yet " up," and an odd visitor, somewhat older than
herself, in the person of Miss Armiger, a school-
friend of Mrs. Bream, who had made her appearance
a month before that of the child and had stayed on,
as Mrs. Beever with some emphasis put it, " right
through everything."

This picture of the situation had filled, after the
first hour or two, much of the time of the two ladies,
but it had originally included for Jean no particular
portrait of the head of the family — an omission in
some degree repaired, however, by the chance of
Mrs. Beever's having on the Saturday morning
taken her for a moment into the Bank. They had
had errands in the town, and Mrs. Beever had
wished to speak to Mr. Bream, a brilliant, joking
gentleman, who, instantly succumbing to their
invasion and turning out a confidential clerk, had
received them in his beautiful private room. " Shall
I like him ? " Jean, with the sense of a widening
circle, had, before this, adventurously asked. " Oh,
yes, if you notice him ! " Mrs. Beever had replied in
obedience to an odd private prompting to mark him
as insignificant. Later on, at the Bank, the girl
noticed him enough to feel rather afraid of him :
that was always with her the foremost result of
being noticed herself. If Mrs. Beever passed him
over, this was in part to be accounted for by all that
at Eastmead was usually taken for granted. The
queen-mother, as Anthony Bream kept up the jest
of calling her, would not have found it easy to paint
off-hand a picture of the allied sovereign whom she

THE OTHER HOUSE 7

was apt to regard as a somewhat restless vassal.
Though he was a dozen years older than the happy
young prince on whose behalf she exercised her
regency, she had known him from his boyhood, and
his strong points and his weak were alike an old
story to her.

His house was new — he had on his marriage, at a
vast expense, made it quite violently so. His wife
and his child were new; new also in a marked
degree was the young woman who had lately taken
up her abode with him and who had the air of
intending to remain till she should lose that quality.
But Tony himself — this had always been his name
to her — was intensely familiar. Never doubting
that he was a subject she had mastered, Mrs.
Beever had no impulse to clear up her view by
distributing her impressions. These impressions
were as neatly pigeon-holed as her correspondence
and her accounts — neatly, at least, save in so far as
they were besprinkled with the dust of time. One
of them might have been freely rendered into a hint
that her young partner was a possible source of
danger to her own sex. Not to her personally, of
course ; for herself, somehow, Mrs. Beever was not
of her own sex. If she had been a woman — she
never thought of herself so loosely — she would, in
spite of her age, have doubtless been conscious of
peril. She now recognised none in life except that
of Paul's marrying wrong, against which she had
taken early measures. It would have been a
misfortune therefore to feel a flaw in a security

8 THE OTHER HOUSE

otherwise so fine. Was not perhaps the fact that
she had a vague sense of exposure for Jean Martle a
further motive for her not expatiating to that young
lady on Anthony Bream ? If any such sense
operated, I hasten to add, it operated without Jean's
having mentioned that at the Bank he had struck
her as formidable.

Let me not fail equally to declare that Mrs.
Beever's general suspicion of him, as our sad want
of signs for shades and degrees condemns me to call
it, rested on nothing in the nature of evidence. If
she had ever really uttered it she might have been
brought up rather short on the question of grounds.
There were certainly, at any rate, no grounds in
Tony's having, before church, sent a word over to
her on the subject of their coming to luncheon.
" Dear Julia, this morning, is really grand," he had
written. " We've just managed to move to her
downstairs room, where they've put up a lovely bed
and where the sight of all her things cheers and
amuses her, to say nothing of the wide immediate
outlook at her garden and her own corner of the
terrace. In short the waves are going down and
we're beginning to have our meals ' regular.'
Luncheon may be rather late, but do bring over
your charming little friend. How she lighted up
yesterday my musty den ! There will be another
little friend, by the way — not of mine, but of Rose
Armiger's, the young man to whom, as I think you
know, she's engaged to be married. He's just back
from China and comes down till to-morrow. Our

THE OTHER HOUSE 9

Sunday trains are such a bore that, having wired
him to take the other line, I'm sending to meet him
at Plumbury." Mrs. Beever had no need to reflect
on these few lines to be comfortably conscious that
they summarised the nature of her neighbour —
down to the " dashed sociability," as she had heard
the poor fellow, in sharp reactions, himself call it,
that had made him scribble them and that always
made him talk too much for a man in what, more
than he, she held to be a "position." He was
there in his premature bustle over his wife's slow
recovery ; he was there in his boyish impatience to
improvise a feast ; he was there in the simplicity
with which he exposed himself to the depredations,
to the possible avalanche, of Miss Armiger's belong
ings. He was there moreover in his free-handed
way of sending six miles for a young man from
China, and he was most of all there in his allusion
to the probable lateness of luncheon. Many things
in these days were new at the other house, but
nothing was so new as the hours of meals. Mrs.
Beever had of old repeatedly dined there on the
stroke of six. It will be seen that, as I began with
declaring, she kept her finger on the pulse of
Bounds.

II

WHEN Jean Martle, arriving with her message, was
ushered into the hall, it struck her at first as empty,
and during the moment that she supposed herself in
sole possession she perceived it to be showy and
indeed rather splendid. Bright, large and high,
richly decorated and freely used, full of " corners "
and communications, it evidently played equally the
part of a place of reunion and of a place of transit.
It contained so many large pictures that if they
hadn't looked somehow so recent it might have
passed for a museum. The shaded summer was in
it now, and the odour of many flowers, as well as
the tick from the chimney-piece of a huge French
clock which Jean recognised as modern. The
colour of the air, the frank floridity, amused and
charmed her. It was not till the servant had left
her that she became aware she was not alone — a
discovery that soon gave her an embarrassed
minute. At the other end of the place appeared
a young woman in a posture that, with interposing
objects, had made her escape notice, a young woman
bent low over a table at which she seemed to have
been writing. Her chair was pushed back, her face
buried in her extended and supported arms, her

THE OTHER HOUSE il

whole person relaxed and abandoned. She had
heard neither the swing of the muffled door nor any
footfall on the deep carpet, and her attitude denoted
a state of mind that made the messenger from
Eastmead hesitate between quickly retreating on
tiptoe or still more quickly letting her know that she
was observed. Before Jean could decide her com
panion looked up, then rapidly and confusedly rose.
She could only be Miss Armiger, and she had b^sn
such a figure of woe that it was a surprise not to
see her in tears. She was by no means in tears ;
but she was for an instant extremely blank, an
instant during which Jean remembered, rather to
wonder at it, Mrs. Beever's having said of her that
one really didn't know whether she was awfully
plain or strikingly handsome. Jean felt that one
quite did know : she was awfully plain. It may
immediately be mentioned that about the charm of
the apparition offered meanwhile to her own eyes
Rose Armiger had not a particle of doubt : a slim,
fair girl who struck her as a light sketch for some
thing larger, a cluster of happy hints with nothing
yet quite " put in " but the splendour of the hair
and the grace of the clothes — clothes that were not
as the clothes of Wilverley. The reflection of these
things came back to Jean from a pair of eyes as to
which she judged that the extreme lightness of their
grey was what made them so strange as to be
ugly — a reflection that spread into a sudden smile
from a wide, full-lipped mouth, whose regular office,
obviously, was to produce the second impression.

12 THE OTHER HOUSE

In a flash of small square white teeth this second
impression was produced and the ambiguity that
Mrs. Beever had spoken of lighted up — an ambiguity
worth all the dull prettiness in the world. Yes,
one quite did know : Miss Armiger was strikingly
handsome. It thus took her but a few seconds to
repudiate every connection with the sombre image
Jean had just encountered.

" Excuse my jumping out at you," she said. " I
heard a sound — I was expecting a friend." Jean
thought her attitude an odd one for the purpose, but
hinted a fear of being in that case in the way ; on
which the young lady protested that she was de
lighted to see her, that she had already heard of
her, that she guessed who she was. " And I dare
say you've already heard of me."

Jean shyly confessed to this, and getting away
from the subject as quickly as possible, produced on
the spot her formal credentials.

" Mrs. Beever sent me over to ask if it's really
quite right we should come to luncheon. We came
out of church before the sermon, because of some
people who were to go home with us. They're with
Mrs. Beever now, but she told me to come straight
across the garden — the short way."

Miss Armiger continued to smile. " No way ever
seems short enough for Mrs. Beever ! "

There was an intention in this, as Jean faintly
felt, that was lost upon her; but while she was
wondering her companion went on :

(f Did Mrs. Beever direct you to inquire of me ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 13

Jean hesitated. " Oi anyone, I think, who would
be here to tell me in case Mrs. Bream shouldn't be
quite so well."

" She isn't quite so well."

The younger girl's face showed the flicker of a
fear of losing her entertainment ; on perceiving
which the elder pursued :

" But we shan't romp or racket — shall we ? We
shall be very quiet."

" Very, very quiet," Jean eagerly echoed.

Her new friend's smile became a laugh, which
was followed by the abrupt question : " Do you
mean to be long with Mrs. Beever ? "

"Till her son comes home. You know he's at
Oxford, and his term soon ends."

" And yours ends with it — you depart as he
arrives ? "

" Mrs. Beever tells me I positively shan't," said
Jean.

" Then you positively won't. Everything is done
here exactly as Mrs. Beever tells us. Don't you
like her son ? " Rose Armiger asked.

" I don't know yet ; it's exactly what she wants
me to find out."

" Then you'll have to be very clear."

" But if I find out I don't ? " Jean risked.

" I shall be very sorry for you ! "

" I think then it will be the only thing in this
love of an old place that I shan't have liked."

Rose Armiger for a moment rested her eyes on
her visitor, who was more and more conscious that

14 THE OTHER HOUSE

she was strange and yet not, as Jean had always
supposed strange people to be, disagreeable. " Do
you like me ? " she unexpectedly inquired.

" How can I tell — at the end of three minutes ? "
" / can tell — at the end of one ! You must try
to like me — you must be very kind to me/' Miss
Armiger declared. Then she added : " Do you
like Mr. Bream ? "

Jean considered ; she felt that she must rise to
the occasion. " Oh, immensely 1 " At this her
interlocutress laughed again, and it made her con
tinue with more reserve : " Of course I only saw
him for five minutes — yesterday at the Bank."

" Oh, we know how long you saw him ! " Miss
Armiger exclaimed. "He has told us all about
your visit."

Jean was slightly awe-stricken : this picture seemed
to include so many people. " Whom has he told ?"
Her companion had the air of being amused at
everything she said; but for Jean it was an air,
none the less, with a kind of foreign charm in it.
" Why, the very first person was of course his poor
little wife."

" But I'm not to see her> am I ? " Jean rather
eagerly asked, puzzled by the manner of the allu
sion and but half suspecting it to be a part of her
informant's general ease*

" You're not to see her, but even if you were she
wouldn't hurt you for it," this young lady replied.
" She understands his friendly way and likes above
all his beautiful frankness."

THE OTHER HOUSE 15

Jean's bewilderment began to look as if she too
now, as she remembered, understood and liked
these things. It might have been in confirmation of
what was in her mind that she presently said : " He
told me I might see the wonderful baby. He told
me he would show it to me himself."

" I'm sure he'll be delighted to do that. He's
awfully proud of the wonderful baby."

" I suppose it's very lovely," Jean remarked with
growing confidence.

" Lovely! Do you think babies are ever lovely ? "

Taken aback by this challenge, Jean reflected a
little ; she found, however, nothing better to say
than, rather timidly : " I like dear little children,
don't you ? "

Miss Armiger in turn considered. "Not a bit !"
she then replied. " It would be very sweet and
attractive of me to say I adore them ; but I never
pretend to feelings I can't keep up, don't you
know ? If you'd like, all the same, to see Effie,"
she obligingly added, " I'll so far sacrifice myself as
to get her for you."

Jean smiled as if this pleasantry were contagious.
" You won't sacrifice her ? "

Rose Armiger stared. " I won't destroy her."

"Then do get her."

" Not yet, not yet ! " cried another voice — that of
Mrs. Beever, who had just been introduced and
who, having heard the last words of the two girls,
came, accompanied by the servant, down the hall.
" The baby's of no importance. We've come over

16 THE OTHER HOUSE

for the mother. Is it true that Julia has had a bad
turn ? " she asked of Rose Armiger.

Miss Armiger had a peculiar way of looking at a
person before speaking, and she now, with this
detachment, delayed so long to answer Mrs. Beever
that Jean also rested her eyes, as if for a reason, on
the good lady from Eastmead. She greatly admired
her, but in that instant, the first of seeing her at
Bounds, she perceived once for all how the differ
ence of the setting made another thing of the gem.
Short and solid, with rounded corners and full
supports, her hair very black and very flat, her eyes
very small for the amount of expression they
could show, Mrs. Beever was so " early Victorian "
as to be almost prehistoric — was constructed to
move amid massive mahogany and sit upon banks
of Berlin-wool. She was like an odd volume,
" sensibly " bound, of some old magazine. Jean
knew that the great social event of her younger
years had been her going to a fancy-ball in the
character of an Andalusian, an incident of which
she still carried a memento in the shape of a
hideous fan. Jean was so constituted that she also
knew, more dimly but at the end of five minutes,
that the elegance at Mr. Bream's was slightly
provincial. It made none the less a medium in
which Mrs. Beever looked superlatively local. That
indeed in turn caused Jean to think the old place
still more of a " love."

11 1 believe our poor friend feels rather down,"
Miss Armiger finally brought out. "But I don't

THE OTHER HOUSE 17

imagine it's of the least consequence," she im
mediately added.

The contrary of this was, however, in some
degree foreshadowed in a speech directed to Jean
by the footman who had admitted her. He re
ported Mr. Bream as having been in his wife's room
for nearly an hour, and Dr. Ramage as having
arrived some time before and not yet come out.
Mrs. Beever decreed, upon this news, that they
must drop their idea of lunching and that Jean must
go straight back to the friends who had been left
at the other house. It was these friends who, on
the way from church, had mentioned their having
got wind of the rumour — the quick circulation of
which testified to the compactness of Wilverley —
that there had been a sudden change in Mrs.
Bream since the hour at which her husband's note
was written. Mrs. Beever dismissed her companion
to Eastmead with a message for her visitors. Jean
was to entertain them there in her stead and to
understand that she might return to luncheon only
in case of being sent for. At the door the girl
paused and exclaimed rather wistfully to Rose
Armiger : " Well, then, give her my love ! "

II

"YOUR young friend," Rose commented, "is as
affectionate as she's pretty: sending her love to
people she has never seen ! "

" She only meant the little girl. I think it's rather
nice of her," said Mrs. Beever. " My interest in
these anxieties is always confined to the mamma.
I thought we were going so straight."

" I dare say we are," Miss Armiger replied.
" But Nurse told me an hour ago that I'm not to see
her at all this morning. It will be the first morning
for several days."

Mrs. Beever was silent a little. " You've enjoyed
a privilege altogether denied to me."

"Ah, you must remember," said Rose, "that I'm
Julia's oldest friend. That's always the way she
treats me."

Mrs. Beever assented. " Familiarly, of course.
Well, you're not mine ; but that's the way I treat
you too," she went on. " You must wait with me
here for more news, and be as still as a mouse."

" Dear Mrs. Beever," the girl protested, " I never
made a noise in all my life 1 "

" You will some day — you're so clever," Mrs.
Beever said.

THE OTHER HOUSE 19

" I'm clever enough to be quiet." Then Rose
added, less gaily : " I'm the one thing of her own
that dear Julia has ever had."

Mrs. Beever raised her eyebrows. " Don't you
count her husband ? "

" I count Tony immensely ; but in another way."

Again Mrs. Beever considered : she might have
been wondering in what way even so expert a young
person as this could count Anthony Bream except
as a treasure to his wife. But what she presently
articulated was : "Do you call him f Tony ' to
himself?"

Miss Armiger met her question this time promptly.
" He has asked me to — and to do it even to Julia.
Don't be afraid ! " she exclaimed ; " I know my place
and I shan't go too far. Of course he's everything
to her now," she continued, " and the child is already
almost as much ; but what I mean is that if he counts
for a great deal more, I, at least, go back a good deal
further. Though I'm three years older we were
brought together as girls by one of the strongest of
all ties — the tie of a common aversion."

" Oh, I know your common aversion ! " Mrs.
Beever spoke with her air of general competence.
. " Perhaps then you know that her detestable
stepmother was, very little to my credit, my aunt.
If her father, that is, was Mrs. Grantham's second
husband, my uncle, my mother's brother, had been
the first. Julia lost her mother; I lost both my
mother and my father. Then Mrs. Grantham took
me : she had shortly before made her second marriage.

20 THE OTHER HOUSE

She put me at the horrid school at Weymouth at
which she had already put her step-daughter."

"You ought to be obliged to her," Mrs. Beever
suggested, " for having made you acquainted."

" We are — we've never ceased to be. It was as
if she had made us sisters, with the delightful
position for me of the elder, the protecting one.
But it's the only good turn she has ever done
us."

Mrs. Beever weighed this statement with her
alternative, her business manner. " Is she really
then such a monster ? "

Rose Armiger had a melancholy headshake.
" Don't ask me about her — I dislike her too much,
perhaps, to be strictly fair. For me, however, I
daresay, it didn't matter so much that she was
narrow and hard : I wasn't an easy victim — I
could take care of myself, I could fight. But Julia
bowed her head and suffered. Never was a mar
riage more of a rescue."

Mrs. Beever took this in with unsuspended
criticism. "And yet Mrs. Grantham travelled all
the way down from town the other day simply to
make her a visit of a couple of hours."

"That wasn't a kindness," the girl returned;
"it was an injury, and I believe — certainly Julia
believes — that it was a calculated one. Mrs.
Grantham knew perfectly the effect she would
have, and she triumphantly had it. She came, she
said, at the particular crisis, to 'make peace.'
Why couldn't she let the poor dear alone ? She

THE OTHER HOUSE 21

only stirred up the wretched past and reopened old
wounds."

For answer to this Mrs. Beever remarked with
some irrelevancy : " She abused you a good deal,
I think."

Her companion smiled frankly. " Shockingly,
I believe ; but that's of no importance to me. She
doesn't touch me or reach me now."

" Your description of her," said Mrs. Beever, " is
a description of a monstrous bad woman. And yet
she appears to have got two honourable men to give
her the last proof of confidence."

" My poor uncle utterly withdrew his confidence
when he saw her as she was. She killed him — he
died of his horror of her. As for Julia's father, he's
honourable if you like, but he's a muff. He's afraid
of his wife."

" And her ' taking ' you, as you say, who were no
real relation to her — her looking after you and put
ting you at school : wasn't that," Mrs. Beever pro
pounded, " a kindness ? "

" She took me to torment me — or at least to make
me feel her hand. She has an absolute necessity
to do that — it was what brought her down here the
other day."

"You make out a wonderful case," said Mrs.
Beever, " and if ever I'm put on my trial for a
crime — say for muddling the affairs of the Bank
— I hope I shall be defended by some one with
your gift and your manner. I don't wonder,"
she blandly pursued, " that your friends, even the

22 THE OTHER HOUSE

blameless ones, like this dear pair, cling to you
as they do."

" If you mean you don't wonder I stay on here
so long," said Rose good-humouredly, " I'm greatly
obliged to you for your sympathy. Julia's the one
thing I have of my own."

" You make light of our husbands and lovers ! "
laughed Mrs. Beever. " Haven't I had the pleasure
of hearing of a gentleman to whom you're soon to
be married ? "

Rose Armiger opened her eyes — there was perhaps
a slight affectation in it. She looked, at any rate,
as if she had to make a certain effort to meet the
allusion. " Dennis Vidal ? " she then asked.

" Lord, are there more than one ? " Mrs. Beever
cried ; after which, as the girl, who had coloured a
little, hesitated in a way that almost suggested
alternatives, she added : " Isn't it a definite engage
ment?"

Rose Armiger looked round at the clock. " Mr.
Vidal will be here this morning. Ask him how he
considers it."

One of the doors of the hall at this moment
opened, and Mrs. Beever exclaimed with some
eagerness : " Here he is, perhaps ! " Her eagerness
was characteristic ; it was part of a comprehensive
vision in which the pieces had already fallen into
sharp adjustment to each other. The young lady
she had been talking with had in these few minutes,
for some reason, struck her more forcibly than ever
before as a possible object of interest to a youth of

THE OTHER HOUSE 23

a candour greater even than any it was incumbent
on a respectable mother to cultivate. Miss Armiger
had just given her a glimpse of the way she could
handle honest gentlemen as " muffs." She was
decidedly too unusual to be left out of account. If
there was the least danger of Paul's falling in love
with her it ought somehow to be arranged that her
marriage should encounter no difficulty.

The person now appearing, however, proved to be
only Doctor Ramage, who, having a substantial wife
of his own, was peculiarly unfitted to promise relief
to Mrs. Beever's anxiety. He was a little man who
moved, with a warning air, on tiptoe, as if he were
playing some drawing-room game of surprises, and
who had a face so candid and circular that it sug
gested a large white pill. Mrs. Beever had once
said with regard to sending for him : " It isn't to
take his medicine, it's to take him. I take him twice
a week in a cup of tea." It was his tone that did
her good. He had in his hand a sheet of note-paper,
one side of which was covered with writing and with
which he immediately addressed himself to Miss
Armiger. It was a prescription to be made up, and
he begged her to see that it was carried on the spot
to the chemist's, mentioning that on leaving Mrs.
Bream's room he had gone straight to the library to
think it out. Rose, who appeared to recognise at a
glance its nature, replied that as she was fidgety
and wanted a walk she would perform the errand
herself. Her bonnet and jacket were there; she
had put them on to go to church, and then, on

24 THE OTHER HOUSE

second thoughts, seeing Mr. Bream give it up, had
taken them off.

" Excellent for you to go yourself/' said the
Doctor. He had an instruction to add, to which,
lucid and prompt, already equipped, she gave full
attention. As she took the paper from him he
subjoined : " You're a very nice, sharp, obliging
person."

" She knows what she's about ! " said Mrs. Beever
with much expression. " But what in the world is
Julia about ? "

tf I'll tell you when / know, my dear lady."

" Is there really anything wrong ? "

" I'm waiting to find out."

Miss Armiger, before leaving them, was waiting
too. She had been checked on the way to the door
by Mrs. Beever's question, and she stood there with
her intensely clear eyes on Doctor Ramage's face.

Mrs. Beever continued to study it as earnestly.
" Then you're not going yet ? "

" By no means, though I've another pressing call.
I must have that thing from you first," he said to
Rose.

She went to the door, but there again she paused.
" Is Mr. Bream still with her ? "

" Very much with her — that's why I'm here. She
made a particular request to be left for five minutes
alone with him."

" So Nurse isn't there either ? " Rose asked.

" Nurse has embraced the occasion to pop down
for her lunch. Mrs. Bream has taken it into her

THE OTHER HOUSE 2$

head that she has something very important to
say."

Mrs. Beever firmly seated herself. " And pray
what may that be ? "

" She turned me out of the room precisely so that
I shouldn't learn."

" I think / know what it is," their companion, at
the door, put in.

"Then what is it?" Mrs. Beever demanded.

" Oh, I wouldn't tell you for the world ! " And
with this Rose Armiger departed.

IV

LEFT alone with the lady of Eastmead, Doctor
Ramage studied his watch a little absently. " Our
young friend's exceedingly nervous."

Mrs. Beever glanced in the direction in which
Rose had disappeared. " Do you allude to that
girl ? "

" I allude to dear Mrs. Tony."

" It's equally true of Miss Armiger ; she's as
worried as a pea on a pan. Julia, as far as that
goes," Mrs. Beever continued, " can never have
been a person to hold herself together."

1 ' Precisely — she requires to be held. Well,
happily she has Tony to hold her."

" Then he's not himself in one of his states ? "

Doctor Ramage hesitated. " I don't quite make
him out. He seems to have fifty things at once
in his head."

Mrs. Beever looked at the Doctor hard. " When
does he ever not have ? But I had a note from him
only this morning — in the highest spirits."

Doctor Ramage's little eyes told nothing but what
he wanted. " Well, whatever happens to him, he'll
always have them ! "

Mrs. Beever at this jumped up. " Robert

THE OTHER HOUSE 27

Ramage," she earnestly demanded, " what is to
happen to that boy ? "

Before he had time to reply there rang out a
sudden sound which had, oddly, much of the effect
of an answer and which caused them both to start.
It was the near vibration, from Mrs. Bream's room,
of one of the smart, loud electric bells which were
for Mrs. Beever the very accent of the newness of
Bounds. They waited an instant ; then the Doctor
said quietly : " It's for Nurse ! "

" It's not for you ? " The bell sounded again as
she spoke.

"It's for Nurse," Doctor Ramage repeated,
moving nevertheless to the door he had come in
by. He paused again to listen, and the door, the
next moment thrown open, gave passage to a tall,
good-looking young man, dressed as if, with much
freshness, for church, and wearing a large orchid
in his buttonhole. " You rang for Nurse ? " the
Doctor immediately said.

The young man stood looking from one of his
friends to the other. " She's there — it's all right.

But ah, my dear people ! " And he passed his

hand, with the vivid gesture of brushing away an
image, over a face of which the essential radiance
was visible even through perturbation.

" How's Julia now ? " Mrs. Beever asked.

" Much relieved, she tells me, at having spoken."

" Spoken of what, Tony ? "

" Of everything she can think of that's incon
ceivable — that's damnable."

28 THE OTHER HOUSE

" If I hadn't known that she wanted to do exactly
that," said the Doctor, " I wouldn't have given her
the opportunity."

Mrs. Beever's eyes sounded her colleague of the
Bank. " You're upset, my poor boy — you're in one
of your greatest states. Something painful to you
has taken place."

Tony Bream paid no attention to this remark ; all
his attention was for his other visitor, who stood
with one hand on the door of the hall and an
open watch, on which he still placidly gazed, in
the other. "Ramage," the young man suddenly
broke out, " are you keeping something back ?
Isn't she safe ? "

The good Doctor's small, neat face seemed to
grow more genially globular. "The dear lady is
convinced, you mean, that her very last hour is at
hand ? "

" So much so," Tony replied, " that if she got
you and Nurse away, if she made me kneel down
by her bed and take her two hands in mine, what
do you suppose it was to say to me ? "

Doctor Ramage beamed. " Why, of course, that
she's going to perish in her flower. I've been
through it so often ! " he said to Mrs. Beever.

" Before, but not after," that lady lucidly rejoined.
" She has had her chance of perishing, but now it's
too late."

" Doctor," said Tony Bream, " is my wife going
to die ? "

His friend hesitated a moment. " When a lady's

THE OTHER HOUSE 29

only symptom of that tendency is the charming
volubility with which she dilates upon it, that's
very well as far as it goes. But it's not quite
enough."

" She says she knows it," Tony returned. " But
you surely know more than she, don't you ? "

" I know everything that can be known. I know
that when, in certain conditions, pretty young
mothers have acquitted themselves of that inevi
table declaration, they turn over and go comfortably
to sleep."

" That's exactly," said Tony, " what Nurse must
make her do."

" It's exactly what she's doing." Doctor Ramage
had no sooner spoken than Mrs. Bream's bell
sounded for the third time. " Excuse me ! " he im-
perturbably added. " Nurse calls me."

"And doesn't she call me?" cried Tony.

" Not in the least." The Doctor raised his hand
with instant authority. " Stay where you are ! "
With this he went off to his patient.

If Mrs. Beever often produced, with promptitude,
her theory that the young banker was subject to
" states," this habit, of which he was admirably
tolerant, was erected on the sense of something in
him of which even a passing observer might have
caught a glimpse. A woman of still more wit than
Mrs. Beever, whom he had met on the threshold of
life, once explained some accident to him by the
words : " The reason is, you know, that you're so
exaggerated." This had not been a manner of

30 THE OTHER HOUSE

saying that he was inclined to overshoot the truth ;
it had been an attempt to express a certain quality
of passive excess which was the note of the whole
man and which, for an attentive eye, began with
his neckties and ended with his intonations. To
look at him was immediately to see that he was a
collection of gifts, which presented themselves as
such precisely by having in each case slightly over
flowed the measure. He could do things — this was
all he knew about them ; and he was ready-made,
as it were — he had not had to put himself together.
His dress was just too fine, his colour just too high,
his moustache just too long, his voice just too loud,
his smile just too gay. His movement, his manner,
his tone were respectively just too free, too easy and
too familiar; his being a very handsome, happy,
clever, active, ambitiously local young man was in
short just too obvious. But the result of it all was
a presence that was in itself a close contact, the air
of immediate, unconscious, unstinted life, and of his
doing what he liked and liking to please. One of
his " states," for Mrs. Beever, was the state of his
being a boy again, and the sign of it was his talking
nonsense. It was not an example of that tendency,
but she noted almost as if it were that almost
as soon as the Doctor had left them he asked
if she had not brought over to him that awfully
pretty girl.

" She has been here, but I sent her home again."
Then his visitor added : " Does she strike you as
awfully pretty ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 31

"As pretty as a pretty song! I took a tre
mendous notion to her."

" She's only a child — for mercy's sake don't show
your notion too much ! " Mrs. Beever ejaculated.

Tony Bream gave his bright stare ; after which,
with his still brighter alacrity, " I see what you
mean : of course I won't ! " he declared. Then, as
if candidly and conscientiously wondering : " Is it
showing it too much to hope she'll come back to
luncheon ? "

"Decidedly— if Julia's so down."

"That's only too much for Julia — not for her"
Tony said with his flurried smile. " But Julia
knows about her, hopes she's coming and wants
everything to be natural and pleasant." He passed
his hand over his eyes again, and as if at the
same time recognising that his tone required
explanation, " It's just because Julia's so down,
don't you see?" he subjoined. "A fellow can't
stand it."

Mrs. Beever spoke after a pause during which
her companion roamed rather jerkily about. " It's a
mere accidental fluctuation. You may trust Ramage
to know."

"Yes, thank God, I may trust Ramage to
know ! " He had the accent of a man constitu
tionally accessible to suggestion, and could turn
the next instant to a quarter more cheering. " Do
you happen to have an idea of what has become of
Rose ? "

Again Mrs, Beever, making a fresh observation,

32 THE OTHER HOUSE

waited a little before answering. "Do you now
call her < Rose ' ? "

" Dear, yes — talking with Julia. And with her"
he went on as if he couldn't quite remember —
"do I too? Yes," he recollected, "I think I
must."

"What one must one must," said Mrs. Beever
dryly. " ' Rose/ then, has gone over to the
chemist's for the Doctor."

"How jolly of her!" Tony exclaimed. "She's
a tremendous comfort."

Mrs. Beever committed herself to no opinion on
this point, but it was doubtless on account of the
continuity of the question that she presently asked :
" Who's this person who's coming to-day to marry
her?"

" A very good fellow, I believe — and ' rising ' :
a clerk in some Eastern house."

" And why hasn't he come sooner ? "

" Because he has been at Hong Kong, or some
such place, trying hard to pick up an income.
"He's 'poor but pushing,' she says. They've no
means but her own two hundred."

"Two hundred a year? That's quite enough for
them ! " Mrs. Beever opined.

" Then you had better tell him so ! " laughed
Tony.

" I hope you'll back me up ! " she returned ; after
which, before he had time to speak, she broke out
with irrelevance : " How is it she knows what Julia
wanted to say to you ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 33

Tony, surprised, looked vague. " Just now ?
Does she know ? — I haven't the least idea." Rose
appeared at this moment behind the glass doors of
the vestibule, and he added : " Here she is."

" Then you can ask her."

" Easily," said Tony. But when the girl came
in he greeted her only with a lively word of thanks
for the service she had just rendered ; so that the
lady of Eastmead, after waiting a minute, took the
line of assuming with a certain visible rigour that
he might have a reason for making his inquiry
without an- auditor. Taking temporary leave of
him, she mentioned the visitors at home whom she
must not forget. " Then you won't come back ? "
he asked.

" Yes, in an hour or two."

"And bring Miss What's-her-name?"

As Mrs. Beever failed to respond to this, Rose
Armiger added her voice. "Yes — do bring Miss
What's-her-name." Mrs. Beever, without assent
ing, reached the door, which Tony had opened for
her. Here she paused long enough to be over
taken by the rest of their companion's appeal. " I
delight so in her clothes."

" I delight so in her hair ! " Tony laughed.

Mrs. Beever looked from one of them to the
other.

" Don't you think you've delight enough with
what your situation here already offers ? " She
departed with the private determination to return
unaccompanied.

c

THREE minutes later Tony Bream put his question
to his other visitor. " Is it true that you know
what Julia a while ago had the room cleared in
order to say to me ? "

Rose hesitated. " Mrs. Beever repeated to you
that I told her so? — Yes, then; I probably do
know." She waited again a little. "The poor
darling announced to you her conviction that she's
dying." Then at the face with which he greeted
her exactitude : " I haven't needed to be a monster
of cunning to guess ! " she exclaimed.

He had perceptibly paled : it made a difference,
a kind of importance for that absurdity that it
was already in other ears. "She has said the
same to you ? "

Rose gave a pitying smile. " She has done me
that honour."

" Do you mean to-day ? "

" To-day — and once before."

Tony looked simple in his wonder. "Yester
day?"

Rose hesitated again. "No; before your child
was born. Soon after I came."

" She had made up her mind then from the first ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 35

"Yes," said Rose, with the serenity of superior
sense; "she had laid out for herself that pleasant
little prospect. She called it a presentiment, a
fixed idea."

Tony took this in with a frown. "And you
never spoke of it ? "

" To you ? Why in the world should I — when
she herself didn't ? I took it perfectly for what
it was — an inevitable but unimportant result of
the nervous depression produced by her step
mother's visit."

Tony had fidgeted away with his hands in the
pockets of his trousers. "Damn her stepmother's
visit ! "

"That's exactly what I did ! " Rose laughed.
" Damn her stepmother too ! " the young man
angrily pursued.

"Hush!" said the girl soothingly: "we mustn't
curse our relations before the Doctor ! " Doctor
Ramage had come back from his patient, and she
mentioned to him that the medicine for which she
had gone out would immediately be delivered.

"Many thanks," he replied: "I'll pick it up
myself. I must run out — to another case." Then
with a friendly hand to Tony and a nod at the
room he had quitted : "Things are quiet."

Tony, gratefully grasping his hand, detained him
by it. " And what was that loud ring that called
you ? "

"A stupid flurry of Nurse. I was ashamed of
her."

36 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Then why did you stay so long ? "

" To have it out with your wife. She wants you
again."

Tony eagerly dropped his hand. "Then I
go!" "

The Doctor raised his liberated member. " In
a quarter of an hour — not before. I'm most
reluctant, but I allow her five minutes."

" It may make her easier afterwards," Rose
observed.

"That's precisely the ground of my giving in.
Take care, you know ; Nurse will time you,"
the Doctor said to Tony.

" So many thanks. And you'll come back ? "

"The moment I'm free."

When he had gone Tony stood there sombre.
" She wants to say it again — that's what she
wants."

" Well," Rose answered, " the more she says it
the less it's true. It's not she who decides it."

"No," Tony brooded; "it's not she. But it's
not you and I either," he soon went on.

" It's not even the Doctor," Rose remarked with
her conscious irony.

Her companion rested his troubled eyes on her.
"And yet he's as worried as if it were." She
protested against this imputation with a word to
which he paid no heed. " If anything should
happen " — and his eyes seemed to go as far as
his thought — " what on earth do you suppose would
become of me ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 37

The girl looked down, very grave. "Men have
borne such things."

" Very badly — the real ones." He seemed to
lose himself in the effort to embrace the worst,
to think it out. " What should I do ? where
should I turn ? "

She was silent a little. " You ask me too
much ! " she helplessly sighed.

" Don't say that/' replied Tony, " at a moment
when I know so little if I mayn't have to ask
you still more ! " This exclamation made her
meet his eyes with a turn of her own that might
have struck him had he not been following another
train. " To you I can say it, Rose — she's inex
pressibly dear to me."

She showed him a face intensely receptive. " It's
for your affection for her that I've really given you
mine." Then she shook her head — seemed to
shake out, like the overflow of a cup, her generous
gaiety. " But be ea.-:y. We shan't have loved her
so much only to lose her."

" I'll be hanged if we shall ! " Tony responded.
"And such talk's a vile false note in the midst
of a joy like yours."

" Like mine ? " Rose exhibited some vague
ness.

Her companion was already accessible to the
amusement of it. " I hope that's not the way
you mean to look at Mr. Vidal ! "

"Ah, Mr. Vidal !" she ambiguously murmured.

" Shan't you then be glad to see him ? "

38 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Intensely glad. But how shall I say it ? "
She thought a moment and then went on as if
she found the answer to her question in Tony's
exceptional intelligence and their comfortable in
timacy. " There's gladness and gladness. It isn't
love's young dream ; it's rather an old and rather
a sad story. We've worried and waited — we've
been acquainted with grief. We've come together
a weary way."

" I know you've had a horrid grind. But isn't
this the end of it ? "

Rose hesitated. "That's just what he's to
settle."

" Happily, I see ! Just look at him."

The glass doors, as Tony spoke, had been
thrown open by the butler. The young man
from China was there — a short, meagre young
man, with a smooth face and a dark blue double-
breasted jacket. " Mr. Vidal ! " the butler an
nounced, withdrawing again, while the visitor,
whose entrance had been rapid, suddenly and
shyly faltered at the sight of his host. His pause,
however, lasted but just long enough to enable
Rose to bridge it over with the frankest maidenly
grace ; and Tony's quick sense of being out of
place at this reunion was not a bar to the im
pression of her charming, instant action, her soft
" Dennis, Dennis ! " her light, fluttered arms, her
tenderly bent head and the short, bright stillness
of her clasp of her lover. Tony shone down at
them with the pleasure of having helped them,

THE OTHER HOUSE 39

and the warmth of it was in his immediate grasp
of the traveller's hand. He cut short his em
barrassed thanks — he was too delighted ; and leav
ing him with the remark that he would presently
come back to show him his room, he went off again
to poor Julia.

VI

DENNIS VIDAL, when the door had closed on his
host, drew again to his breast the girl to whom he
was plighted and pressed her there with silent joy.
She softly submitted, then still more softly dis
engaged herself, though in his flushed firmness he
but partly released her. The light of admiration
was in his hard young face — a visible tribute to
what she showed again his disaccustomed eyes.
Holding her yet, he covered her with a smile that
produced two strong but relenting lines on either
side of his dry, thin lips. " My own dearest," he
murmured, " you're still more so than one remem
bered!"

She opened her clear eyes wider. "Still more
what ? "

" Still more of a fright ! " And he kissed her again.

" It's you that are wonderful, Dennis," she said ;
" you look so absurdly young."

He felt with his lean, fine brown hand his spare,
clean brown chin. "If I looked as old as I feel,
dear girl, they'd have my portrait in the illustrated
papers."

He had now drawn her down upon the nearest
sofa, and while he sat sideways, grasping the wrist

THE OTHER HOUSE 41

of which he remained in possession after she had
liberated her fingers, she leaned back and took him
in with a deep air of her own. " And yet it's not
that you're exactly childish — or so extraordinarily
fresh," she went on as if to puzzle out, for her
satisfaction, her impression of him.

" ' Fresh/ my dear girl ! " He gave a little happy
jeer; then he raised her wrist to his mouth and
held it there as long as she would let him, looking
at her hard. " That's the freshest thing I've ever
been conscious of ! " he exclaimed as she drew away
her hand and folded her arms.

" You're worn, but you're not wasted," she
brought out in her kind but considering way.
" You're awfully well, you know."

" Yes, I'm awfully well, I know " — he spoke with
just the faintest ring of impatience. Then he
added : " Your voice, all the while, has been in my
irs. But there's something you put into it that
icy — out there, stupid things ! — couldn't. Don't
size me up' so," he continued smiling; "you
lake me nervous about what I may seem to come
to!"

They had both shown shyness, but Rose's was
already gone. She kept her inclined position and
her folded arms ; supported by the back of the sofa,
icr head preserved, toward the side on which he
>at, its charming contemplative turn. " I'm only
thinking," she said, " that you look young just as a
steel instrument of the best quality, no matter how
much it's handled, often looks new."

42 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Ah, if you mean I'm kept bright by use— — ! "
the young man laughed.

"You're polished by life."

41 ' Polished ' is delightful of you ! "

" I'm not sure you've come back handsomer than
you went," said Rose, " and I don't know if you've
come back richer."

" Then let me immediately tell you I have ! "
Dennis broke in.

She received the announcement, for a minute, in
silence : a good deal more passed between this pair
than they uttered. " What I was going to say,"
she then quietly resumed, " is that I'm awfully
pleased with myself when I see that at any rate
you're — what shall I call you ? — a made man."

Dennis frowned a little through his happiness.
"With * yourself? Aren't you a little pleased
with me ? "

She hesitated. "With myself first, because I
was sure of you first."

" Do you mean before I was of you ? — I'm
somehow not sure of you yet ! " the young man
declared.

Rose coloured slightly ; but she gaily laughed.
" Then I'm ahead of you in everything ! "

Leaning toward her with all his intensified need
of her and holding by his extended arm the top
of the sofa-back, he worried with his other hand
a piece of her dress, which he had begun to finger
for want of something more responsive. "You're
as far beyond me still as all the distance I've come."

THE OTHER HOUSE 43

He had dropped his eyes upon the crumple he
made in her frock, and her own during that
moment, from her superior height, descended upon
him with a kind of unseen appeal. When he
looked up again it was gone. " What do you mean
by a ' made ' man ? " he asked.

" Oh, not the usual thing, but the real thing. A
man one needn't worry about."

" Thank you ! The man not worried about is the
man who muffs it."

" That's a horrid, selfish speech," said Rose
Armiger. "You don't deserve I should tell you
what a success I now feel that you'll be."

" Well, darling," Dennis answered, " that matters
the less as I know exactly the occasion on which
I shall fully feel it for myself."

Rose manifested no further sense of this occasion
than to go straight on with her idea. She placed
her arm with frank friendship on his shoulder. It
drew him closer, and he recovered his grasp of her
free hand. With his want of stature and presence,
his upward look at her, his small, smooth head, his
seasoned sallowness and simple eyes, he might at
this instant have struck a spectator as a figure
actually younger and slighter than the ample,
accomplished girl whose gesture protected and even
a little patronised him. But in her vision of him
she none the less clearly found full warrant for
saying, instead of something he expected, something
she wished and had her reasons for wishing, even if
they represented but the gain of a minute's time

44 THE OTHER HOUSE

" You're not splendid, my dear old Dennis — you're
not dazzling, nor dangerous, nor even exactly dis
tinguished. But you've a quiet little something that
the tiresome time has made perfect, and that — just
here where you've come to me at last — makes me
immensely proud of you ! "

She had with this so far again surrendered her
self that he could show her in the ways he pre
ferred how such a declaration touched him. The
place in which he had come to her at last was of
a nature to cause him to look about at it, just as to
begin to inquire was to learn from her that he had
dropped upon a crisis. He had seen Mrs. Bream,
under Rose's wing, in her maiden days ; but in his
eagerness to jump at a meeting with the only
woman really important to him he had perhaps
intruded more than he supposed. Though he ex
pressed again the liveliest sense of the kindness of
these good people, he was unable to conceal his
disappointment at finding their inmate agitated also
by something quite distinct from the joy of his
arrival. "Do you really think the poor lady will
spoil our fun ? " he rather resentfully put it to
her.

" It will depend on what our fun may demand of
her," said Rose. " If you ask me if she's in danger,
I think not quite that : in such a case I must cer
tainly have put you off. I dare say to-day will
show the contrary. But she's so much to me — you
know how much — that I'm uneasy, quickly upset;
and if I seem to you flustered and not myself and

THE OTHER HOUSE 45

not with you, I beg you to attribute it simply to the
situation in the house."

About this situation they had each more to say,
and about many matters besides, for they faced
each other over the deep waters of the accumulated
and the undiscussed. They could keep no order
and for five minutes more they rather helplessly
played with the flood. Dennis was rueful at first,
for what he seemed to have lighted upon was but
half his opportunity; then he had an inspiration
which made him say to his companion that they
should both, after all, be able to make terms with
any awkwardness by simply meeting it with a con
sciousness that their happiness had already taken
form.

" Our happiness ? " Rose was all interest.

" Why, the end of our delays."

She smiled with every allowance. "Do you
mean we're to go out and be married this minute ? "

" Well — almost ; as soon as I've read you a
letter." He produced, with the words, his pocket-
book.

She watched him an instant turn over its con
tents. "What letter?"

" The best one I ever got. What have I done
with it ? " On his feet before her, he continued his
search.

" From your people ? "

" From my people. It met me in town, and it
makes everything possible."

She waited while he fumbled in his pockets;

46 THE OTHER HOUSE

with her hands clasped in her lap she sat looking
up at him. "Then it's certainly a thing for me
to hear."

" But what the dickens have I done with it ? "
Staring at her, embarrassed, he clapped his hands,
on coat and waistcoat, to other receptacles ; at the
end of a moment of which he had become aware of
the proximity of the noiseless butler, upright in the
high detachment of the superior servant who has
embraced the conception of unpacking.

" Might I ask you for your keys, sir ? "

Dennis Vidal had a light — he smote his forehead.
" Stupid — it's in my portmanteau ! "

" Then go and get it ! " said Rose, who perceived
as she spoke, by the door that faced her, that Tony
Bream was rejoining them. She got up, and Tony,
agitated, as she could see, but with complete com
mand of his manners, immediately and sociably said
to Dennis that he was ready to guide him upstairs.
Rose, at this, interposed. " Do let Walker take him
— I want to speak to you."

Tony smiled at the young man. "Will you
excuse me then ? " Dennis protested against the
trouble he was giving, and Walker led him away.
Rose meanwhile waited not only till they were out
of sight and of earshot, but till the return of Tony,
who, his hand on Vidal's shoulder, had gone with
them as far as the door.

" Has he brought you good news ? " said the
master of Bounds.

"Very good. He's very well ; he's all right."

THE OTHER HOUSE 47

Tony's flushed face gave to the laugh with which
he greeted this almost the effect of that of a man
who had been drinking. " Do you mean he's quite
faithful ? "

Rose always met a bold joke. " As faithful as I !
But your news is the thing."

" Mine? " He closed his eyes a moment, but stood
there scratching his head as if to carry off with a
touch of comedy his betrayal of emotion.

" Has Julia repeated her declaration ? "

Tony looked at her in silence. " She has done
something more extraordinary than that," he replied
at last.

" What has she done ? "

Tony glanced round him, then dropped into a
chair. He covered his face with his hands. " I
must get over it a little before I tell you ! "

VII

SHE waited compassionately for his nervousness to
pass, dropping again, during the pause, upon the sofa
she had just occupied with her visitor. At last as,
while she watched him, his silence continued, she
put him a question. " Does she at any rate still
maintain that she shan't get well ? "

Tony removed his hands from his face. " With
the utmost assurance — or rather with the utmost
serenity. But she treats that now as a mere
detail."

Rose wondered. "You mean she's really con
vinced that she's sinking ? "

" So she says."

" But ^'s she, good heavens ? Such a thing isn't
a matter of opinion : it's a fact or it's not a fact."

" It's not a fact," said Tony Bream. " How can
it be when one has only to see that her strength
hasn't failed ? She of course says it . has, but she
has a remarkable deal of it to show. What's the
vehemence with which she expresses herself but a
sign of increasing life ? It's excitement, of course
— partly ; but it's also striking energy."

" Excitement ? " Rose repeated. " I thought you
ust said she was ' serene.' "

THE OTHER HOUSE 49

Tony hesitated, but he was perfectly clear.
" She's calm about what she calls leaving me, bless
her heart ; she seems to have accepted that prospect
with the strangest resignation. What she's uneasy,
what she's in fact still more strangely tormented and
exalted about, is another matter."

" I see — the thing you just mentioned."

" She takes an interest," Tony went on, " she asks
questions, she sends messages, she speaks out with
all her voice. She's delighted to know that Mr.
Vidal has at last come to you, and she told me to tell
you so from her, and to tell him so — to tell you both,
in fact, how she rejoices that what you've so long
waited for is now so close at hand."

Rose took this in with lowered eyes. " How dear
of her ! " she murmured.

"She asked me particularly about Mr. Vidal,"
Tony continued — " how he looks, how he strikes me,
how you met. She gave me indeed a private message
for him."

Rose faintly smiled. " A private one ? "

" Oh, only to spare your modesty : a word to the
effect that she answers for you."

" In what way ? " Rose asked.

" Why, as the charmingest, cleverest, handsomest,
in every way most wonderful wife that ever any man
will have had."

" She is wound up ! " Rose laughed. Then she
said : " And all the while what does Nurse think ?
—I don't mean," she added with the same slight
irony, " of whether I shall do for Dennis."

50 THE OTHER HOUSE

"Of Julia's condition? She wants Ramage to
come back."

Rose thought a moment. " She's rather a goose,
I think — she loses her head."

" So I've taken the liberty of telling her." Tony
sat forward, his eyes on the floor, his elbows on his
knees and his hands nervously rubbing each other.
Presently he rose with a jerk. " What do you
suppose she wants me to do ? "

Rose tried to suppose. " Nurse wants you ? "

"No — that ridiculous girl." Nodding back at
his wife's room, he came and stood before the
sofa.

Half reclining again, Rose turned it over, raising
her eyes to him. " Do you really mean something
ridiculous ? "

" Under the circumstances— grotesque."

"Well," Rose suggested, smiling, "she wants
you to allow her to name her successor."

" Just the contrary ! " Tony seated himself where
Dennis Vidal had sat. " She wants me to promise
her she shall have no successor."

His companion looked at him hard; with her
surprise at something in his tone she had just visibly
coloured. " I see." She was at a momentary loss.
" Do you call that grotesque ? "

Tony, for an instant, was evidently struck by
her surprise ; then seeing the reason of it and
blushing too a little, " Not the idea, my dear Rose —
God forbid ! " he exclaimed. " What I'm speaking
of is the mistake of giving that amount of colour

THE OTHER HOUSE 51

to her insistence — meeting her as if one accepted
the situation as she represents it and were really
taking leave of her.

Rose appeared to understand and even to be
impressed. "You think that will make her
worse ? "

" Why, arranging everything as if she's going to
die ! " Tony sprang up afresh ; his trouble was
obvious and he fell into the restless pacing that
had been his resource all the morning.

His interlocutress watched his agitation.
" Mayn't it be that if you do just that she'll, on
the contrary, immediately find herself better ? "

Tony wandered, again scratching his head.
" From the spirit of contradiction ? I'll do anything
in life that will make her happy, or just simply
make her quiet : I'll treat her demand as intensely
reasonable even, if it isn't better to treat it as an ado
about nothing. But it stuck in my crop to lend
myself, that way, to a death-bed solemnity. Heaven
deliver us ! " Half irritated and half anxious, suffer
ing from his tenderness a twofold effect, he dropped
into another seat with his hands in his pockets and
his long legs thrust out»

" Does she wish it very solemn ? " Rose asked.

" She's in dead earnest, poor darling. She wants
a promise on my sacred honour — a vow of the most
portentous kind.''

Rose was silent a little. " You didn't give it ? '*

" I turned it off — I refused to take any such
discussion seriously. I said : ' My own darling^

52 THE OTHER HOUSE

how can I meet you on so hateful a basis ? Wait
till you are dying ! ' " He lost himself an instant ;
then he was again on his feet. " How in the world

can she dream I'm capable ? " He hadn't

patience even to finish his phrase.

Rose, however, finished it. " Of taking a second
wife ? Ah, that's another affair ! " she sadly
exclaimed. " We've nothing to do with that,"
she added. " Ot course you understand poor Julia's
feeling."

" Her feeling ? " Tony once more stood in front
of her.

" Why, what's at the bottom of her dread of your
marrying again."

" Assuredly I do ! Mrs, Grantham naturally —
she's at the bottom. She has filled Julia with the
vision of my perhaps giving our child a step
mother."

" Precisely," Rose said, " and if you had known,
as I knew it, Julia's girlhood, you would do justice
to the force of that horror. It possesses her whole
being — she would prefer that the child should
die."

Tony Bream, musing, shook his head with
dark decision. "Well, I would prefer that they
neither of them should ! "

" The simplest thing, then, is to give her your
word."

" My ' word ' isn't enough," Tony said : " she
wants mystic rites and spells ! The simplest thing,
moreover, was exactly what I desired to do. My

THE OTHER HOUSE 53

objection to the performance she demands was that
this was just what it seemed to me not to be."

" Try it," said Rose, smiling.

" To bring her round ? "

" Before the Doctor returns. When he comes,
you know, he won't let you go back to her."

"Then I'll go now," said Tony, already at the
door.

Rose had risen from the sofa. " Be very brief —
but be very strong."

" I'll swear by all the gods — that or any other
nonsense." Rose stood there opposite to him with
a fine, rich urgency which operated as a detention.
" I see you're right," he declared. " You always
are, and I'm always indebted to you." Then as he
opened the door : " Is there anything else ? "

" Any thing else?"

" I mean that you advise."

She thought a moment. " Nothing but that —
for you to seem to enter thoroughly into her idea,
to show her you understand it as she understands
it herself."

Tony looked vague. "As she does ? "

" Why, for the lifetime of your daughter." As
he appeared still not fully to apprehend, she
risked : " If you should lose Effie the reason would
fail."

Tony, at this, jerked back his head with a flush.
" My dear Rose, you don't imagine that it's as a
needed vow "

" That you would give it ? " she broke in. " Cer-

THE OTHER HOUSE

tainly I don't, any more than I suppose the degree
of your fidelity to be the ground on which we're
talking. But the thing is to convince Julia, and
I said that only because she'll be more convinced
if you strike her as really looking at what you
subscribe to."

Tony gave his nervous laugh. " Don't you know
I always 'put down my name' — especially to
1 appeals ' — in the most reckless way ? " Then
abruptly, in a different tone, as if with a pas
sionate need to make it plain, " I shall never, never,
never," he protested, " so much as look at another
woman ! "

The girl approved with an eager gesture.
" You've got it, my dear Tony. Say it to her that
way ! " But he had already gone, and, turning, she
found herself face to face with her lover, who had
come back as she spoke.

VIII

WITH his letter in his hand Dennis Vidal stood and
smiled at her. " What in the world has your dear
Tony ' got/ and what is he to say ? "

" To say ? Something to his wife, who appears
to have lashed herself into an extraordinary
state."

The young man's face fell. "What sort of a
state?"

" A strange discouragement about herself. She's
depressed and frightened — she thinks she's sinking."

Dennis looked grave. " Poor little lady — what a
bore for us! I remember her perfectly."

" She of course remembers you," Rose said. " She
takes the friendliest interest in your being here."

" That's most kind of her in her condition."

" Oh, her condition," Rose returned, " isn't quite
so bad as she thinks."

"I see." Dennis hesitated. "And that's what
Mr. Bream's to tell her."

"That's a part of it." Rose glanced at the docu
ment he had brought to her ; it was in its enve
lope, and he tapped it a little impatiently on his
left finger-tips. What she said, however, had no
reference to it. " She's haunted with a morbid

56 THE OTHER HOUSE

alarm — on the subject, of all things, of his marry
ing again."

" If she should die ? She wants him not to ? "
Dennis asked.

" She wants him not to." Rose paused a
moment. " She wants to have been the only one."

He reflected, slightly embarrassed with this peep
into a situation that but remotely concerned him.
" Well, I suppose that's the way women often
feel."

" I daresay it is." The girl's gravity gave the
gleam of a smile. " I daresay it's the way /
should."

Dennis Vidal, at this, simply seized her and
kissed her. " You needn't be afraid — you'll be the
only one ! "

His embrace had been the work of a few seconds,
and she had made no movement to escape from it ;
but she looked at him as if to convey that the
extreme high spirits it betrayed were perhaps just a
trifle mistimed. " That's what I recommended
him," she dropped, " to say to Julia."

" Why, I should hope so ! " Presently, as if a
little struck, Dennis continued : " Doesn't he want
to?"

" Absolutely. They're all in all to each other.
But he's naturally much upset and bewildered."

" And he came to you for advice ? "

" Oh, he comes to me," Rose said, " as he might
come to talk of her with the mother that, poor dar
ling, it's her misfortune never to have known,"

THE OTHER HOUSE 57

The young man's vivacity again played up.
" He treats you, you mean, as his mother-in-
law ? "

" Very much. But I'm thoroughly nice to him.
People can do anything to me who are nice to
Julia."

Dennis was silent a moment ; he had slipped
his letter out of its cover. "Well, I hope they're
grateful to you for such devotion."

" Grateful to me, Dennis ? They quite adore
me." Then as if to remind him of something it
was important he should feel : " Don't you see what
it is for a poor girl to have such an anchorage
as this — such honourable countenance, such a place
to fall back upon ? "

Thus challenged, her visitor, with a moment's
thought, did frank justice to her question. " I'm
certainly glad you've such jolly friends — one sees
they're charming people. It has been a great
comfort to me lately to know you were with them."
He looked round him, conscientiously, at the bright
and beautiful hall. " It is a good berth, my dear, and
it must be a pleasure to live with such fine things.
They've given me a room up there that's full of them
— an awfully nice room." He glanced at a picture
or two — he took in the scene. " Do they roll in
wealth ? "

"They're like all bankers, I imagine," said Rose.
" Don't bankers always roll ? "

"Yes, they seem literally to wallow. What, a
pity we ain't bankers, eh ? "

58 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Ah, with my friends here their money's the least
part of them/' the girl answered. " The great thing's
their personal goodness."

Dennis had stopped before a large photograph, a
great picture in a massive frame, supported, on a
table, by a small gilded easel. " To say nothing
of their personal beauty ! He's tremendously good-
looking."

Rose glanced with an indulgent sigh at a
representation of Tony Bream in all his splen
dour, in a fine white waistcoat and a high white
hat, with a stick and gloves and a cigar, his
orchid, his stature and his smile. " Ah, poor Julia's
taste ! "

" Yes," Dennis exclaimed, " one can see how he
must have fetched her ! "

" I mean the style of the thing," said Rose.

" It isn't good, eh ? Well, you know." Then
turning away from the picture, the young man
added : " They'll be after that fellow ! "

Rose faltered. " The people she fears ? "

"The women-folk, bless 'em — if he should lose
her."

" I daresay," said Rose. " But he'll be proof."

" Has he told you so ? " Dennis smiled.

She met his smile with a kind of conscious bravado
in her own. " In so many words. But he assures
me he'll calm her down."

Dennis was silent a little : he had now unfolded
his letter and run his eyes over it. " What a funny
subject for him to be talking about ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE 59

" With me, do you mean ? "

" Yes, and with his wife."

"My dear man," Rose exclaimed, "you can
imagine he didn't begin it ! "

"Did you?" her companion asked.

She hesitated again, and then, " Yes — idiot ! "
she replied with a quiet humour that produced, on
his part, another demonstration of tenderness.
This attempt she arrested, raising her hand, as she
appeared to have heard a sound, with a quick
injunction to listen.

" What's the matter ? "

" She bent her ear. " Wasn't there a cry from
Julia's room ? "

" I heard nothing."

Rose was relieved. " Then it's only my nervous
ness."

Dennis Vidal held up his letter. " Is your
nervousness too great to prevent your giving a
moment's attention to this ? "

" Ah, your letter ! " Rose's eyes rested on it as
if she had become conscious of it for the first time.

" It very intimately concerns our future," said her
visitor. " I went up for it so that you should do
me the favour to read it."

She held out her hand promptly and frankly.
11 Then give it to me — let me keep it a little."

" Certainly ; but kindly remember that I've still
to answer it — I mean referring to points. I've
waited to see you because it's from the ' governor '
himself — practically saying what he'll do for me."

60 THE OTHER HOUSE

Rose held the letter ; her large light eyes widened
with her wonder and her sympathy. " Is it some
thing very good ? "

Dennis prescribed, with an emphatic but amused
nod at the paper, a direction to her curiosity.
" Read and you'll see !"

She dropped her eyes, but after a moment, while
her left hand patted her heart, she raised them with
an odd, strained expression. " I mean is it really
good enough ? "

" That's exactly what I want you to tell me ! "
Dennis laughed out. A certain surprise at her
manner was in his face.

While she noted it she heard a sound again, a
sound this time explained by the opening of the
door of the vestibule. Doctor Ramage had come
back; Rose put down her letter. "I'll tell you as
soon as I have spoken to the Doctor."

IX

THE Doctor, eagerly, spoke to her first. " Our
friend has not come back ? "

"Mine has/' said Rose with grace. "Let me
introduce Mr. Vidal." Doctor Ramage beamed a
greeting, and our young lady, with her discreet
gaiety, went on to Dennis : " He too thinks all the
world of me."

" Oh, she's a wonder — she knows what to do !
But you'll see that for yourself," said the Doctor.

" I'm afraid you won't approve of me," Dennis
replied with solicitude. " You'll think me rather in
your patient's way."

Doctor Ramage laughed. " No indeed — I'm sure
Miss Armiger will keep you out of it." Then look
ing at his watch, " Bream's not with her still ? " he
inquired of Rose.

" He came away, but he returned to her."

" He shouldn't have done that."

" It was by my advice, and I'm sure you'll find
it's all right," Rose returned. " But you'll send him
back to us."

" On the spot." The Doctor picked his way out.

" He's not at all easy," Dennis pronounced when
he had gone.

62 THE OTHER HOUSE

Rose demurred. " How do you know that ? "

"By looking at him. I'm not such a fool/' her
visitor added with some emphasis, "as you strike
me as wishing to make of me."

Rose candidly stared. " As I strike you as wish
ing ? " For a moment this young couple looked

at each other hard, and they both changed colour.
" My dear Dennis, what do you mean ? "

He evidently felt that he had been almost violently
abrupt ; but it would have been equally evident
to a spectator that he was a man of cool courage.
"I mean, Rose, that I don't quite know what's
the matter with you. It's as if, unexpectedly, on my
eager arrival, I find something or other between us."

She appeared immensely relieved. " Why, my
dear child, of course you do ! Poor Julia's between
us — much between us." She faltered again ; then
she broke out with emotion : " I may as well confess
it frankly — I'm miserably anxious. Good heavens,"
she added with impatience, " don't you see it for
yourself ? "

" I certainly see that you're agitated and absent
— as you warned me so promptly you would be.
But remember you've quite denied to me the
gravity of Mrs. Bream's condition."

Rose's impatience overflowed into a gesture*
" I've been doing that to deceive my own self ! "

"I understand," said Dennis kindly. "Still,"
he went on, considering, "it's either one thing or
the other. The poor lady's either dying, you
know, or she ain't ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE 63

His friend looked at him with a reproach too
fine to be uttered. " My dear Dennis — you're
rough ! "

He showed a face as conscientious as it was
blank. " I'm crude — possibly coarse ? Perhaps I
am — without intention."

" Think what these people are to me/' said Rose.

He was silent a little. " Is it anything so very
extraordinary? Oh, I know/' he went on, as if
he feared she might again accuse him of a want
of feeling ; "I appreciate them perfectly — I do
them full justice. Enjoying their hospitality here,
I'm conscious of all their merits." The letter
she had put down was still on the table, and he
took it up and fingered it a moment. " All I mean
is that I don't want you quite to sink the fact that
I'm something to you too."

She met this appeal with instant indulgence.
"Be a little patient with me," she gently said.
Before he could make a rejoinder she pursued :
"You yourself are impressed with the Doctor's
being anxious. I've been trying not to think
so, but I daresay you're right. There I've
another worry.'*

" The greater your worry, then, the more press
ing our business." Dennis spoke with cordial
decision, while Rose, moving away from him,
reached the door by which the Doctor had gone
out. She stood there as if listening, and he con^
tinued : " It's me, you know, that you've now to
'fall back 'upon."

64 THE OTHER HOUSE

She had already raised a hand with her clear
" Hush ! " and she kept her eyes on her com
panion while she tried to catch a sound. "The
Doctor said he would send him out of the room.
But he doesn't."

" All the better — for your reading this." Dennis
held out the letter to her.

She quitted her place. "If he's allowed to stay,
there must be something wrong."

" I'm very sorry for them ; but don't you call
that a statement ? "

"Ah, your letter?" Her attention came back
to it, and, taking it from him, she dropped again
npon the sofa with it. " Voyons, voyons this great
affair!" — she had the air of trying to talk herself
nto calmness.

Dennis stood a moment before her. " It puts
us on a footing that really seems to me sound."

She had turned over the leaf to take the measure
of the document ; there were three, large, close,
neat pages. " He's a trifle long-winded, the
' governor ' ! "

" The longer the better," Dennis laughed, " when
it's all in that key! Read it, my dear, quietly and
carefully; take it in — 'it's really simple enough. "
He spoke soothingly and tenderly, turning off to
give her time and not oppress her. He moved
slowly about the hall, whistling very faintly and
looking again at the pictures, and when he had
left her she followed him a minute with her eyes.
Then she transferred them to the door at which

THE OTHER HOUSE 6$

she had just listened ; instead of reading she
watched as if for a movement of it. If there had
been any one at that moment to see her face, such
an observer would have found it strangely, tragic
ally convulsed : she had the appearance of holding
in with extraordinary force some passionate sob or
cry, some smothered impulse of anguish. This
appearance vanished miraculously as Dennis turned
at the end of the room, and what he saw, while
the great showy clock ticked in the scented still
ness, was only his friend's study of what he had put
before her. She studied it long, she studied it in
silence — a silence so unbroken by inquiry or com
ment that, though he clearly wished not to seem
to hurry her, he drew nearer again at last and
stood as if waiting for some sign.

" Don't you call that really meeting a fellow ? "
" I must read it again," Rose replied without
looking up. She turned afresh to the beginning,
and he strolled away once more. She went
through to the end ; after which she said with
tranquillity, folding the letter : " Yes ; it showrs
what they think of you." She put it down where
she had put it before, getting up as he came back
to her. tl It's good not only for what he says, but
for the way he says it."

" It's a jolly bit more than I expected." Dennis
picked the letter up and, restoring it to its en
velope, slipped it almost lovingly into a breast
pocket. " It does show, I think, that they don't
want to lose me."

E

66 THE OTHER HOUSE

"They're not such fools!" Rose had in her
turn moved off, but now she faced him, so intensely
pale that he was visibly startled ; all the more that
it marked still more her white grimace. " My dear
boy, it's a splendid future."

" I'm glad it strikes you so ! " he laughed.

"It's a great joy — you're all right. As I said
a while ago, you're a made man."

"Then by the same token, of course, you're
a made woman ! "

" I'm very, very happy about you," she brightly
conceded. " The great thing is that there's more
to come."

" Rather— there's more to come ! " said Dennis.
He stood meeting her singular smile. " I'm only
waiting for it."

" I mean there's a lot behind — a general attitude.
Read between the lines ! "

" Don't you suppose I have, miss ? I didn't
venture, myself, to say that to you,"

" Do I have so to be prompted and coached ? "
asked Rose. " I don't believe you even see all
I mean. There are hints and tacit promises—
glimpses of what may happen if you'll give them
time."

" Oh, I'll give them time ! " Dennis declared.
" But he's really awfully cautious. You're sharp
to have made out so much."

" Naturally — I'm sharp." Then, after an instant,-
"Let me have the letter again," the girl said,
holding out her hand. Dennis promptly drew it

THE OTHER HOUSE 67

forth, and she took it and went over it in silence
once more. He turned away as he had done
before, to give her a chance; he hummed slowly,
to himself, about the room, and once more, at the
end of some minutes, it appeared to strike him
that she prolonged her perusal. But when he
approached her again she was ready with her
clear contentment. She folded the letter and
handed it back to him. " Oh, you'll do!" she
proclaimed.

" You're really quite satisfied ? "

She hesitated a moment. " For the present —
perfectly." Her eyes were on the precious
document as he fingered it, and something in
his way of doing so made her break into incon
gruous gaiety. He had opened it delicately and
been caught again by a passage. "You handle
it as if it were a thousand-pound note '"

He looked up at her quickly. " It's much more
than that. Capitalise his figure."

" ' Capitalise ' it ? "

" Find the invested sum."

Rose thought a moment. "Oh, I'll do every
thing for you but cipher ! But it's millions." Then
as he returned the letter to his pocket she added :
" You should have that thing mounted in double
glass — with a little handle like a hand^screen."

"There's certainly nothing too good for the
charter of our liberties — for that's what it really
is," Dennis said. " But you can face the music ? "
he went on.

68 THE OTHER HOUSE

" The music ? "—Rose was momentarily blank.

He looked at her hard again. " You have, my
dear, the most extraordinary vacancies. The figure ,
we're talking of — the poor, dear little figure. The
five-hundred-and-forty," he a trifle sharply ex
plained. " That's about what it makes."

" Why, it seems to me a lovely little figure/' said
the girl. " To the ' likes ' of me, how can that be
anything but a duck of an income ? Then," she
exclaimed, " think also of what's to come ! "

"Yes — but I'm not speaking of anything you
may bring."

Rose wavered, judicious, as if trying to be as
attentive as he desired. " I see— without that.
But I wasn't speaking of that either," she added.

" Oh, you may count it — I only mean I don't
touch it. And the going out — you take that too ? "
Dennis asked.

Rose looked brave. "Why it's only for two
years."

He flushed suddenly, as with a flood of reassur
ance, putting his arms round her as round the
fulfilment of his dream. " Ah, my own old girl ! "

She let him clasp her again, but when she disen
gaged herself they were somehow nearer to the
door that led away to Julia Bream. She stood
there as she had stood before, while he still held
one of her hands ; then she brought forth some
thing that betrayed an extraordinary disconnection
from all that had just preceded. " I can't make
out why he doesn't send him back ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE 69

Dennis Vidal dropped her hand ; both his own
went into his pockets, and he gave a kick to the
turned-up corner of a rug. " Mr. Bream — the
Doctor ? Oh, they know what they're about ! "

" The doctor doesn't at all want him to be there.
Something has happened," Rose declared as she
left the door.

Her companion said nothing for a moment.
" Do you mean the poor lady's gone ? " he at last
demanded.

" Gone ? " Rose echoed.

" Do you mean Mrs. Bream is dead ? "

His question rang out so that Rose threw herself
back in horror. " Dennis — God forbid !"

" God forbid too, I say. But one doesn't know
what you mean — you're too difficult to follow.
One thing, at any rate, you clearly have in your
head — that we must take it as possibly on the
cards. That's enough to make it remarkably to
the point to remind you of the great change that
would take place in your situation if she should
die."

" What else in the world but that change am I
thinking of ? " Rose asked.

" You're not thinking of it perhaps so much in the
connection I refer to. If Mrs. Bream goes, your
'anchorage,' as you call it, goes."

" I see what you mean." She spoke with the
softest assent ; the tears had sprung into her eyes
and she looked away to hide them.

" One may have the highest possible opinion of

70 THE OTHER HOUSE

her husband and yet not quite see you staying on
here in the same manner with him"

Rose was silent, with a certain dignity. "Not
quite/' she presently said with the same gentleness.

"The way therefore to provide against every
thing is — as I remarked to you a while ago — to
settle with me this minute the day, the nearest one
possible, for our union to become a reality."

She slowly brought back her troubled eyes.
" The day to marry you ? "

" The day to marry me of course ! " He gave a
short, uneasy laugh. " What else ? "

She waited again, and there was a fear deep in her
face. " I must settle it this minute ? "

Dennis stared. " Why, my dear child, when in
the world if not now ? "

"You can't give me a little more time?" she
asked.

" More time ? " His gathered stupefaction broke
out. " More time — after giving you years ? "

"Ah, but just at the last, here — this news, this
rush is sudden."

" Sudden ! " Dennis repeated. "Haven't you
known I was coming, and haven't you known for
what?"

She looked at him now with an effort of resolu
tion in which he could see her white face harden ;
as if by a play of some inner mechanism some
thing dreadful had taken place in it. Then she
said with a painful quaver that no attempt to be
natural could keep down : " Let me remind you

THE OTHER HOUSE 71

Dennis, that your coming was not at my request.
You've come — yes; but you've come because you
would. You've come in spite of me."

He gasped, and with the mere touch of her tone
his own eyes filled. " You haven't wanted me ? "

" I'm delighted to see you."

" Then in God's name what do you mean ?
Where are we, and what are you springing on me?"

" I'm only asking you again, as I've asked you
already, to be patient with me — to let me, at such
a critical hour, turn round. I'm only asking you to
bear with me — I'm only asking you to wait."

" To wait for what ? " He snatched the words out
of her mouth. " It's because I have waited that I'm
here. What I want of you is three simple words —
that you can utter in three simple seconds." He
looked about him, in his helpless dismay, as if to
call the absent to witness. " And you look at me
like a stone. You open up an abyss. You give me
nothing, nothing." He paused, as it were, for a
contradiction, but she made none ; she had lowered
her eyes and, supported against a table, stood there
rigid and passive. Dennis sank into a chair with
his vain hands upon his knees. " What do you
mean by my coming in spite of you ? You never
asked me not to — you've treated me well till now.
It was my idea — yes ; but you perfectly accepted
it." He gave her time to assent to this or to deny
it, but she took none, and he continued : " Don't
you understand the one feeling that has possessed
me and sustained me ? Don't you understand that

72 THE OTHER HOUSE

I've thought of nothing else every hour of my way ?
I arrived here with a longing for you that words
can't utter; and now I see — though I couldn't
immediately be sure — that I found you from the
first constrained and unnatural."

Rose, as he went on, had raised her eyes again ;
they seemed to follow his words in sombre sub
mission. " Yes, you must have found me strange
enough."

"And don't again say it's your being anxious

! " Dennis sprang up warningly. " It's your

being anxious that just makes my right."

His companion shook her head slowly and am
biguously. " I am glad you've come."

" To have the pleasure of not receiving me ? "

" I have received you," Rose replied. " Every
word I've spoken to you and every satisfaction I've
expressed is true, is deep. I do admire you, I do
respect you, I'm proud to have been your friend.
Haven't I assured you of my pure joy in your pro
motion and your prospects ? "

" What do you call assuring me ? You utterly
misled me for some strange moments ; you mysti
fied me; I think I may say you trifled with me.
The only assurance I'm open to is that of your
putting your hand in mine as my wife. In God's
name," the young man panted, " what has happened
to you and what has changed you ? "

" I'll tell you to-morrow," said Rose.

" Tell me what I insist on ? "

She cast about her. " Tell you things I can't now,"

THE OTHER HOUSE 73

He sounded her with visible despair. " You're
not sincere — you're not straight. You've nothing
to tell me, and you're afraid. You're only gaining
time, and you've only been doing so from the first.
I don't know what it's for — you're beyond me ; but
if it's to back out I'll be hanged if I give you a
moment."

Her wan face, at this, showed a faint flush ; it
seemed to him five years older than when he came
in. " You take, with your cruel accusations, a
strange way to keep me ! " the girl exclaimed. u But
I won't talk to you in bitterness," she pursued in
a different tone. " That will drop if we do allow
it a day or two." Then on a sharp motion of his
impatience she added : " Whether you allow it or
not, you know, I must take the time I need."

He was angry now, as if she were not only
proved evasion, but almost proved insolence ; and
his anger deepened at her return to this appeal that
offered him no meaning. " No, no, you must
choose," he said with passion, " and if you're really
honest you will. I'm here for you with all my soul,
but I'm here for you now or never."

" Dennis ! " she weakly murmured.

" You do back out ? "

She put out her hand. " Good-bye."

He looked at her as over a flood ; then he thrust
his hand behind him and glanced about for his hat.
He moved blindly, like a man picking himself up
from a violent fall — flung indeed suddenly from a
smooth, swift vehicle. ''Good-bye,"

X

HE quickly remembered that he had not brought in
his hat, and also, the next instant, that even to clap
it on wouldn't under the circumstances qualify him
for immediate departure from Bounds. Just as it
came over him that the obligation he had incurred
must keep him at least for the day, he found himself
in the presence of his host, who, while his back was
turned, had precipitately reappeared and whose vision
of the place had resulted in an instant question.

" Mrs. Beever has not come back ? Julia wants
her — Julia must see her ! "

Dennis was separated by the width of the hall
from the girl with whom he had just enjoyed such
an opportunity of reunion, but there was for the
moment no indication that Tony Bream, engrossed
with a graver accident, found a betrayal in the space
between them. He had, however, for Dennis the
prompt effect of a reminder to take care : it was a
consequence of the very nature of the man that to
look at him was to recognise the value of appearances
and that he couldn't have dropped upon any scene,
however disordered, without, by the simple fact, re
establishing a superficial harmony. His new friend
met him with a movement that might have been that

THE OTHER HOUSE 75

of stepping in front of some object to hide it, while
Rose, on her side, sounding out like a touched bell,
was already alert with her response. "Ah," said
Dennis, to himself, " it's for them she cares ! "

"She has not come back, but if there's a hurry "

Rose was all there.

" There is a hurry. Some one must go for her."

Dennis had a point to make that he must make on
the spot. He spoke before Rose's rejoinder. " With
your increasing anxieties, Mr. Bream, I'm quite
ashamed to be quartered on you. Hadn't I really
better be at the inn ? "

" At the inn — to go from here ? My dear fellow,
are you mad ? " Tony sociably scoffed ; he wouldn't
hear of it. " Don't be afraid ; we've plenty of use for
you — if only to keep this young woman quiet."

" He can be of use this instant." Rose looked at
her suitor as if there were not the shadow of a cloud
between them. " The servants are getting luncheon.
Will you go over for Mrs. Beever ? "

"Ah," Tony demurred, laughing, "we mustn't
make him fetch and carry ! "

Dennis showed a momentary blankness and then,
in his private discomposure, jumped at the idea of
escaping from the house and into the air. " Do
employ me," he pleaded. " I want to stretch my
legs — I'll do anything."

" Since you're so kind, then, and it's so near,"
Tony replied. " Mrs. Beever's our best friend, and
always the friend of our friends, and she's only across
the river."

76 THE OTHER HOUSE

"Just six minutes," said Rose, " by the short way.
Bring her back with you."

" The short way," Tony pressingly explained, " is
through my garden and out of it by the gate on the
river."

"At the river you turn to the right — the little
foot-bridge is her bridge," Rose went on.

" You pass the gatehouse — empty and closed — at
the other side of it, and there you are," said
Tony.

" In her garden — it's lovely. Tell her it's for Mrs.
Bream and it's important," Rose added.

" My wife's calling aloud for her ! '' Tony laid his
hand, with his flushed laugh, on the young man's
shoulder.

Dennis had listened earnestly, looking at his com
panions in turn. " It doesn't matter if she doesn't
know in the least who I am ? "

" She knows perfectly — don't be shy ! " Rose
familiarly exclaimed.

Tony gave him a great pat on the back which sent
him off. " She has even something particular to
say to you ! She takes a great interest in his rela
tions with you," he continued to Rose as the door
closed behind their visitor. Then meeting in her
face a certain impatience of any supersession of the
question of Julia's state, he added, to justify his
allusion, a word accompanied by the same excited
laugh that had already broken from him. " Mrs.
Beever deprecates the idea of any further delay in
your marriage and thinks you've got quite enough

THE OTHER HOUSE 77

to ' set up ' on. She pronounces your means remark
ably adequate."

" What does she know about our means ? " Rose
coldly asked.

" No more, doubtless, than I ! But that needn't
prevent her. It's the wish that's father to the
thought. That's the result of her general goodwill
to you."

" She has no goodwill of any sort to me. She

doesn't like me." Rose spoke with marked dryness,

in which moreover a certain surprise at the direction

of her friend's humour was visible. Tony was now

completely out of his groove ; they indeed both were,

though Rose was for the moment more successful

in concealing her emotion. Still vibrating with the

immense effort of the morning and particularly of

the last hour, she could yet hold herself hard and

observe what was taking place in her companion.

He had been through something that had made his

nerves violently active, so that his measure of security,

of reality almost, was merged in the mere sense of

the unusual. It was precisely this evidence of what

he had been through that helped the girl's curiosity

to preserve a waiting attitude — the firm surface she

had triumphantly presented to each of the persons

whom, from an early hour, she had had to encounter.

But Tony had now the air of not intending to reward

her patience by a fresh communication ; it was as if

some new delicacy had operated and he had struck

himself as too explicit. He had looked astonished

at her judgment of the lady of Eastmead.

78 THE OTHER HOUSE

" My dear Rose/' he said, " I think you're greatly
mistaken. Mrs. Beever much appreciates you."

She was silent at first, showing him a face worn
with the ingenuity of all that in her interview with
Dennis Vidal she had had to keep out of it and put
into it. " My dear Tony/' she then blandly replied,
" I've never known any one like you for not having
two grains of observation. I've known people with
only a little; but a little's a poor affair. You've
absolutely none at all, and that, for your character,
is the right thing : it's magnificent and perfect."

Tony greeted this with real hilarity. "I like a
good square one between the eyes ! "

" You can't like it as much as I like you for being
just as you are. Observation's a second-rate thing ;
it's only a precaution — the refuge of the small and
the timid. It protects our own ridicules and props
up our defences. You may have ridicules — I don't
say so ; but you've no suspicions and no fears and
no doubts; you're natural and generous and
easy "

" And beautifully, exquisitely stupid ! " Tony
broke in. " ' Natural ' — thank you I Oh, the
horrible people who are natural ! What you mean
— only you're too charming to say it— is that I'm so
utterly taken up with my own interests and feelings
that I pipe about them like a canary in a cage. Not
to have the things you mention, and above all not to
have imagination, is simply not to have tact, than
which nothing is more unforgivable and more loath
some. What lovelier proof of my selfishness could

THE OTHER HOUSE 79

I be face to face with than the fact — which I imme
diately afterwards blushed for — that, coming in to
you here a while ago, in the midst of something so
important to you, I hadn't the manners to ask you
so much as a question about it ? "

" Do you mean about Mr. Vidal — after he had
gone to his room ? You did ask me a question,"
Rose said ; " but you had a subject much more
interesting to speak of." She waited an instant
before adding : " You spoke of something I haven't
ceased to think of." This gave Tony a chance for
reference to his discharge of the injunction she had
then laid upon him ; as a reminder of which Rose
further observed : " There's plenty of time for Mr.
Vidal."

"I hope indeed he's going to stay. I like his
looks immensely," Tony responded. " I like his
type ; it matches so with what you've told me of
him. It's the real thing — I wish we had him here."
Rose, at this, gave a small, confused cry, and her
host went on : " Upon my honour I do — I know a
man when I see him. He's just the sort of fellow I
personally should have liked to be."

" You mean you're not the real thing ? " Rose
asked.

It was a question of a kind that Tony's good
nature, shining out almost splendidly even through
trouble, could always meet with princely extrava
gance. " Not a bit ! I'm bolstered up with all sorts
of little appearances and accidents. Your friend
there has his feet on the rock." This picture of her

8o THE OTHER HOUSE

friend's position moved Rose to another vague sound
— the effect of which, in turn, was to make Ton}'
look at her more sharply. But he appeared not to
impute to her any doubt of his assertion, and after
an instant he reverted, with a jump, to a matter that
he evidently wished not to drop. " You must really,
you know, do justice to Mrs. Beever. When she
dislikes one it's not a question of shades or degrees.
She's not an underhand enemy — she very soon lets
one know it."

" You mean by something she says or does ? "

Tony considered a moment. " I mean she gives
you her reasons — she's eminently direct. And I'm
sure she has never lifted a finger against you."

" Perhaps not. But she will," said Rose. " You
yourself just gave me the proof."

Tony wondered. " What proof? "

" Why, in telling Dennis that she had told you
she has something special to say to him."

Tony recalled it — it had already passed out of his
mind. " What she has to say is only what I myself
have already said for the rest of us — that she hopes
with all her heart things are now smooth for his
marriage."

" Well, what could be more horrid than that ? "

" More horrid ? " Tony stared.

" What has she to do with his marriage ? Her
interference is in execrable taste."

The girl's tone was startling, and her companion's
surprise augmented, showing itself in his lighted
eyes and deepened colour. " My dear Rose, isn't

THE OTHER HOUSE 81

that sort of thing, in a little circle like ours, a
permitted joke — a friendly compliment ? We're all
so with you."

She had turned away from him. She went on, as
if she had not heard him, with a sudden tremor in
her voice — the tremor of a deep upheaval : " Why
does she give opinions that nobody wants or asks
her for ? What does she know of our relations or
of what difficulties and mysteries she touches ?
Why can't she leave us alone — at least for the first
hour?"

Embarrassment was in Tony's gasp — the unex
pected had sprung up before him. He could only
stammer after her as she moved away: " Bless my
soul, my dear child — you don't mean to say there
are difficulties ? Of course it's no one's business —
but one hoped you were in quiet waters." Across
her interval, as he spoke, she suddenly faced round,
and his view of her, with this, made him smite his
forehead in his penitent, expressive way. " What a
brute I am not to have seen you're not quite happy,

and not to have noticed that he ! " Tony caught

himself up ; the face offered him was the convulsed
face that had not been offered Dennis Vidal. Rose
literally glared at him ; she stood there with her two
hands on her heaving breast and something in all
her aspect that was like the first shock of a great
accident. What he saw, without understanding it,
was the final snap of her tremendous tension, the
end of her wonderful false calm. He misunderstood
it in fact, as he saw it give way before him : he

F

82 THE OTHER HOUSE

sprang at the idea that the poor girl had received a
blow — a blow which her self-control up to within a
moment only presented as more touchingly borne.
Vidal's absence was there as a part of it : the situa
tion flashed into vividness. " His eagerness to leave
you surprised me," he exclaimed, " and yours to
make him go ! " Tony thought again, and before he
spoke his thought her eyes seemed to glitter it back.
" He has not brought you bad news — he has not
failed of what we hoped ? " He went to her with
compassion and tenderness : " You don't mean to
say, my poor girl, that he doesn't meet you as you
supposed he would ? " Rose dropped, as he came,
into a chair; she had burst into passionate tears.
She threw herself upon a small table, burying her
head in her arms, while Tony, all wonder and pity,
stood above her and felt helpless as she sobbed.
She seemed to have sunk under her wrong and to
quiver with her pain. Her host, with his own re
current pang, could scarcely bear it : he felt a sharp
need of making some one pay. " You don't mean
to say Mr. Vidal doesn't keep faith ? "

" Oh, God ! oh, God ! oh, God ! " Rose Armiger
wailed.

XI

TONY turned away from her with a movement which
was a confession of incompetence ; a sense more
over of the awkwardness of being so close to a grief
for which he had no direct remedy. He could only
assure her, in his confusion, of his deep regret that
she had had a distress. The extremity of her
collapse, however, was brief, a gust of passion after
which she instantly showed the effort to recover.
" Don't mind me," she said through her tears ; " I
shall pull myself together ; I shall be all right in a
moment." He wondered whether he oughtn't to
leave her; and yet to leave her was scarcely
courteous. She was quickly erect again, with her
characteristic thought for others flowering out through
her pain. " Only don't let Julia know — that's all I
ask of you. One's little bothers are one's little
bothers — they're all in the day's work. Just give
me three minutes, and I shan't show a trace." She
straightened herself and even smiled, patting her
eyes with her crumpled handkerchief, while Tony
marvelled at her courage and good humour.

" Of one thing you must be sure, Rose," he
expressively answered, " that whatever happens
to you, now or at any time, you've friends here

84 THE OTHER HOUSE

and a home here that are yours for weal and
woe."

" Ah, don't say that," she cried ; " I can scarcely
bear it ! Disappointments one can meet ; but how
in the world is one adequately to meet generosity ?
Of one thing you, on your side, must be sure : that
no trouble in life shall ever make me a bore. It was
because I was so awfully afraid to be one that I've
been keeping myself in — and that has led, in this
ridiculous way, to my making a fool of myself at the
last. 1 knew a hitch was coming — I knew at least
something was ; but I hoped it would come and go
without this!" She had stopped before a mirror,
still dealing, like an actress in the wing, with her
appearance, her make-up. She dabbed at her cheeks
and pressed her companion to leave her to herself.
11 Don't pity me, don't mind me ; and, above all,
don't ask any questions."

" Ah," said Tony in friendly remonstrance, "your
bravery makes it too hard to help you ! "

" Don't try to help me — don't even want to. And
don't tell any tales. Hush ! " she went on in a
different tone. " Here's Mrs. Beever ! "

The lady of Eastmead was preceded by the butler,
who, having formally announced her, announced
luncheon as invidiously as if it had only been waiting
for her. The servants at each house had ways of
reminding her they were not the servants at the
other.

" Luncheon's all very well," said Tony, " but who
in the world's to eat it ? Before you do," he

THE OTHER HOUSE 85

continued, to Mrs. Beever, "there's something I
must ask of you."

"And something I must ask too," Rose added,
while the butler retired like a conscientious Minister
retiring from untenable office. She addressed her
self to their neighbour with a face void, to Tony's
astonishment, of every vestige of disorder. " Didn't
Mr. Vidal come back with you ? "

Mrs. Beever looked incorruptible. " Indeed he
did ! " she sturdily replied. " Mr. Vidal is in the
garden of this house."

"Then I'll call him to luncheon." And Rose
floated away, leaving 1 er companions confronted in
a silence that ended — as Tony was lost in the wonder
of her presence of mind — only when Mrs. Beever
had assured herself that she was out of earshot.

" She has broken it off! " this lady then responsibly
proclaimed.

Her colleague demurred. "She? How do you
know ? "

" I know because he has told me so."

" Already — in these few minutes ? "

Mrs. Beever hung fire. " Of course I asked him
first. I met him at the bridge — I saw he had had a
shock."

" It's Rose who has had the shock ! " Tony
returned. " It's he who has thrown her over."

Mrs. Beever stared. " That's her story ? "

Tony reflected. " Practically— yes."

Again his visitor hesitated, but only for an instant.
"Then one of them lies."

86 THE OTHER HOUSE

Tony laughed out at her lucidity. " It isn't Rose
Armiger ! "

" It isn't Dennis Vidal, my dear ; I believe in him,"
said Mrs. Beever.

Her companion's amusement grew. " Your opera
tions are rapid."

" Remarkably. I've asked him to come to me."

Tony raised his eyebrows. " To come to you ? "

" Till he can get a train — to-morrow. He can't
stay on here."

Tony looked at it. " I see what you mean."

" That's a blessing — you don't always ! I like
him — he's my sort. And something seems to tell
me I'm his ! "

" I won't gracefully insult you by saying you're
every one's/' Tony observed. Then, after an instant,
" Is he very much cut up ? " he inquired.

" He's utterly staggered. He doesn't understand."

Tony thought again. " No more do I. But you'll
console him," he added.

"Til feed him first," said his neighbour. "I'll
take him back with me to luncheon."

" Isn't that scarcely civil ? "

" Civil to you ? " Mrs. Beever interposed. " That's
exactly what he asked me. I told him I would
arrange it with you."

" And you're ' arranging ' it, I see. But how can
you take him if Rose is bringing him in ? "

Mrs. Beever was silent a while. " She isn't. She
hasn't gone to him. That was for me."

Tony looked at her in wonder. " Your operations

THE OTHER HOUSE 87

are rapid/' he repeated. " But I found her under
the unmistakable effect of a blow."

" I found her exactly as usual."

" Well, that also was for you/' said Tony. " Her
disappointment's a secret."

" Then I'm much obliged to you for mentioning it."

" I did so to defend her against your bad account
of her. But the whole thing's obscure/' the young
man added with sudden weariness. " I give it up ! "

"I don't — I shall straighten it out." Mrs. Beever
spoke with high decision. "But I must see your
wife first."

" Rather ! — she's waiting all this while." He had
already opened the door.

As she reached it she stopped again. "Shall I
find the Doctor with her ? "

"Yes, by her request."

" Then how is she ? "

" Maddening ! " Tony exclaimed ; after which, as
his visitor echoed the word, he went on : "I mean in
her dreadful obsession, to which poor Ramage has
had to give way and which is the direct reason of
her calling you."

Mrs. Beever's little eyes seemed to see more than
he told her, to have indeed the vision of something
formidable. " What dreadful obsession ? "

"She'll tell you herself." He turned away to
leave her to go, and she disappeared ; but the next
moment he heard her again on the threshold.

" Only a word to say that that child may turn
up."

88 THE OTHER HOUSE

" What child ? " He had already forgotten.

" Oh, if you don't remember ! " Mrs. Beever,

with feminine inconsequence, almost took it ill.

Tony recovered the agreeable image. " Oh, your
niece ? Certainly — I remember her hair."

"She's not my niece, and her hair's hideous.
But if she does come, send her straight home ! "

" Very good," said Tony. This time his visitor
vanished.

XII

HE moved a minute about the hall ; then he dropped
upon a sofa with a sense of exhaustion and a
sudden need of rest; he stretched himself, closing
his eyes, glad to be alone, glad above all to make
sure that he could lie still. He wished to show
himself he was not nervous ; he took up a position
with the purpose not to budge till Mrs. Beever
should come back. His house was in an odd con
dition, with luncheon pompously served and no one
able to go to it. Poor Julia was in a predicament,
poor Rose in another, and poor Mr. Vidal, fasting
in the garden, in a greater one than either. Tony
sighed as he thought of this dispersal, but he
stiffened himself resolutely on his couch. He
wouldn't go in alone, and he couldn't even enjoy
Mrs. Beever. It next occurred to him that he could
still less enjoy her little friend, the child he had
promised to turn away ; on which he gave a sigh
that represented partly privation and partly resig
nation — partly also a depressed perception of the
fact that he had never in all his own healthy life
been less eager for a meal. Meanwhile, however,
the attempt to stop pacing the floor was a success :
he felt as if in closing his eyes he destroyed the

90 THE OTHER HOUSE

vision that had scared him. He was cooler, he was
easier, and he liked the smell of flowers in the dusk.
What was droll, when he gave himself up to it, was
the sharp sense of lassitude ; it had dropped on him
out of the blue and it showed him how a sudden
alarm — such as, after all, he had had — could drain a
fellow in an hour of half his vitality. He wondered
whether, if he might be undisturbed a little, the
result of this surrender wouldn't be to make him
delightfully lose consciousness.

He never knew afterwards whether it was in
the midst of his hope or on the inner edge of a doze
just achieved that he became aware of a footfall
betraying an uncertain advance. He raised his lids
to it and saw before him the pretty girl from the
other house, whom, for a moment before he moved,
he lay there looking at. He immediately recognised
that what had roused him was the fact that, noise
lessly and for a few seconds, her eyes had rested on
his face. She uttered a blushing "Oh!" which
deplored this effect of her propinquity and which
brought Tony straight to his feet. "Ah, good
morning ! How d'ye do ? " Everything came back
to him but her name. " Excuse my attitude — I
didn't hear you come in."

" When I saw you asleep I'm afraid I kept the
footman from speaking." Jean Martle was much
embarrassed, but it contributed in the happiest way
to her animation. " I came in because he told me
that Cousin Kate's here."

"Oh yes, she's here — she thought you might

THE OTHER HOUSE 91

arrive. Do sit down," Tony added with his prompt
instinct of what, in his own house, was due from a
man of some confidence to a girl of none at all. It
operated before he could check it, and Jean was as
passive to it as if he had tossed her a command ; but
as soon as she was seated, to obey him, in a high-
backed, wide-armed Venetian chair which made a
gilded cage for her flutter, and he had again placed
himself — not in the same position — on the sofa
opposite, he recalled the request just preferred by
Mrs. Beever. He was to send her straight home ;
yes, it was to be invited instantly to retrace her
steps that she sat there panting and pink.

Meanwhile she was very upright and very serious ;
she seemed very anxious to explain. " I thought it
better to come, since she wasn't there. I had gone
off to walk home with the Marshes — 1 was gone
rather long; and when I came back she had left
the house — the servants told me she must be here."

Tony could only meet with the note of hospitality
so logical a plea. " Oh, it's all right — Mrs. Beever's
with Mrs. Bream." It was apparently all wrong —
he must tell her she couldn't stay ; but there was a
prior complication in his memory of having invited
her to luncheon. " I wrote to your cousin — I hoped
you'd come. Unfortunately she's not staying her
self."

" Ah, then, /mustn't ! " Jean spoke with lucidity,
but without quitting her chair.

Tony hesitated. " She'll be a little while yet—
my wife has something to say to her."

92 THE OTHER HOUSE

The girl had fixed her eyes on the floor ; she
might have been reading there the fact that for the
first time in her life she was regularly calling on a
gentleman. Since this was the singular case she
must at least call properly. Her manner revealed
an earnest effort to that end, an effort visible even
in the fear of a liberty if she should refer too
familiarly to Mrs. Bream. She cast about her with
intensity for something that would show sympathy
without freedom, and, as a result, presently produced :
" I came an hour ago, and I saw Miss Armiger.
She told me she would bring down the baby."

" But she didn't ? "

" No, Cousin Kate thought it wouldn't do."

Tony was happily struck. " It will do — it shall
do. Should you like to see her ? "

" I thought I should like it very much. It's very
kind of you."

Tony jumped up. " I'll show her to you myself."
He went over to ring a bell ; then, as he came back,
he added : " I delight in showing her. 1 think she's
the wonder of the world."

" That's what babies always seem to me," said
Jean. " It's so absorbing to watch them."

These remarks were exchanged with great gravity,
with stifftsh pauses, while Tony hung about till his
ring should be answered.

" Absorbing ? " he repeated. " Isn't it, preposter
ously ? Wait till you've watched Effie ! "
^ His visitor preserved for a while a silence which
might have indicated that, with this injunction, her

THE OTHER HOUSE 93

waiting had begun ; but at last she said with the
same simplicity : " I've a sort of original reason for
my interest in her."

" Do you mean the illness of her poor mother ? "
He saw that she meant nothing so patronising,
though her countenance fell with the reminder of
this misfortune : she heard with awe that the
unconscious child was menaced. " That's a very
good reason," he declared, to relieve her. " But so
much the better if you've got another too. I hope
you'll never want for one to be kind to her."

She looked more assured. " I'm just the person
always to be."

" Just the person ? " Tony felt that he must

draw her out. She was now arrested, however, by
the arrival of the footman, to whom he immediately
turned. " Please ask Gorham to be as good as to
bring down the child."

" Perhaps Gorham will think it won't do," Jean
suggested as the servant went off.

" Oh, she's as proud of her as I am ! But if she
doesn't approve I'll take you upstairs. That'll be
because, as you say you're just the person. I
haven't the least doubt of it — but you were going to
tell me why."

Jean treated it as if it were almost a secret.
" Because she was born on my day."

" Your birthday ? "

"My birthday — the twenty- fourth."

" Oh I see ; that's charming— that's delightful ! "
The circumstance had not quite all the subtlety she

94 THE OTHER HOUSE

had beguiled him into looking for, but her amusing
belief in it, which halved the date like a succulent
pear, mingled oddly, to make him quickly feel that
it had enough, with his growing sense that Mrs.
Beever's judgment of her hair was a libel. " It's a
most extraordinary coincidence — it makes a most
interesting tie. Do, therefore, I beg you, whenever
you keep you anniversary, keep also a little hers."

" That's just what I was thinking," said Jean.
Then she added, still shy, yet suddenly almost
radiant : " I shall always send her something ! "

" She shall do the same to you ! " This idea had
a charm even for Tony, who determined on the
spot, quite sincerely, that he would, for the first
years at least, make it his own charge. " You're
her very first friend," he smiled.

" Am I ? " Jean thought it wonderful news.
" Before she has even seen me ! "

" Oh, those are the first. You're ' handed down,'"
said Tony, humouring her.

She evidently deprecated, however, any abate
ment of her rarity. "Why, I haven't seen her
mother, either."

" No, you haven't seen her mother. But you
shall. And you have seen her father."

" Yes, I have seen her father." Looking at him
as if to make sure of it, Jean gave this assertion the
assent of a gaze so unrestricted that, feeling herself
after an instant caught, as it were, in it, she turned
abruptly away.

It came back to Tony at the same moment with

THE OTHER HOUSE 95

a sort of coarseness that he was to have sent her
home; yet now, somehow, as if half through the
familiarity it had taken but these minutes to
establish, and half through a perception of her
extreme juvenility, his reluctance to tell her so had
dropped. " Do you know I'm under a sort of
dreadful vow to Mrs. Beever ? " Then as she
faced him again, wondering : " She told me that if
you should turn up I was to pack you off."

Jean stared with a fresh alarm. " Ah, I shouldn't
have stayed ! "

" You didn't know it, and I couldn't show you the
door."

"Then I must go now."

" Not a bit. I wouldn't have mentioned it — to
consent to that. I mention it for just the other
reason — to keep you here as long as possible. I'll
make it right with Cousin Kate," Tony continued.
" I'm not afraid of her ! " he laughed. " You pro
duce an effect on me for which I'm particularly
grateful." She was acutely sensitive ; for a few
seconds she looked as if she thought he might be
amusing himself at her expense. " I mean you
soothe me — at a moment when I really want it," he
said with a gentleness from which it gave him
pleasure to see in her face an immediate impression.
" I'm worried, I'm depressed, I've been threshing
about in my anxiety. You keep me cool — you're
just the right thing." He nodded at her in clear
kindness. " Stay with me — stay with me ! "

Jean had not taken the flight of expressing a

96 THE OTHER HOUSE

concern for his domestic situation, but in the pity
that flooded her eyes at this appeal there was an
instant surrender to nature. It was the sweetness
of her youth that had calmed him, but in the res
ponse his words had evoked she already, on the
spot, looked older. " Ah, if I could help you ! " she
timidly murmured.

" Sit down again ; sit down ! " He turned away.
" Here's the wonder of the world ! " he exclaimed
the next instant, seeing Gorham appear with her
charge. His interest in the apparition almost
simultaneously dropped, for Mrs. Beever was at the
opposite door. She had come back, and Ramage
was with her : they stopped short together, and he
did the same on catching the direction, as he
supposed, of his sharp neighbour's eyes. She had
an air of singular intensity ; it was peculiarly
embodied in a look which, as she drew herself up,
she shot straight past him and under the reprobation
of which he glanced round to see Jean Martle turn
pale. What he saw, however, was not Jean Martle
at all, but that very different person Rose Armiger,
who, by an odd chance and with Dennis Vidal at
her side, presented herself at this very juncture at
the door of the vestibule. It was at Rose Mrs.
Beever stared — stared with a significance doubtless
produced by this young lady's falsification of her
denial that Mr. Vidal had been actively pursued.
She took no notice of Jean, who, while the rest of
them stood about, testified to her prompt compliance
with any word of Tony's by being the only member

THE OTHER HOUSE 97

of the company in a chair. The sight of Mrs.
Beever's face appeared to have deprived her of the
force to rise. Tony observed these things in a flash,
and also how far the gaze of the Gorgon was from
petrifying Rose Armiger, who, with a bright recovery
of zeal by which he himself was wonderstruck,
launched without delay. a conscientious reminder of
luncheon. It was on the table — it was spoiling — it
was spoilt ! Tony felt that he must gallantly
support her. " Let us at last go in then," he said
to Mrs. Beever. " Let us go in then," he repeated
to Jean and to Dennis Vidal. " Doctor, you'll come
too ? "

He broke Jean's spell at a touch ; she was on her
feet ; but the Doctor raised, as if for general applica
tion, a deterrent, authoritative hand. " If you please,
Bream — no banquet." He looked at Jean, at Rose,
at Vidal, at Gorham. " I take the house in hand.
We immediately subside."

Tony sprang to him. " Julia's worse ? "

" No — she's the same."

" Then I may go to her ? "

" Absolutely not." Doctor Ramage grasped his
arm, linked his own in it and held him. " If you're
not a good boy I lock you up in your room. We
immediately subside," he said again, addressing the
others ; " we go our respective ways and we keep
very still. The fact is I require a hushed house.
But before the hush descends Mrs. Beever has
something to say to you."

She fcwas on the other side of Tony, who felt,

98 THE OTHER HOUSE

between them there, like their prisoner. She
looked at her little audience, which consisted of
Jean and Rose, of Mr. Vidal and the matronly
Gorham. Gorham carried in her ample arms a
large white sacrifice, a muslin-muffled offering
which seemed to lead up to a ceremony. " I have
something to say to you because Doctor Ramage
allows it, and because we are both under pledges to
Mrs. Bream. It's a very peculiar announcement for
me to have on my hands, but I've just passed her
my promise, in the very strictest manner, to make
it, before leaving the house, to every one it may
concern, and to repeat it in certain other quarters."
She paused again, and Tony, from his closeness to
her, could feel the tremor of her solid presence.
She disliked the awkwardness and the coercion,
and he was sorry for her, because by this time he
well knew what was coming. He had guessed his
wife's extraordinary precaution, which would have
been almost grotesque if it hadn't been so infinitely
touching. It seemed to him that he gave the
measure of his indulgence for it in overlooking the
wound to his delicacy conveyed in the publicity she
imposed. He could condone this in a tender sigh,
because it meant that in consequence of it she'd now
pull round. " She wishes it as generally known as
possible," Mrs. Beever brought out, "that Mr.
Bream, to gratify her at a crisis which I trust she
exaggerates, has assured her on his sacred honour
that in the event of her death he will not again
marry."

THE OTHER HOUSE C9

" In the lifetime of her daughter, that is," Doctor
Ramage hastened to add.

" In the lifetime of her daughter," Mrs. Beever as
clearly echoed.

" In the lifetime of her daughter ! " Tony himself
took up with an extravagance intended to offer the
relief of a humorous treatment, if need be, to the
bewildered young people whose embarrassed stare
was a prompt criticism of Julia's discretion. It
might have been in the spirit of a protest still more
vehement that, at this instant, a small shrill pipe
rose from the animated parcel with which Gorham,
participating in the general awkwardness, had
possibly taken a liberty. The comical little sound
created a happy diversion ; Tony sprang straight to
the child. " So it t's, my own," he cried, " a
scandal to be talking of 'lifetimes!'" He caught
her from the affrighted nurse — he put his face down
to hers with passion. Her wail ceased and he held
her close to him ; for a minute, in silence, as if
something deep went out from him, he laid his
cheek to her little cheek, burying his head under
her veil. When he gave her up again, turning
round, the hall was empty of every one save the
Doctor, who signalled peremptorily to Gorham to
withdraw. Tony remained there meeting his eyes,
in which, after an instant, the young man saw some
thing that led him to exclaim : " How dreadfully ill
she must be, Ramage, to have conceived a stroke in
such taste ! "

His companion drew him down to the sofa,

TOO THE OTHER HOUSE

patting, soothing, supporting him. "You must
bear it my dear boy — you must bear everything."
Doctor Ramage faltered. "Your wife's exceed
ingly ill."

END OF BOOK FIRST

BOOK SECOND

XIII

IT continued to be for the lady of Eastmead, as the
years went on, a sustaining reflection that if in the
matter of upholstery she yielded somewhat stiffly to
the other house, so the other house was put out of
all countenance by the mere breath of her garden.
Tony could beat her indoors at every point, but
when she took her stand on her lawn she could defy
not only Bounds but Wilverley. Her stand, and
still more her seat, in the summer days, was frequent
there, as we easily gather from the fortified position
in which we next encounter her. From May to
October she was out, as she said, at grass, drawing
from it most of the time a comfortable sense that on
such ground as this her young friend's love of new
ness broke down. He might make his dinner-service
as new as he liked ; she triumphed precisely in the fact
that her trees and her shrubs were old. He could
hang nothing on his walls like her creepers and
clusters ; there was no velvet in his carpets like the
velvet of her turf. She had everything, or almost
everything — she had space and time and the river.
No one at Wilverley had the river as she had it ;
people might say of course there was little of it to
have, but of whatever there was she was in intimate

104 THE OTHER HOUSE

possession. It skirted her grounds and improved
her property and amused her guests ; she always
held that her free access made up for being, as
people said, on the wrong side of it. If she had not
been on the wrong side she would not have had the
little stone foot-bridge which was her special pride
and the very making of her picture, and which she
had heard compared — she had an off-hand way of
bringing it in — to a similar feature, at Cambridge,
of one of the celebrated " backs." The other side
was the side of the other house, the side for the view
— the view as to which she entertained ihe merely
qualified respect excited in us, after the first creative
flush, by mysteries of our own making. Mrs. Beever
herself formed the view and the other house was
welcome to it, especially to those parts of it enjoyed
through the rare gaps in an interposing leafy lane.
Tony had a gate which he called his river-gate, but
you didn't so much as suspect the stream till you
got well out of it. He had on his further quarter a
closer contact with the town ; but this was just what
on both quarters she had with the country. Her
approach to the town was by the " long way " and
the big bridge, and by going on, as she liked to do,
past the Doctor's square red house. She hated
stopping there, hated it as much as she liked his
stopping at Eastmead : in the former case she
seemed to consult him and in the latter to advise,
which was the exercise of her wisdom that she
decidedly preferred. Such degrees and dimensions,
I hasten to add, had to do altogether with short

THE OTHER HOUSE 105

relations and small things ; but it was just the good
lady's reduced scale that held her little world
together. So true is it that from strong compres
sion the elements of drama spring and that there
are conditions in which they seem to invite not so
much the opera-glass as the microscope.

Never, perhaps, at any rate, had Mrs. Beever been
more conscious of her advantages, or at least more
surrounded with her conveniences, than on a
beautiful afternoon of June on which we are again
concerned with her. These blessings were partly
embodied in the paraphernalia of tea, which had
cropped up, with promptness and profusion, in a
sheltered corner of the lawn and in the midst of
which, waiting for custom, she might have been in
charge of a refreshment-stall at a fair. Everything
at the other house struck her as later and later, and
she only regretted that, as the protest of her own
tradition, she couldn't move in the opposite direction
without also moving from the hour. She waited for
it now, at any rate, in the presence of a large red
rug and. a large white tablecloth, as well as of sundry
basket-chairs and of a hammock that swayed in the
soft west wind ; and she had meanwhile been
occupied with a collection of parcels and paste
board boxes that were heaped together on a bench.
Of one of these parcels, enveloped in several layers
of tissue-paper, she had just possessed herself, and,
seated near her tea-table, was on the point of
uncovering it. She became aware, at this instant,
of being approached from behind ; on which, looking

106 THE OTHER HOUSE

over her shoulder and seeing Doctor Ramage, she
straightway stayed her hands. These friends, in a
long acquaintance, had dropped by the way so many
preliminaries that absence, in their intercourse, was
a mere parenthesis and conversation in general
scarce began with a capital. But on this occasion
the Doctor was floated to a seat not, as usual, on the
bosom of the immediately previous.

" Guess whom I've just overtaken on your door
step. The young man you befriended four years
ago — Mr. Vidal, Miss Armiger's flame ! "

Mrs. Beever fell back in her surprise ; it was rare
for Mrs. Beever to fall back. " He has turned up
again ? " Her eyes had already asked more than her

friend could tell. " For what in the world ? "

" For the pleasure of seeing you. He has
evidently retained a very grateful sense of what you
did for him."

" I did nothing, my dear man — I had to let it
alone."

" Tony's condition — of course I remember — again
required you. But you gave him a shelter," said the
Doctor, " that wretched day and that night, and he
felt (it was evidently much to him) that, in his
rupture with his young woman, you had the right
instinct of the matter and were somehow on his side."
" I put him up for a few hours — I saved him, in
time, the embarrassment of finding himself in a
house of death. But he took himself off. the next
morning early — bidding me good-bye only in a quiet
little note."

THE OTHER HOUSE 107

" A quiet little note which I remember you after
wards showed me and which was a model of
discretion and good taste. It seems to me," the
Doctor went on, " that he doesn't violate those
virtues in considering that you've given him the right
to reappear."

" At the very time, and the only time, in so long a
period that his young woman, as you call her,
happens also to be again in the field ! "

" That's a coincidence," the Doctor replied, " far too
singular for Mr. Vidal to have had any forecast of it."

" You didn't then tell him ? "

" I told him nothing save that you were probably
just where I find you, and that, as Manning is busy
with her tea-things, I would come straight out for
him and announce that he's there."

Mrs. Beever's sense of complications evidently
grew as she thought. " By ' there ' do you mean on
the doorstep ? "

" Far from it. In the safest place in the world —
at least when you're not in it."

" In my own room ? " Mrs. Beever asked.

" In that austere monument to Domestic Method
which you're sometimes pleased to call your boudoir.
I took upon myself to show him into it and to close
the door on him there. I reflected that you'd
perhaps like to see him before any one else."

Mrs. Beever looked at her visitor with apprecia
tion. " You dear, sharp thing ! "

" Unless, indeed," the Doctor added, " they have,
in so many years, already met."

ioS THE OTHER HOUSE

" She told me only yesterday they haven't."

" I see. However, as I believe you consider that
she never speaks the truth, that doesn't particularly
count."

" I hold, on the contrary, that a lie counts double,"
Mrs. Beever replied with decision.

Doctor Ramage laughed. " Then why have you
never in your life told one ? I haven't even yet
quite made out," he pursued, " why — especially with
Miss Jean here — you asked Miss Armiger down."

" I asked her for Tony."

" Because he suggested it ? Yes, I know that."

" I mean it," said Mrs. Beever, " in a sense I think
you don't know." She looked at him a moment;
but either her profundity or his caution were too
great, and he waited for her to commit herself
further. That was a thing she could always do
rapidly without doing it recklessly. " I asked her
exactly on account of Jean."

The Doctor meditated, but this seemed to deepen
her depth. " I give it up. You've mostly struck
me as so afraid of every other girl Paul looks at."

Mrs. Beever 's face was grave. " Yes, I've
always been; but I'm not so afraid of them as of
those at whom Tony looks."

Her interlocutor started. " He's looking at
Jean ? "

Mrs. Beever was silent a little. " Not for the first
time ! "

Her visitor also hesitated. "And do you think,
Miss Armiger ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 109

Mrs. Beever took him up. " Miss Armiger's better
for him — since he must have somebody ! "
" You consider she'd marry him ? "
" She's insanely in love with him."
The Doctor tilted up his chin ; he uttered an
expressive " Euh ! — She is indeed, poor thing ! " he
said. " Since you frankly mention it, I as frankly
agree with you, that I've never seen anything like it.
And there's monstrous little I've not seen. But if

Tony isn't crazy too ? "

" It's a kind of craze that's catching. He must
think of that sort of thing."

" I don't know what you mean by ' thinking ! '
Do you imply that the dear man, on what we

know ? " The Doctor couldn't phrase it.

His friend had greater courage. " Would break
his vow and marry again ? " She turned it over,
but at last she brought out : " Never in the world."
"Then how does the chance of his thinking of
Rose help her ? "

" I don't say it helps her. I simply say it helps
poor me."

Doctor Ramage was still mystified. " But if they

can't marry ? "

" I don't care whether they marry or not ! "
She faced him with the bravery of this, and he
broke into a happy laugh. " I don't know whether
most to admire your imagination or your morality."
" I protect my girl/' she serenely declared.
Doctor Ramage made his choice. " Oh, your
morality ! "

no THE OTHER HOUSE

" In doing so," she went on, " I also protect my
boy. That's the highest morality I know. I'll see
Mr. Vidal out here/' she added.

" So as to get rid of him easier ? "

" My getting rid of him will depend on what he
wants. He must take, after all/' Mrs. Beever con
tinued, " his chance of meeting any embarrassment.
If he plumps in without feeling his way — — "

" It's his own affair — I see," the Doctor said.
What he saw was that his friend's diplomacy had
suffered a slight disturbance. Mr. Vidal was a new
element in her reckoning; for if, of old, she had
liked and pitied him, he had since dropped out of
her problem. Her companion, who timed his
pleasures to the minute, indulged in one of his
frequent glances at his watch. " I'll put it then to
the young man — more gracefully than you do — that
you'll receive him in this place."

" I shall be much obliged to you."

"But before I go," Doctor Ramage inquired,
" where are all our friends ? "

" I haven't the least idea. The only ones I count
on are Effie and Jean."

The Doctor made a motion of remembrance. " To
be sure — it's their birthday : that fellow put it out
of my head. The child's to come over to you to tea,
and just what I stopped for "

" Was to see if I had got your doll ? " Mrs.
Beever interrupted him by holding up the muffled
parcel in her lap. She pulled away the papers.
" Allow me to introduce the young lady."

THE OTHER HOUSE in

The young lady was sumptuous and ample ; he
took her in his hands with reverence. " She's
splendid — she's positively human ! I feel like a
Turkish pasha investing in a beautiful Circassian.
I feel too," the Doctor went on, " how right I was
to depend, in the absence of Mrs. Ramage, on
your infallible taste." Then restoring the effigy :
" Kindly mention how much I owe you."

"Pay at the shop," said Mrs. Beever. "They
' trusted ' me."

" With the same sense of security that I had ! "
The Doctor got up. " Please then present the
object and accompany it with nyy love and a kiss."

" You can't come back to give them yourself? "

"What do I ever give ' myself/ dear lady, but
medicine ? "

" Very good," said Mrs. Beever ; " the presenta
tion shall be formal. But I ought to warn you that
your beautiful Circassian will have been no less than
the fourth." She glanced at the parcels on the bench.
" I mean the fourth doll the child's to receive to-day."

The Doctor followed the direction of her eyes.
" It's a regular slave-market — a perfect harem ! "

"We've each of us given her one. Each, that is,
except Rose."

" And what has Rose given her ? "

" Nothing at all."

The Doctor thought a moment. " Doesn't she
like her ? "

"She seems to wish it to be marked that she
has nothing to do with her."

112 THE OTHER HOUSE

Again Doctor Ramage reflected. " I see — that's
very clever."

Mrs. Beever, from her chair, looked up at him.
" What do you mean by ' clever ' ? "

"I'll tell you some other time." He still stood
before the bench. " There are no gifts for poor
Jean ? "

" Oh, Jean has had most of hers."

" But nothing from me." The Doctor had but
just thought of her; he turned sadly away. "I'm
quite ashamed ! "

"You needn't be," said Mrs. Beever. "She has
also had nothing from Tony."

He seemed struck'. " Indeed ? On Miss Armi-
ger's system ? " His friend remained silent, and he
went on : " That of wishing it to be marked that he
has nothing to do with her ? "

Mrs. Beever, for a minute, continued not to
reply ; but at last she exclaimed : " He doesn't
calculate ! "

"That's bad— for a banker!" Doctor Ramage
laughed. " What then has she had from Paul ? "

"Nothing either — as yet. That's to come this
evening."

" And what's it to be ? "

Mrs. Beever hesitated. " I haven't an idea."

"Ah, you can fib!" joked her visitor, taking
leave.

XIV

HE crossed on his way to the house a tall parlour
maid who had just quitted it with a tray which
a moment later she deposited on the table near
her mistress. Tony Bream was accustomed to say
that since Frederick the Great's grenadiers there
had never been anything like the queen-mother's
parlourmaids, who indeed on field-days might, in
stature, uniform and precision of exercise, have
affronted comparison with that formidable phalanx.
They were at once more athletic and more reserved
than Tony liked to see their sex, and he was always
sure that the extreme length of their frocks was deter
mined by that of their feet. The young woman, at
any rate, who now presented herself, a young woman
with a large nose and a straight back, stiff cap-
streamers, stiffer petticoats and stiffest manners,
was plainly the corporal of her squad. There was
a murmur and a twitter all around her; but she
rustled about the tea-table to a tune that quenched
the voice of summer. It left undisturbed, however,
for awhile, Mrs. Beever's meditations; that lady
was thoughtfully occupied in wrapping up Doctor
Ramage's doll. " Do you know, Manning, what
has become of Miss Armiger?" she at last inquired.

H4 THE OTHER HOUSE

"She went, ma'am, near an hour ago, to the
pastrycook's."

" To the pastrycook's ? "

''She had heard you wonder, ma'am, she told
me, that the young ladies' birthday-cake hadn't
yet arrived."

"And she thought she'd see about it? Uncom
monly good of her ! " Mrs. Beever exclaimed.

"Yes, ma'am, uncommonly good."

" Has it arrived, then, now ? "

" Not yet, ma'am."

"And Miss Armiger hasn't returned ? "

" I think not, ma'am."

Mrs. Beever considered again. " Perhaps she's
waiting to bring it."

Manning indulged in a proportionate pause.
" Perhaps, ma'am- — in a fly. And when it comes,
ma'am, shall I fetch it out ? "

" In a fly too ? I'm afraid," said Mrs. Beever,
" that with such an incubation it will really require
one." After a moment she added : " I'll go in and
look at it first." And then, as her attendant was
about to rustle away, she further detained her.
" Mr. Bream hasn't been over ? "

" Not yet, ma'am."

Mrs. Beever consulted her watch. u Then he's
still at the Bank."

" He must be indeed, ma'am."
Tony's colleague appeared for a little to ponder
this prompt concurrence ; after which she said :
" You haven't seen Miss Jean ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 115

Manning bethought herself. " I believe, ma'am,
Miss Jean is dressing."

" Oh, in honour " But Mrs. Beever's idea

dropped before she finished her sentence.

Manning ventured to take it up. " In honour
of her birthday, ma'am."

" I see — of course. And do you happen to have
heard if that's what also detains Miss EfHe- — that
she's dressing in honour of hers ? "

Manning hesitated. " I heard, ma'am, this
morning that Miss Effie had a slight cold."

Her mistress looked surprised. " But not such
as to keep her at home ? "

" They were taking extra care of her, ma'am — •
so that she might be all right for coming."

Mrs. Beever was not pleased. " Extra care ?
Then why didn't they send for the Doctor ? "

Again Manning hesitated. "They sent for Miss
Jean, ma'am."

" To come and look after her ? "

"They often do, ma'am, you know. This morn
ing I took in the message."

" And Miss Jean obeyed it ? "

" She was there an hour, ma'am.'*

Mrs. Beever administered a more than approving
pat to the final envelope of her doll. "She said
nothing about it."

Again Manning concurred. "Nothing, ma'am."
The word sounded six feet high, like the figure she
presented. She waited a moment and then as if
to close with as sharp a snap the last open door to

116 THE OTHER HOUSE

the desirable, " Mr. Paul, ma'am," she observed, " if
you were wanting to know, is out in his boat on the
river."

Mrs. Beever pitched her parcel back to the bench.
11 Mr. Paul is never anywhere else ! "

" Never, ma'am," said Manning inexorably. She
turned the next instant to challenge the stranger
who had come down from the house. " A gentleman,
ma'am," she announced ; and, retiring while Mrs.
Beever rose to meet the visitor, drew, with the noise
of a lawn-mower, a starched tail along the grass.

Dennis Vidal, with his hat off, showed his hostess
a head over which not a year seemed to have
passed. He had still his young, sharp, meagre
look, and it came to her that the other time as
well he had been dressed in double-breasted blue
of a cut that made him sailorly. It was only on
a longer view that she saw his special signs to_ be
each a trifle intensified. He was browner, leaner,
harder, finer ; he even struck her as more wanting
in height. These facts, however, didn't prevent
another fact from striking her still more : what
was most distinct in his face was that he was
really glad to take her by the hand. That had
an instant effect on her : she could glow with
pleasure, modest matron as she was, at such an
intimation of her having, so many years before, in
a few hours, made on a clever young man she
liked an impression that could thus abide with
him. In the quick light of it she liked him afresh ;
it was as if their friendship put down on the spot

THE OTHER HOUSE 117

a firm foot that was the result of a single stride
across the chasm of time. In this indeed, to her
clear sense, there was even something more to
pity him for : it was such a dreary little picture
of his interval, such an implication of what it had
lacked, that there had been so much room in it
for an ugly old woman at Wilverley. She motioned
him to sit down with her, but she immediately re
marked that before she asked him a question she
had an important fact to make known. She had
delayed too long, while he waited there, to let him
understand that Rose Armiger was at Eastmead.
She instantly saw at this that he had come
in complete ignorance. The range of alarm in
his face was narrow, but he coloured, looking
grave ; and after a brief debate with himself
he inquired as to Miss Armiger's actual where
abouts.

" She has gone out, but she may reappear at any
moment," said Mrs. Beever.

" And if she does, will she come out here ? "

" I've an impression she'll change her dress first.
That may take her a little time."

" Then I'm free to sit with you ten minutes ? "

" As long as you like, dear Mr. Vidal. It's for
you to choose whether you'll avoid her."

" I dislike dodging — I dislike hiding," Dennis
returned ; " but I daresay that if I had known
where she was I wouldn't have come."

" I feel hatefully rude — but you took a leap in the
dark. The absurd part of it," Mrs. Beever went on,

n8 THE OTHER HOUSE

" is that you've stumbled on her very first visit
to me."

The young man showed a surprise which gave
her the measure of his need of illumination. " For
these four years ? "

" For these four years. It's the only time she has
been at Eastmead."

Dennis hesitated. " And how often has she been
at the other house ? "

Mrs. Beever smiled. " Not even once." Then
as her smile broadened to a small, dry laugh, " I
can quite say that for her ! " she declared.

Dennis looked at her hard. "To your certain
knowledge ? "

" To my certain and absolute knowledge." This
mutual candour continued, and presently she said :
" But you — where do you come from.? "

" From far away — I've been out of England.
After my visit here I went back to my post."

"And now you've returned with your fortune ?"

He gave her a smile from which the friendliness
took something of the bitter quality. " Call it my
/w/sfortune ! " There was nothing in this to deprive
Mrs. Beever of the pleasant play of a professional
sense that he had probably gathered such an inde
pendence as would have made him welcome at the
Bank. On the other hand she caught the note of a
tired grimness in the way he added : " I've come
back with that. It sticks to me ! "

For a minute she spared him. "You want her
as much as ever ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 119

His eyes confessed to a full and indeed to a
sore acceptance of that expression of the degree.
" I want her as much as ever. It's my constitu
tional obstinacy ! "

" Which her treatment of you has done nothing
to break down ? "

" To break down ? It has done everything in life
to build it up."

" In spite of the particular circumstance ? "

At this point even Mrs. Beever's directness failed.

That of her visitor, however, was equal to the
occasion. " The particular circumstance of her
chucking me because of the sudden glimpse given
her, by Mrs. Bream's danger, of the possibility of a
far better match ? " He gave a laugh drier than her
own had just been, the ring of an irony from which
long, hard thought had pressed all the savour.
"That ' particular circumstance,' dear madam, is
every bit that's the matter with me ! "

" You regard it with extraordinary coolness, but
I presumed to allude to it "

" Because," Dennis broke in with lucidity, " I
myself made no bones of doing so on the only
other occasion on which we've met ? "

" The fact that we both equally saw, that we both
equally judged," said Mrs. Beever, "was on that
occasion really the only thing that had time to pass
between us. It's a tie, but it's a slender one, and
I'm all the more flattered that it should have had
any force to make you care to see me again."

" It never ceased to be my purpose to see you,

120 THE OTHER HOUSE

if you would permit it, on the first opportunity. My
opportunity," the young man continued, " has been
precipitated by an accident. I returned to England
only last week, and was obliged two days ago to
come on business to Southampton. There I found
I should have to go, on the same matter, to Mar-
rington. It then appeared that to get to Harrington
I must change at Plumbury

" And Plumbury," said Mrs. Beever, " reminded
you that you changed there, that it was from there
you drove, on that horrible Sunday."

" It brought my opportunity home to me. With
out wiring you or writing you, without sounding the
ground or doing anything I ought to have done, I
simply embraced it. I reached this place an hour
ago and went to the inn."

She looked at him wofully. " Poor dear young
man ! "

He turned it off. " I do very well. Remember
the places I've come from."

" I don't care in the least where you've come
from ! If Rose weren't here I could put you up so
beautifully."

" Well, now that I know it," said Dennis after a
moment, " I think I'm glad she's here. It's a fact
the more to reckon with."

" You mean to see her then ? "

He sat with his eyes fixed, weighing it well. " You
must tell me two or three things first. Then I'll
choose— I'll decide."

She waited for him to mention his requirements,

THE OTHER HOUSE 121

turning to her teapot, which had been drawing, so
that she could meanwhile hand him a cup. But for
some minutes, taking it and stirring it, he only
gazed and mused, as if his curiosities were so
numerous that he scarcely knew which to pick out.
Mrs. Beever at last, with a woman's sense for this,
met him exactly at the right point. " I must tell
you frankly that if four years ago she was a girl

most people admired :

He caught straight on. " She's still more won
derful now ? "

Mrs. Beever distinguished. " I don't know about
' wonderful,' but she wears really well. She carries
the years almost as you do, and her head better
than any young woman I've ever seen. Life is
somehow becoming to her. Every one's immensely
struck with her. She only needs to get what she
wants. She has in short a charm, that I recognise."
Her visitor stared at her words as if they had
been a framed picture; the reflected colour of it
made a light in his face. " And you speak as one
who, I remember, doesn't like her."

The lady of Eastmead faltered, but there was
help in her characteristic courage. " No — I don't
like her."

" I see," Dennis considered. " May I ask then
why you invited her ? "

" For the most definite reason in the world. Mr.
Bream asked me to."

Dennis gave his hard smile. " Do you do every
thing Mr. Bream asks ? "

122 THE OTHER HOUSE

" He asks so little ! "

" Yes," Dennis allowed — " if that's a specimen !
Does he like her still ? " he inquired.

" Just as much as ever."

The young man was silent a few seconds. " Do
you mean he's in love with her ? "

" He never was — in any degree."

Dennis looked doubtful. " Are you very sure ? "

" Well/' said his hostess, " I'm sure of the pre
sent. That's quite enough. He's not in love with
her now — I have the proof."

"The proof?"

Mrs. Beever waited a moment. " His request in
itself. If he were in love with her he never would
have made it."

There was a momentary appearance on her com
panion's part of thinking this rather too fine ; but he
presently said : " You mean because he's completely
held by his death-bed vow to his wife ? "

" Completely held."

" There's no likelihood of his breaking it ? "

" Not the slightest."

Dennis Vidal exhaled a low, long breath which
evidently represented a certain sort of relief.
" You're very positive ; but I've a great respect for
your judgment." He thought an instant, then
he pursued abruptly : " Why did he wish her
nvited ? "

" For reasons that, as he expressed them to me,
struck me as natural enough. For the sake of old
acquaintance — for the sake of his wife's memory."

THE OTHER HOUSE 123

" He doesn't consider, then, that Mrs. Bream's
obsession, as you term it, had been in any degree an
apprehension of Rose ? "

" Why should he ? " Mrs. Beever asked. " Rose,
for poor Julia, was on the point of becoming your
wife."

" Ah ! for all that was to prevent ! " Dennis rue
fully exclaimed.

" It was to prevent little enough, but Julia never
knew how little. Tony asked me a month ago if I
thought he might without awkwardness propose to
Miss Armiger a visit to the other house. I said
' No, silly boy ! ' and he dropped the question ; but
a week later he came back to it. He confided to
me that he was ashamed for so long to have done
so little for her ; and she had behaved in a difficult
situation with such discretion and delicacy that to
have ' shunted ' her, as he said, so completely was a
kind of outrage to Julia's affection for her and a
slur upon hers for his wife. I said to him that
if it would help him a bit I would address her a
suggestion that she should honour me with her
company. He jumped at that, and I wrote. She
jumped, and here she is."

Poor Dennis, at this, guve a spring, as if the young
lady had come into sight. Mrs. Beever reassured
him, but he was on his feet and he stood before
her. " This then is their first meeting ? "

" Dear, no ! they've met in London. He often
goes up."

" How often ? "

124 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Oh, irregularly. Sometimes twice a month."

" And he sees her every time ? "

Mrs. Beever considered. " Every time ? I should
think — hardly."

" Then every other ? "

" I haven't the least idea."

Dennis looked round the garden. " You say
you're convinced that, in the face of his promise,
he has no particular interest in her. You mean,
however, of course, but to the extent of marriage."

" I mean," said Mrs. Beever, " to the extent of
anything at all." She also rose ; she brought out her
whole story. " He's in love with another person."

" Ah/' Dennis murmured, " that's none of my
business ! " He nevertheless closed his eyes an
instant with the cool balm of it. " But it makes a
lot of difference."

She laid a kind hand on his arm. " Such a lot, I
hope, then, that you'll join our little party ? " He
looked about him again, irresolute, and his eyes fell
on the packages gathered hard by, of which the
nature was betrayed by a glimpse of flaxen curls
and waxen legs. She immediately enlightened him.
" Preparations for a birthday visit from the little
girl at the other house. She's coming over to
receive them."

Again he dropped upon a seat ; she stood there
and he looked up at her. "At last we've got to
business ! It's she I've come to ask about."

" And what do you wish to ask ? "

" How she goes on — I mean in health,"

THE OTHER HOUSE 125

" Not very well, I believe, just to-day ! " Mrs.
Beever laughed.

" Just to-day ? "

" She's reported to have a slight cold. But don't
be alarmed. In general she's splendid."

He hesitated. "Then you call it a good little
life ? "

" 1 call it a beautiful one ! "

" I mean she won't pop off ? "

" I can't guarantee that," said Mrs. Beever.
" But till she does "

" Till she does ? " he asked, as she paused.

She paused a moment longer. " Well, it's a
comfort to see her. You'll do that for yourself."

" I shall do that for myself," Dennis repeated.
After a moment he went on : " To be utterly frank,
it was to do it I came."

" And not to see me ? Thank you ! But I quite
understand," said Mrs. Beever ; " you looked to me
to introduce you. Sit still where you are, and I
will."

" There's one thing more I must ask you. You
see; you know; you can tell me." He complied
but a minute with her injunction ; again, nervously,
he was on his feet. " Is Miss Armiger in love with
Mr. Bream ? "

His hostess turned away. " That's the one
question I can't answer." Then she faced him
again. "You must find out for yourself."

He stood looking at her. " How shall I find
out?"

126 THE OTHER HOUSE

" By watching her."

" Oh, I didn't come to do that ! " Dennis, on his
side, turned away ; he was visibly dissatisfied. But
he checked himself; before him rose a young man in
boating flannels, who appeared to have come up
from the river, who. had advanced noiselessly across
the lawn and whom Mrs. Beever introduced with
out ceremony as her " boy." Her boy blinked at
Dennis, to whose identity he received no clue ; and
her visitor decided on a course. " May I think over
what you've said to me and come back ? "

" I shall be very happy to see you again. But, in
this poor place, what will you do ? "

Dennis glanced at the river; then he appealed
to the young man. "Will you lend me your
boat?"

" It's mine," said Mrs. Beever, with decision.
" You're welcome to it."

" I'll take a little turn." Raising his hat, Dennis
went rapidly down to the stream.

Paul Beever looked after him. "Hadn't I better
show him ? " he asked of his mother.

"You had better sit right down there." She
pointed with sharpness to the chair Dennis had
quitted, and her son submissively took possession
of it.

XV

PAUL BEEVER was tall and fat, and his eyes, like his
mother's, were very small ; but more even than to his
mother nature had offered him a compensation for
this defect in the extension of the rest of the face.
He had large, bare, beardless cheeks and a wide,
clean, candid mouth, which the length of the smooth
upper lip caused to look as exposed as a bald head.
He had a deep fold of flesh round his uncovered
young neck, and his white flannels showed his legs
to be all the way down of the same thickness. He
promised to become massive early in life and even
to attain a remarkable girth. His great tastes were
for cigarettes and silence ; but he was, in spite of
his proportions, neither gross nor lazy. If he was
indifferent to his figure he was equally so to his
food, and he played cricket with his young towns
men and danced hard with their wives and sisters.
Wilverley liked him and Tony Bream thought well
of him : it was only his mother who had not yet
made up her mind. He had done a good deal at
Oxford in not doing any harm, and he had subse
quently rolled round the globe in the very groove
with which she had belted it. But it was exactly
in satisfying that he a little disappointed her : she

128 THE OTHER HOUSE

had provided so against dangers that she found it a
trifle dull to be so completely safe. It had become
with her a question not of how clever he was, but
of how stupid. Tony had expressed the view that
he was distinctly deep, but that might only have
been, in Tony's florid way, to show that he himself
was so. She would not have found it convenient to
have to give the boy an account of Mr. Vidal ; but
now that, detached from her purposes and respect
ful of her privacies, he sat there without making
an inquiry, she was disconcerted enough slightly to
miss the opportunity to snub him. On this occa
sion, however, she could steady herself with the
possibility that her hour would still come. He
began to eat a bun — his row justified that ; and
meanwhile she helped him to his tea. As she
handed him the cup she challenged him with some
sharpness. " Pray, when are you going to give it ? "

He slowly masticated while he looked at her.
" When do you think I had better ? "

"Before dinner — distinctly. One doesn't know
what may happen."

" Do you think anything at all will ? " he placidly
asked.

His mother waited before answering. " Nothing,
certainly, unless you take some trouble for it."
His perception of what she meant by this was
clearly wanting, so that after a moment she con
tinued : " You don't seem to grasp that I've done
for you all I can do, and that the rest now depends
on yourself."

THE OTHER HOUSE 120

" Oh yes, mother, I grasp it," he said without
irritation. He took another bite of his bun and
then added : " Miss Armiger has made me quite
do that."

" Miss Armiger ? " Mrs. Beever stared ; she even
felt that her opportunity was at hand. " What in
the world has she to do with the matter ? "

" Why I've talked to her a lot about it."

" You mean she has talked to you a lot, I suppose.
It's immensely like her."

" It's like my dear mamma — that's whom it's like,"
said Paul. " 'She takes just the same view as yourself.
I mean the view that I've a great opening and that
I must make a great effort."

" And don't you see that for yourself? Do you
require a pair of women to tell you ? " Mrs. Beever
asked.

Paul, looking grave and impartial, turned her
question over while he stirred the tea. "No, not
exactly. But Miss Armiger puts everything so
well."

"She puts some things doubtless beautifully.
Still, I should like you to be conscious of some
better reason for making yourself acceptable to
Jean than that another young woman, however
brilliant, recommends it."

The young man continued to ruminate, and it
occurred to his mother, as it had occurred before,
that his imperturbability was perhaps a strength.
" I am," he said at last. " She seems to make clear
to me what I feel."

130 THE OTHER HOUSE

Mrs. Beever wondered. "You mean of course
Jean does."

" Dear no — Miss Armiger ! "

The lady of Eastmead laughed out in her
impatience. " I'm delighted to hear you feel any
thing. You haven't often seemed to me to feel."

" I feel that Jean's very charming."

She laughed again at the way he made it sound.
" Is that the tone in which you think of telling her
so?"

"I think she'll take it from me in any tone,"
Paul replied. " She has always been most kind to
me ; we're very good friends, and she knows what I
want."

" It's more than / do, my dear ! That's exactly
what you said to me six months ago — when she liked
you so much that she asked you to let her alone/'

"She asked me to give her six months for a
definite answer, and she likes me the more for
having consented to do that/' said Paul. "The
time I've waited has improved our relations."

" Well, then, they now must have reached per
fection. You'll get her definite answer, therefore,
this very afternoon."

" When I present the ornament ? "

"When you present the ornament* You've got
it safe, I hope ? "

Paul hesitated ; he took another bun; " I imagine
it's all right."

"Do you only ( imagine '—with a thing Of that
value ? What have you done with it ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 13!

Again the young man faltered. " I've given it to
Miss Armiger. She was afraid I'd lose it."

"And you were not afraid she would?" his
mother cried.

" Not a bit. She's to give it back to me on this
spot. She wants me too much to succeed."

Mrs. Beever was silent a little. "And how much
do you want her to ? "

Paul looked blank. " In what ? "

" In making a fool of you." Mrs. Beever
gathered herself. "Are you in love with Rose
Armiger, Paul ? "

He judiciously weighed the question. "Not in
the least. I talk with her of nobody and nothing
but Jean."

" And do you talk with Jean of nobody and
nothing but Rose ? "

Paul appeared to make an effort to remember.
" I scarcely talk with her at all. We're such old
friends that there's almost nothing to say."

" There's this to say, my dear— that you take too
much for granted I "

" That's just what Miss Armiger tells me. Give
me, please, some more tea." His mother took his
cup, but she look at him hard and searchingly. He
bore it without meeting her eyes, only turning his
own pensively to the different dainties on the table.
" If I do take a great deal for granted," he went on,
" you must remember that you brought me up to it."

Mrs. Beever found only after an instant a reply ;
then, however^ she uttered it with an air of

132 THE OTHER HOUSE

triumph. " I may have brought you up — but I
didn't bring up Jean ! "

" Well, it's not of her I'm speaking/' the young
man good-humouredly rejoined; "though I might
remind you that she has been here again and again,
and month after month, and has always been taught
— so far as you could teach her — to regard me as
her inevitable fate. Have you any real doubt," he
went on, " of her recognising in a satisfactory way
that the time has come ? "

Mrs. Beever transferred her scrutiny to the
interior of her teapot. " No ! " she said after a
moment.

" Then what's the matter ? "

"The matter is that I'm nervous, and that your
stolidity makes me so. I want you to behave to me
as if you cared — and I want you still more to behave
so to her." Paul made, in his seat, a movement in
which his companion caught, as she supposed, the
betrayal of a sense of oppression ; and at this her
own worst fear broke out. "Oh, don't tell. me you
dorit care — for if you do I don't know what I shall
do to you ! " He looked at her with an air he some
times had, which always aggravated her impatience,
an air of amused surprise, quickened to curiosity,
that there should be in the world organisms capable
of generating heat. She had thanked God, through
life, that she was cold-blooded, but now it seemed
to face her as a Nemesis that she was a volcano
compared with her son. This transferred to him
the advantage she had so long monopolised, that of

THE OTHER HOUSE 133

always seeing, in any relation or discussion, the
other party become the spectacle, while, sitting back
in her stall, she remained the spectator and even
the critic. She hated to perform to Paul as she had
made others perform to herself; but she determined
on the instant that, since she was condemned to do
so, she would do it to some purpose. She would
have to leap through a hoop, but she would land on
her charger's back. The next moment Paul was
watching her while she shook her little flags at him.
" There's one thing, my dear, that I can give you
my word of honour for — the fact that if the influence
that congeals, that paralyses you, happens by any
chance to be a dream of what may be open to you
in any other quarter, the sooner you utterly dismiss
that dream the better it will be not only for your
happiness, but for your dignity. If you entertain —
with no matter how bad a conscience — a vain fancy
that you've the smallest real chance of making the
smallest real impression on anybody else, all I can
say is that you prepare for yourself very nearly as
much discomfort as you prepare disgust for your
mother." She paused a moment ; she felt, before
her son's mild gape, like a trapezist in pink tights.
" How much susceptibility, I should like to know,
has Miss Armiger at her command for your great
charms?"

Paul showed her a certain respect ; he didn't clap
her — that is he didn't smile. He felt something,
however, which was indicated, as it always was, by
the way his eyes grew smaller : they contracted at

134 THE OTHER HOUSE

times, in his big, fair face, to mere little conscious
points. These points he now directed to the region
of the house. "Well, mother," he quietly replied,
"if you would like to know it, hadn't you better ask
her directly ? " Rose Armiger had come into view ;
Mrs. Beever, turning, saw her approach, bare
headed, in a fresh white dress, under a showy red
parasol. Paul, as she drew near, left his seat and
strolled to the hammock, into which he immediately
dropped. Extended there, while the great net
bulged and its attachments cracked with his weight,
he spoke with the same plain patience. " She has
come to give me up the ornament."

XVI

" THE great cake has at last arrived, dear lady 1 "
Rose gaily announced to Mrs. Beever, who waited,
before acknowledging the news, long enough to
suggest to her son that she was perhaps about to
act on his advice.

"I'm much obliged to you for having gone to see
about it " was, however, what, after a moment, Miss
Armiger's hostess instructed herself to reply.

"It was an irresistible service. I shouldn't
have got over on such a day as this," said Rose,
" the least little disappointment to dear little Jean." 7

" To say nothing, of course, of dear little Effie,"
Mrs. Beever promptly rejoined.

" It comes to the same thing — the occasion so
mixes them up. They're interlaced on the cake —
with their initials and their candles. There are
plenty of candles for each," Rose laughed, " for
their years have been added together. It makes a
very pretty number !"

" It must also make a very big cake," said Mrs.
Beever.

" Colossal."

" Too big to be brought out ? "

The girl considered. "Not so big, you know,"

136 THE OTHER HOUSE

she archly replied, "as if the candles had to be
yours and mine ! " Then holding up the " orna
ment " to Paul, she said : " I surrender you my
trust. Catch ! " she added with decision, making a
movement to toss him a small case in red morocco,
which, the next moment, in its flight through the
air, without altering his attitude, he intercepted with
one hand.

Mrs. Beever's excited mistrust dropped at the
mere audacity of this : there was something per
ceptibly superior in the girl who could meet hall
way, so cleverly, a suspicion she was quite con
scious of and much desired to dissipate. The lady
of Eastmead looked at her hard, reading her desire
in the look she gave back. " Trust me, trust me,"
her eyes seemed to plead ; " don't at all events
think me capable of any self-seeking that's stupid or
poor. I may be dangerous to myself, but I'm not
so to others ; least of all am I so to you." She had
a presence that was, in its way, like Tony Bream's :
it made, simply and directly, a difference in any
personal question exposed to, it. Under its action,
at all events, Mrs. Beever found herself suddenly
feeling that she could after all trust Rose if she
could only trust Paul. She glanced at that young
man as he lay in the hammock, and saw that in
spite of the familiarity of his posture — which indeed
might have been assumed with a misleading purpose
— his diminished pupils, fixed upon their visitor,
still had the expression imparted to them by her
own last address. She hesitated ; but while she

THE OTHER HOUSE 137

did so Rose came straight up to her and kissed her.
It was the very first time, and Mrs. Beever blushed
as if one of her secrets had been surprised. Rose
explained her impulse only with a smile ; but the
smile said vividly: " I'll polish him off! "

This brought a response to his mother's lips.
" I'll go and inspect the cake ! "

Mrs. Beever took her way to the house, and as
soon as her back was turned her son got out of the
hammock. An observer of the scene would not
have failed to divine that, with some profundity of
calculation, he had taken refuge there as a mute
protest against any frustration of his interview with
Rose. This young lady herself laughed out as she
saw him rise, and her laugh would have been, for
the same observer, a tribute to the natural art that
was mingled with his obvious simplicity. Paul
himself recognised its bearing and, as he came and
stood at the tea-table, acknowledged her criticism by
saying quietly : " I was afraid dear mamma would
take me away."

" On the contrary ; she has formally surrendered
you."

" Then you must let me perform her office and
help you to some tea."

He spoke with a rigid courtesy that was not
without its grace, and in the rich shade of her
umbrella, which she twirled repeatedly on her
shoulder, she looked down with detachment at the
table. " I'll do it for myself, thank you ; and I
should like you to return to your hammock,"

I38 ^HE OTHER HOUSE

" I left it on purpose/' the young man said.
"Flat on my back, that way, I'm at a sort of
disadvantage in talking with you."

" That's precisely why I made the request. I
wish you to be flat on your back and to have
nothing whatever to reply." Paul immediately re
traced his steps, but before again extending himself
he asked her, with the same grave consideration,
where in this case she would be seated. " I sha'n't
be seated at all," she answered; "Til walk about
and stand over you and bully you." He tumbled
into his net, sitting up rather more than before ; and,
coming close to it, she put out her hand. " Let me
see that object again." He had in his lap the little
box he had received from her, and at this he passed
it back. She opened it, pressing on the spring, and,
inclining her head to one side, considered afresh the
mounted jewel that nestled in the white velvet.
Then, closing the case with a loud snap, she
restored it to him. " Yes, it's very good ; it's a
wonderful stone, and she knows. But that alone,
my dear, won't do it." She leaned, facing him,
against the tense ropes of the hammock, and he
looked up at her. "You take too much for granted."

For a moment Paul answered nothing, but at last
he brought out : " That's just what I said to my
mother you had already said when she said just
the same."

Rose stared an instant ; then she smiled again.
" It's complicated, but I follow you ! She has been
waking you up."

THE OTHER HOUSE 139

"She knows," said her companion, "that you
advise me in the same sense as herself."

" She believes it at last — her leaving us together
was a sign of that. I have at heart perfectly to
justify her confidence, for hitherto she has been so
blind to her own interest as to suppose that, in
these three weeks, you had been so tiresome as to
fall in love with me."

" I particularly told her I haven't at all."

Paul's tone had at moments of highest gravit}'
the gift of moving almost any interlocutor to mirth.
" I hope you'll be more convincing than that if you
ever particularly tell any one you have at all ! " the
girl exclaimed. She gave a slight push to the
hammock, turning away, ajnd he swung there gently
a minute.

" You mustn't ask too much of me, you know,"
he finally said, watching her as she went to the
table and poured out a cup of tea.

She drank a little and then, putting down the cup,
came back to him. " I should be asking too much
of you only if you were asking too much of her.
You're so far from that, and your position's so
perfect. It's too beautiful, you know, what you
offer."

" I know what I offer and I know what I don't,"
Paul returned ; " and the person we speak of knows
exactly as well. All the elements are before her,
and if my position's so fine it's there for her to see
it quite as well as for you. I agree that I'm a
decent sort, and that, as things are going, my

140 THE OTHER HOUSE

business, my prospects, my guarantees of one kind
and another, are substantial. But just these things,
for years, have been made familiar to her, and
nothing, without a risk of greatly boring her, can
very well be added to the account. You and my
mother say I take too much for granted ; but I take
only that." This was a long speech for our young
man, and his want of accent, his passionless pauses,
made it seem a trifle longer. It had a visible effect
on Rose Armiger, whom he held there with widen
ing eyes as he talked. There was an intensity in
her face, a bright sweetness that, when he stopped,
seemed to give itself out to him as if to encourage
him to go on. But he went on only to the extent
of adding ; " All I mean is that if I'm good enough
for her she has only to take me."

" You're good enough for the best girl in the
world," Rose said with the tremor of sincerity.
" You're honest and kind ; you're generous and
wise." She looked at him with a sort of intelligent
pleasure, that of a mind fine enough to be touched
by an exhibition of beauty even the most occult.
" You're so sound — you're so safe that it makes
any relation with you a real luxury and a thing to
be grateful for." She shed on him her sociable
approval, treating him as a happy product, speaking
of him as of another person. " I shall always be
glad and proud that you've been, if only for an
hour, my friend ! "

Paul's response to this demonstration consisted in
getting slowly and heavily to his feet. "Do you

THE OTHER HOUSE 141

think I like what you do to me ? " he abruptly
demanded.

It was a sudden new note, but it found her quite
ready. " I don't care whether you like it or not !
It's my duty, and it's yours — it's the right thing."

He stood there in his tall awkwardness ; he
spoke as if he had not heard her. " It's too
strange to have to take it from you."

" Everything's strange — and the truest things are
the strangest. Besides, it isn't so extraordinary as
that comes to. It isn't as if you had an objection to
her ; it isn't as if she weren't beautiful and good —
really cultivated and altogether charming. It isn't
as if, since I first saw her here, she hadn't developed
in the most admirable way, and also hadn't, by her
father's death, come into three thousand a year and
into an opportunity for looking, with the red gold of
her hair, in the deepest, daintiest, freshest mourning,
lovelier far, my dear boy, than, with all respect, any
girl who can ever have strayed before, or ever will
again, into any Wilverley bank. It isn't as if,
granting you do care for me, there were the smallest
chance, should you try to make too much of it, of my
ever doing anything but listen to you with a pained
' Oh, dear ! ' pat you affectionately on the back and
push you promptly out of the room." Paul Beever,
when she thus encountered him, quitted his place,
moving slowly outside the wide cluster of chairs,
while Rose, within it, turned as he turned, pressing
him with deeper earnestness. He stopped behind
one of the chairs, holding its high back and now

142 THE OTHER HOUSE

meeting her eyes. " If you do care for me," she
went on with her warm voice, " there's a magnificent
way you can show it. You can show it by putting
into your appeal to Miss Martle something that she
can't resist."

" And what may she not be able to resist ? " Paul
inquired, keeping his voice steady, but shaking his
chair a little.

" Why, you — if you'll only be a bit personal, a bit
passionate, have some appearance of really desiring
her, some that your happiness really depends on
her." Paul looked as if he were taking a lesson, and
she gave it with growing assurance. " Show her
some tenderness, some eloquence, try some touch of
the sort that goes home. Speak to her, for God's
sake, the words that women like. We all like them,
and we all feel them, and you can do nothing good
without them. Keep well in sight that what you
must absolutely do is please her."

Paul seemed to fix his little eyes on this remote
aim. " Please her and please you,"

" It sounds odd, yes, lumping us together* But
that doesn't matter," said Rose. "The effect of
your success will be that you'll unspeakably help
and comfort me. It's difficult to talk about it-^my
grounds are so deep, deep down." She hesitated,
casting about her, asking herself how far she might
go. Then she decided, growing a little pale with
the effort. " I've an idea that has become a passion
with me. There's a right I must see done — -there's
a wrong I must make impossible. There's a loyalty

THE OTHER HOUSE: 143

I must cherish — there's a memory I must protect.
That's all I can say." She stood there in her vivid
meaning like the priestess of a threatened altar. " If
that girl becomes your wife — why then I'm at last
at rest 1 "

i( You get, by my achievement, what you want — I
see. And, please, what do / get ? " Paul presently
asked.

" You ? " The blood rushed back to her face with
the shock of this question. "Why, you get Jean
Martle!" He turned away without a word, and at
the same moment, in the distance, she saw the person
whose name she had just uttered descend the great
square steps. She hereupon slipped through the
circle of chairs and rapidly met her companion, who
stopped short as she approached. Rose looked him
straight in the eyes. " If you give me the peace I
pray for, I'll do anything for you in life ! " She left
him staring and passed down to the river, where, 'on
the little bridge, Tony Bream was in sight, waving
his hat to her as he came from the other house.

XVII

ROSE ARMIGER, in a few moments, was joined by
Tony, and they came up the lawn together to where
Jean Martle stood talking with Paul. Here, at the
approach of the master of Bounds, this young lady
anxiously inquired if Effie had not been well enough
to accompany him. She had expected to find her
there ; then, failing that, had taken for granted he
would bring her.

" I've left the question, my dear Jean, in her nurse's
hands," Tony said. " She had been bedizened from
top to toe, and then, on some slight appearance of
being less well, had been despoiled, denuded and
disappointed. She's a poor little lamb of sacrifice.
They were at her again, when I came away, with the
ribbons and garlands; but there was apparently
much more to come, and I couldn't answer for it that
a single sneeze wouldn't again lay everything low.
It's in the bosom of the gods. I couldn't wait."

" You were too impatient to be with dear, de
lightful us" Rose suggested.

Tony, with a successful air of very light comedy,
smiled and inclined himself. " I was too impatient
to be with you, Miss Armiger." The lapse of four
years still presented him in such familiar mourning

THE OTHER HOUSE 145

as might consort with a country nook on a summer
afternoon ; but it also allowed undiminished relief to
a manner of addressing women which was clearly
instinctive and habitual and which, at the same time,
by good fortune, had the grace of flattery without
phrases and of irony without impertinence. He was
a little older, but he was not heavier ; he was a little
worn, but he was not worn dull. His presence was,
anywhere and at any time, as much as ever the clock
at the moment it strikes. Paul Beever's little eyes,
after he appeared, rested on Rose with an expression
which might have been that of a man counting the
waves produced on a sheet of water by the plunge
of a large object. For any like ripple on the fine
surface of the younger girl he appeared to have no
attention.

" I'm glad that remark's not addressed to we"
Jean said gaily; "for I'm afraid I must im
mediately withdraw from you the light of my
society."

" On whom then do you mean to bestow it ? "

" On your daughter, this moment. I must go and
judge for myself of her condition."

Tony looked at her more seriously. "If you're at
all really troubled about her I'll go back with you.
You're too beautifully kind ; they told me of your
having been with her this morning."

"Ah, you were with her this morning?" Rose
asked of Jean in a manner to which there was a clear
effort to impart the intonation of the casual, but which
had in it something that made the person addressed

146 THE OTHER HOUSE

turn to her with a dim surprise. Jean stood there
in her black dress and her fair beauty ; but her
wonder was not of a sort to cloud the extraordinary
radiance of her youth. " For ever so long. Don't
you know I've made her my peculiar and exclusive
charge ? "

" Under the pretext," Tony went on, to Rose, " of
saving her from perdition. I'm supposed to be in
danger of spoiling her, but Jean treats her quite as
spoiled ; which is much the greater injury of the two."

tl Don't go back, at any rate, please," Rose said to
him with soft persuasion. " I never see you, you
know, and I want just now particularly to speak to
you." Tony instantly expressed submission, and
Rose, checking Jean, who, at this, in silence, turned
to take her way to the bridge, reminded Paul Beever
that she had just heard from him of his having, on
his side, some special purpose of an interview with
Miss Martle.

At this Paul grew very red. " Oh yes, I should
rather like to speak to you, please," he said to Jean.

She had paused half way down the little slope;
she looked at him frankly and kindly. "Do you
mean immediately ? "

" As soon as you've time."

" I shall have time as soon as I've been to Effie,"
Jean replied. " I want to bring her over. There
are four dolls waiting for her."

" My dear child," Rose familiarly exclaimed, " at
home there are about forty ! Don't you give her
one every day or two ? " she went on to Tony.

THE OTHER HOUSE 147

Her question didn't reach him ; he was too much
interested in Paul's arrangement with Jean, on
whom his eyes were fixed. " Go, then — to be the
sooner restored to us. And do bring the kid ! " He
spoke with jollity.

" I'm going in to change — perhaps I shall presently
find you here," Paul put in.

" You'll certainly find me, dear Paul. I shall be
quick ! " the girl called back. And she lightly went
her way while Paul walked off to the house and the
two others, standing together, watched her a minute.
In spite of her black dress, of which the thin,
voluminous tissue fluttered in the summer breeze,
she seemed to shine in the afternoon light. They
saw her reach the bridge, where, in the middle, she
turned and tossed back at them a wave of her hand
kerchief ; after which she dipped to the other side
and disappeared.

" Mayn't I give you some tea ? " Rose said to her
companion. She nodded at the bright display of
Mrs. Beever's hospitality ; Tony gratefully accepted
her offer and they strolled on side by side. " Why
have you ceased to call me ' Rose ' ? " she then
suddenly demanded.

Tony started so that he practically stopped ; on
which she promptly halted. "Have I, my dear

woman ? I didn't know " He looked at her

and, looking at her, after a moment flagrantly
coloured : he had the air of a man who sees some
thing that operates as a warning. What Tony
Bream saw was a circumstance of which he had

148 THE OTHER HOUSE

already had glimpses ; but for some reason or other
it was now written with a largeness that made it
resemble a printed poster on a wall. It might have
been, from the way he took it in, a big yellow
advertisement to the publicity of whose message
no artifice of type was wanting. This message was
simply Rose Armiger's whole face, exquisite and
tragic in its appeal, stamped with a sensibility that
was almost abject, a tenderness that was more than
eager. The appeal was there for an instant with
rare intensity, and what Tony felt in response to it
he felt without fatuity or vanity. He could meet it
only with a compassion as unreserved as itself. He
looked confused, but he looked kind, and his com
panion's eyes lighted as with the sense of something
that at last even in pure pity had come out to her.
It was as if she let him know that since she had
been at Eastmead nothing whatever had come
out.

" When I was at Bounds four years ago," she
said, "you called me Rose and you called our friend
there " — she made a movement in the direction Jean
had taken — " nothing at all. Now you call her by
name and you call me nothing at all."

Tony obligingly turned it over. " Don't I call
you Miss Armiger ? "

" Is that anything at all ? " Rose effectively asked.
"You're conscious of some great difference."

Tony hesitated ; he walked on. " Between you
and Jean ? "

"Oh, the difference between me and Jean goes

THE OTHER HOUSE 149

without saying. What I mean is the difference
between my having been at Wilverley then and my
being here now."

They reached the tea-table, and Tony, dropping
into a chair, removed his hat. " What have I called
you when we've met in London ? "

She stood before him closing her parasol. " Don't
you even know ? You've called me nothing." She
proceeded to pour out tea for him, busying herself
delicately with Mrs. Beever's wonderful arrangements
for keeping things hot. " Have you by any chance
been conscious of what I've called you ? " she said.

Tony let himself, in his place, be served. " Doesn't
every one in the wide world call me the inevitable
'Tony'? The name's dreadful — for a banker; it
should have been a bar for me to that career. It's
fatal to dignity. But then of course I haven't any
dignity."

" I think you haven't much," Rose replied. " But
I've never seen any one get on so well without it;
and, after all, you've just enough to make Miss
Martle recognise it."

Tony wondered. " By calling me ' Mr. Bream ' ?
Oh, for her I'm a greybeard — and I address her as
I addressed her as a child. Of course I admit," he
added with an intention vaguely pacific, "that she
has entirely ceased to be that."

" She's wonderful," said Rose, handing him some
thing buttered and perversely cold.

He assented even to the point of submissively
helping himself. "She's a charming creature."

150 THE OTHER HOUSE

" I mean she's wonderful about your little girl."

" Devoted, isn't she ? That dates from long ago.
She has a special sentiment about her."

Rose was silent a moment. " It's a little life to
preserve and protect," she then said. " Of course ! "

"Why, to that degree that she seems scarcely to
think the child safe even with its infatuated
daddy ! "

Still on her feet beyond the table near which he
sat, she had put up her parasol again, and she
looked across at him from under it. Their eyes
met, and he again felt himself in the presence of
what, in them, shortly before, had been so deep, so
exquisite. It represented something that no lapse
could long quench — something that gave out the
measureless white ray of a light steadily revolving.
She could sometimes tiirn it away, but it was always
somewhere; and now it covered him with a great
cold lustre that made everything for the moment
look hard and ugly — made him also feel the chill of
a complication for which he had not allowed. He
had had plenty of complications in life, but he had
likewise had ways of dealing with them that were in
general clever, easy, masterly — indeed often really
pleasant. He got up nervously: there would be
nothing pleasant in any way of dealing with this
one.

XVIII

CONSCIOUS of the importance of not letting his
nervousness show, he had no sooner pointlessly
risen than he took possession of another chair. He
dropped the question of Effie's security, remembering
there was a prior one as to which he had still to
justify himself. He brought it back with an air of
indulgence which scarcely disguised, however, its
present air of irrelevance. " I'll gladly call you, my
dear Rose, anything you like, but you mustn't think
I've been capricious or disloyal. I addressed you
of old — at the last — in the way in which it seemed
most natural to address so close a friend of my wife's.
But I somehow think of you here now rather as a
friend of my own."

" And that makes me so much more distant ? "
Rose asked, twirling her parasol.

Tony, whose plea had been quite extemporised, felt
a slight confusion, which his laugh but inadequately
covered. i( I seem to have uttered a betise — but I
haven't. I only mean that a different title belongs,
somehow, to a different character."

" I don't admit 1113' character to be different,"
Rose said ; " save perhaps in the sense of its having
become a little intensified. If I was here before as

152 THE OTHER HOUSE

Julia's friend, I'm here still more as Julia's friend
now."

Tony meditated, with all his candour; then he
gave a highly cordial, even if a slightly illogical
assent. " Of course you are — from your own point
of view." He evidently only wanted to meet her as
far on the way to a quiet life as he could manage.
" Dear little Julia ! " he exclaimed in a manner which,
as soon as he had spoken, he felt to be such a fresh
piece of pointlessness that, to carry it off, he got up
again.

" Dear little Julia ! " Rose echoed, speaking out
loud and clear, but with an expression which, unlike
Tony's, would have left on the mind of an ignorant
auditor no doubt of its conveying a reference to the
un forgotten dead.

Tony strolled towards the hammock. " May I
smoke a cigarette ? " She approved with a gesture
,that was almost impatient, and while he lighted he
pursued with genial gaiety : " I'm not going to
allow you to pretend that you doubt of my having
dreamed for years of the pleasure of seeing you here
again, or of the diabolical ingenuity that I exercised
to enable your visit to take place in the way most
convenient to both of us. You used to say the
queen-mother disliked you. You see to-day how
much ! "

" She has ended by finding me useful," said Rose.
" That brings me exactly to what I told you just
now I wanted to say to you."

Tony had gathered the loose net of the hammock

THE OTHER HOUSE 153

into a single strand, and, while he smoked, had
lowered himself upon it, sideways, in a posture
which made him sit as in a swing. He looked sur
prised and even slightly disconcerted, like a man
asked to pay twice. " Oh, it isn't then what you
did say ? "

" About your use of my name ? No, it isn't that —
it's something quite different." Rose waited ; she
stood before him as she had stood before her previous
interlocutor. " It's to let you know the interest I
take in Paul Beever. I take the very greatest."

" You do ? " said Tony approvingly. " Well, you
might go in for something worse ! "

He spoke with a cheerfulness that covered all
the ground ; but she repeated the words as if
challenging their sense. " I might ' go in ' ? "

Her accent struck a light from them, put in an
idea that had not been Tony's own. Thus pre
sented, the idea seemed happy, and, in his incon-
trollable restlessness, his face more vividly bright
ening, he rose to it with a zeal that brought him for
a third time to his feet. He smiled ever so kindly
and, before he could measure his words or his
manner, broke out : " If you only really would,
you know, my dear Rose ! "

In a quicker flash he became aware that, as if
he had dealt her a blow in the face, her eyes had
filled with tears. It made the taste of his joke too
bad. "Are you gracefully suggesting that I shall
carry Mr. Beever off?" she demanded.

" Not from me, my dear — never ! " Tony blushed

154 THE OTHER HOUSE

and felt how much there was to rectify in some of
his impulses. " I think a lot of him and I want to
keep my hand on him. But I speak of him frankly,
always, as a prize, and I want something awfully
good to happen to him. If you like him," he
hastened laughingly to add, "of course it does
happen — I see ! "

He attenuated his meaning, but he had already
exposed it, and he could perceive that Rose, with
a kind of tragic perversity, was determined to get
the full benefit, whatever it might be, of her
impression or her grievance. She quickly did her
best to look collected. " You think he's safe then,
and solid, and not so stupid as he strikes one at
first ? "

" Stupid ? — not a bit. He's a statue in the block
— he's a sort of slumbering giant. The right sort
of tact will call him to life, the right sort of hand
will work him out of the stone."

"And it escaped you just now, in a moment of
unusual expansion, that the right sort are mine ? "

Tony puffed away at his cigarette, smiling at her
resolutely through its light smoke. "You do in
justice to my attitude about you. There isn't an
hour of the day that I don't indulge in some tribute
or other to your great ability."

Again there came into the girl's face her strange
alternative look — the look of being made by her
passion so acquainted with pain that even in the
midst of it she could flower into charity. Sadly
and gently she shook her head. " Poor Tony ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE i$5

Then she added in quite a different tone: "What
do you think of the difference of our ages ? "

"Yours and Paul's ? It isn't worth speaking of!"

" That's sweet of you — considering that he's only
twenty-two. However, I'm not yet thirty," she
went on; "and, of course, to gain time, one
might press the thing hard." She hesitated again ;
after which she continued : " It's awfully vulgar,
this way, to put the dots on the i's, but as it was
you, and not I, who began it, I may ask if you
really believe that if one should make a bit of an

effort ? " And she invitingly paused, to leave

him to complete a question as to which it was
natural she should feel a delicacy.

Tony's face, for an initiated observer, would have
shown that he was by this time watching for a
trap ; but it would also have shown that, after a
moment's further reflection, he didn't particularly
care if the trap should catch him. " If you take
such an interest in Paul," he replied with no
visible abatement of his preference for the stand
point of pleasantry, "you can calculate better than
I the natural results of drawing him out. But what
I can assure you is that nothing would give me
greater pleasure than to see you so happily ' estab
lished,' as they say — so honourably married, so affec
tionately surrounded and so thoroughly protected."

" And all alongside of you here ? " cried Rose.

Tony faltered, but he went on. " It's precisely
your being 'alongside' of one that would enable
one to see you."

156 THE OTHER HOUSE

" It would enable one to see you — it would have
that particular merit/' said Rose. " But my interest
in Mr. Beever hasn't at all been of a kind to prompt
me to turn the possibility over for myself. You
can readily imagine how far I should have been
in that case from speaking of it to you. The
defect of your charming picture/' she presently
added, "is that an important figure is absent
from it."

" An important figure ? "

"Jean Martle."

Tony looked at the tip of his cigarette. "You
mean because there was at one time so much
planning and plotting over the idea that she should
make a match with Paul ? "

" At one time, my dear Tony ? " Rose exclaimed.
" There's exactly as much as ever, and I'm already
— in these mere three weeks — in the very thick of
it ! Did you think the question had been quite
dropped ? " she inquired.

Tony faced her serenely enough — in part because
he felt the extreme importance of so doing. " I
simply haven't heard much about it. Mrs. Beever
used to talk about it. But she hasn't talked of late."

" She talked, my good man, no more than half
an hour ago ! " Rose replied.

Tony winced ; but he stood bravely up ; his
cigarettes were an extreme resource. " Really ?
And what did she say to you ? "

"She said nothing to me — but she said every
thing to her son. She said to him, I mean, that

THE OTHER HOUSE 157

she'll never forgive him if she doesn't hear from
him an hour or two hence that he has at last
successfully availed himself, with Miss Martle, of
this auspicious day, as well as of the fact that
he's giving her, in honour of it, something remark
ably beautiful."

Tony listened with marked attention, but without
meeting his companion's eyes. He had again seated
himself in the hammock, with his feet on the ground
and his head thrown back ; and he smoked freely,
holding it with either hand. "What is he giving
her ? " he asked after a moment

Rose turned away; she mechanically did some
thing at the table. " Shouldn't you think she'd
show it to you ? " she threw over her shoulder.

While this shoulder, sensibly cold for the instant,
was presented, he watched her. " I daresay — if she
accepts it."

The girl faced him again. "And won't she
accept it ? "

"Only — I should say — if she accepts him"

11 And won't she do that ? "

Tony made a " ring " with his cigarette. " The
thing will be for him to get her to."

''That's exactly," said Rose, "what I want you
to do."

" Me ? " He now stared at her. " How can I ? "

" I won't undertake to tell you how — I'll leave
that to your ingenuity. Wouldn't it be a matter —
just an easy extension — of existing relations ? You
saw just now that he appealed to her for his chance

158 THE OTHER HOUSE

and that she consented to give it to him. What
I wanted you to hear from me is that I feel how
much interested you'll be in learning that this
chance is of the highest importance for him
and that I know with how good a conscience
you'll throw your weight into the scale of his
success."

" My weight with the young lady ? Don't you
rather exaggerate my weight ? " Tony asked.

"That question can only be answered by your
trying it. It's a situation in which not to take an
interest is — well, not your duty, you know," said
Rose.

Tony gave a smile which he felt to be a little pale ;
but there was still good-humour in the tone in which
he protestingly and portentously murmured : " Oh,
my 'duty' !"

" Surely; if you see no objection to poor Mrs.
Beever's at last gathering the fruit of the tree she
long ago so fondly and so carefully planted. Of
course if you should frankly tell me you see one
that I don't know — — ! " She looked ingenuous
and hard. " Do you, by chance, see one ? "

"None at all. I've never known a tree of
Mrs. Beever's of which the fruit hasn't been
sweet."

" Well, in the present case — sweet or bitter ! — it's
ready to fall. This is the hour the years have
pointed to. You think highly of Paul "

Tony Bream took her up. " And I think highly
of Jean, and therefore I must see them through ? I

THE OTHER HOUSE 159

catch your meaning. But have you — in a matter
composed, after all, of ticklish elements — thought of
the danger of one's meddling ? "

" A great deal." A troubled vision of this danger
dawned even now in Rose's face. " But I've thought
still more of one's possible prudence — one's occa
sional tact." Tony, for a moment, made no reply ;
he quitted the hammock and began to stroll about.
Her anxious eyes followed him, and presently she
brought out: " Have you really been supposing that
they've given it up ? "

Tony remained silent; but at last he stopped
short, and there was an effect of returning from an
absence in the way he abruptly demanded : " That
who have given up what ? "

" That Mrs. Beever and Paul have given up what
we're talking about — the idea of his union with
Jean."

Tony hesitated. " I haven't been supposing any
thing at all ! " Rose recognised the words for the
first he had ever uttered to her that expressed even
a shade of irritation, and she was unable to conceal
that she felt, on the spot, how memorable this fact
was to make them. Tony's immediate glance at her
showed equally that he had instantly become aware
of their so affecting her. He did, however, nothing
to modify the impression : he only stood a moment
looking across the river; after which he observed
quietly : " Here she is — on the bridge."

He had walked nearer to the stream, and Rose
had moved back to the tea-table, from which the view

160 THE OTHER HOUSE

of the bridge was obstructed. " Has she brought
the child ? " she asked.

" I don't make out — she may have her by the
hand." He approached again, and as he came he
said : " Your idea is really that 1 should speak to
her now ? "

" Before she sees Paul ? " Rose met his eyes ;
there was a quick anguish of uncertainty in all her
person. " I leave that to you — since you cast a
doubt on the safety of your doing so. I leave it/'
said Rose, "to your judgment — I leave it to your
honour."

" To my honour ? " Tony wondered with a showy
jerk of his head what the deuce his honour had to
do with it.

She went on without heeding him. " My idea is
only that, whether you speak to her or not, she shall
accept him. Gracious heavens, she must!11 Rose
broke out with passion.

" You take an immense interest in it ! " Tony
laughed.

" Take the same, then, yourself, and the thing
will come off." They stood a minute looking at
each other, and more passed between them than had
ever passed before. The result of it was that Rose
had a drop from her strenuous height to sudden and
beautiful gentleness. " Tony Bream, I trust you."

She had uttered the word in a way that had the
power to make him flush. He answered peaceably,
however, laughing again : " I hope so, my dear Rose !"
Then in a moment he added : " I will speak." He

THE OTHER HOUSE 161

glanced again at the circuitous path from the bridge,
but Jean had not yet emerged from the shrubbery
by which it was screened. " If she brings Effie
will you take her ? "

With her ominous face the girl considered. " I'm
afraid I can't do that."

Tony gave a gesture of impatience. " Good God,
how you stand off from the poor little thing ! "

Jean at this moment came into sight without the
child. " I shall never take her from her ! " And
Rose Armiger turned away.

XIX

TONY went toward his messenger, who, as she saw
Rose apparently leaving the garden, pressingly
called out : " Would you. Miss Armiger, very kindly
go over for Effie ? She wasn't even yet ready," she
explained as she came back up the slope with her
friend, " and I was afraid to wait after promising
Paul to meet him."

" He's not here, you see," said Tony; "it's he
who, most ungallantly, makes you wait. Never
mind ; you'll wait with me." He looked at Rose as
they overtook her. "Will you go and bring the
child, as our friend here asks, or is such an act as
that also, and still more, inconsistent with your
mysterious principles ? "

" You must kindly excuse me," Rose said directly
to Jean. " I've a letter to write in the house. Now
or never — I must catch the post."

" Don't let us keep you, then," Tony returned,
" I'll go over myself — as soon as Paul comes
back."

" I'll send him straight out." And Rose Armiger
retired in good order.

Tony followed her with his eyes ; then he ex
claimed : " It's, upon my soul, as if she couldn't

THE OTHER HOUSE 163

trust herself ! " His remark, which he checked,

dropped into a snap of his fingers while Jean Martle
wondered.

" To do what ? " she asked.

Tony hesitated. "To do nothing! The child's
all right ? "

" Perfectly right. It's only that the great Gorham
has decreed that she's to have her usual little supper
before she comes, and that, with her ribbons and
frills all covered with an enormous bib, Effie had
just settled down to that extremely solemn
function."

Tony in his turn wondered. "Why shouldn't
she have her supper here ? "

" Ah, you must ask the great Gorham ! "

" And didn't you ask her ? "

" I did better— I divined her," said Jean. "She
doesn't trust our kitchen."

Tony laughed. " Does she apprehend poison ? "

"She apprehends what she calls ' sugar and
spice.' "

" 'And all that's nice?' Well, there's too much
that's nice here, certainly! Leave the poor child
then, like the little princess you all make of her, to
her cook and her ( taster,' to the full rigour of her
royalty, and stroll with me here till Paul comes out
to you." He looked at his watch and about at the
broad garden where the shadows of the trees were
still and the long afternoon had grown rich. " This is
remarkably peaceful, and there's plenty of time."
Jean concurred with a murmur as soft as the stir of

164 THE OTHER HOUSE

the breeze, a " Plenty, plenty/' as serene as if, to
oblige Tony Bream, so charming a day would be
sure to pause in its passage. They went a few steps,
but he stopped again with a question. "Do you
know what Paul wants of you ? "

Jean looked a moment at the grass by her feet.
" I think I do." Then raising her eyes without shy
ness, but with unqualified gravity, " Do you know,
Mr. Bream ? " she asked.

" Yes — I've just now heard."

" From Miss Armiger ? "

" From Miss Armiger. She appears to have had
it from Paul himself."

The girl gave out her mild surprise. " Why has
he told her ? "

Tony hesitated. " Because she's such a good
person to tell things to."

" Is it her immediately telling them again that
makes her so ? " Jean inquired with a faint smile.

Faint as this smile was, Tony met it as if he had
been struck by it, and as if indeed, in the midst of
an acquaintance which four years had now conse
crated, he had not quite got used to being struck.
That acquaintance had practically begun, on an un
forgettable day, with his opening his eyes to it
from an effort which had been already then the effort
to forget — his suddenly taking her in as he lay on
the sofa in his hall. From the way he sometimes
looked at her it might have been judged that he had
even now not taken her in completely — that the act
of slow, charmed apprehension had yet to melt into

THE OTHER HOUSE 165

accepted knowledge. It had in truth been made
continuous by the continuous expansion of its object.
If the sense of lying there on the sofa still sometimes
came back to Tony, it was because he was interested
in not interrupting by a rash motion the process
taking place in the figure before him, the capricious
rotation by which the woman peeped out of the child
and the child peeped out of the woman. There was
no point at which it had begun and none at which
it would end, and it was a thing to gaze at with an
attention refreshingly baffled. The frightened child
had become a tall, slim nymph on a cloud, and yet
there had been no moment of anything so gross as
catching her in the act of change. If there had been
he would have met it with some punctual change of
his own ; whereas it was his luxurious idea — unob-
scured till now — that in the midst of the difference
so delightfully ambiguous he was free just not to
change, free to remain as he was and go on liking
her on trivial grounds. It had seemed to him that
there was no one he had ever liked whom he could
like quite so comfortably : a man of his age had had
what he rather loosely called the " usual " flashes of
fondness. There had been no worrying question of
the light this particular flash might kindle ; he had
never had to ask himself what his appreciation of
Jean Martle might lead to. It would lead to exactly
nothing — that had been settled all round in advance.
This was a happy, lively provision that kept every
thing down, made sociability a cool, public, out-of-
door affair, without a secret or a mystery — confined

1 66 THE OTHER HOUSE

it, as one might say, to the breezy, sunny forecourt
of the temple of friendship, forbidding it any dream
of access to the obscure and comparatively stuffy
interior. Tony had acutely remarked to himself that
a thing could be led to only when there was a practi
cable road. As present to him to-day as on that
other day was the little hour ot violence — so
strange and sad and sweet — which in his life had
effectually suppressed any thoroughfare, making
this expanse so pathless that, had he not been
looking for a philosophic rather than a satiric
term, he might almost have compared it to a
desert. He answered his companion's inquiry
about Rose's responsibility as an informant after
he had satisfied himself that if she smiled exactly
as she did it was only another illustration of a
perfect instinct. That instinct, which at any time
turned all talk with her away from flatness, told
her that the right attitude for her now was the
middle course between anxiety and resignation.
" If Miss Armiger hadn't spoken," he said, " I
shouldn't have known. And of course I'm in
terested in knowing."

" But why is she interested in your doing so ? "
Jean asked.

Tony walked on again. " She has several reasons.
One of them is that she greatly likes Paul and that,
greatly liking him, she wishes the highest happiness
conceivable for him. It occurred to her that as I
greatly like a certain young lady I might not
unnaturally desire for that young lady a correspond-

THE OTHER HOUSE 167

ing chance, and that with a hint," laughed Tony,
" that she really is about to have it, I might perhaps
see my way to putting in a word for the dear boy in
advance."

The girl strolled beside him, looking quietly before
her. " How does she know," she demanded,
" whom you ' greatly like ' ? "

The question pulled him up a little, but he resisted
the impulse, constantly strong in him, to stop again
and stand face to face with her. He continued to
laugh and after an instant he replied : " Why, I
suppose I must have told her."

" And how many persons will she have told ? "
" I don't care how many," Tony said, " and I
don't think you need care either. Every one but she —
from lots of observation — knows we're good friends,
and it's because that's such a pleasant old story with
us all that I feel as if I might frankly say to you
what I have on my mind."

" About what Paul may have to say ? "
" The first moment you let him."
Tony was going on when she broke in : " How
long have you had it on your mind ? "

He found himself, at her challenge, just a trifle
embarrassed. " How long ? "

"As it's only since Miss Armiger has told you
that you've known there's anything in the air."

This inquiry gave Tony such pause that he met it
first with a laugh and then with a counter-appeal.
" You make me feel dreadfully dense ! Do you
mind my asking how long you yourself have known

168 THE OTHER HOUSE

that what may be in the air is on the point of
alighting ? "

" Why, since Paul spoke to me."
" Just now — before you went to Bounds ? " Tony
wondered. " You were immediately sure that that's
what he wants ? "

" What else can he want ? He doesn't want so
much/' Jean added, "that there would have been
many alternatives."

" I don't know what you call ' much ' ! " Again
Tony wondered. " And it produces no more effect

upon you "

" Than I'm showing to you now ? " the girl
asked. " Do }'ou think me dreadfully stolid ? "

" No, because I know that, in general, what you
show isn't at all the full measure of what you feel.
You're a great little mystery. Still," Tony blandly
continued, "you strike me as calm — as quite sub
lime — for a young lady whose fate's about to be
sealed. Unless, of course, you've regarded it," he
added, " as sealed from far away back."

They had strolled, in the direction they had
followed, as far as they could go, and they neces
sarily stopped for a turn. Without taking up his
last words Jean stood there and looked obscurely
happy, as it seemed to him, at his recognition of her
having appeared as quiet as she wished. " You
haven't answered my question," she simply said.
"You haven't told me how long you've had it on
your mind that you must say to me whatever it is
you wish to say."

THE OTHER HOUSfi 169

" Why is it important I should answer it ? "
"Only because you seemed positively to imply
that the time of your carrying your idea about had
been of the shortest. In the case of advice, if to

advise is what you wish "

" It t's what I wish," Tony interrupted ; " strangely
as it may strike you that, in regard to such a matter
as we refer to, one should be eager for such a
responsibility. The question of time doesn't signify
— what signifies is one's sincerity. I had an
impression, I confess, that the prospect I a good
while ago supposed you have accepted had — what
shall I call it ? — rather faded away. But at the
same time I hoped" — and Tony invited his com
panion to resume their walk — " that it would
charmingly come up again."

Jean moved beside him and spoke with a colourless
kindness which suggested no desire to challenge or
cross-question, but a thoughtful interest in anything,
in the connection in which they were talking, that he
would be so good as to tell her and an earnest
desire to be clear about it Perhaps there was
also in her manner just the visible tinge of a
confidence that he would tell her the absolute truth.
" I see. You hoped it would charmingly come up
again."

" So that on learning that it is charmingly coming
up, don't you see ? " Tony laughed, " I'm so agree
ably agitated that I spill over on the spot. I want,
without delay, to be definite to you about the really
immense opinion I have of dear Paul. It can't do

170 THE OTHER MOUSE

any harm, and it may do a little good, to mention
that it has always seemed to me that we've only got
to give him time. I mean, of course, don't you
know," he added, " for him quite to distinguish him
self."

Jean was silent a little, as if she were thoroughly
taking this home. " Distinguish himself in what
way ? " she asked with all her tranquillity.

" Well — in every way," Tony handsomely replied.
" He's full of stuff — there's a great deal of him : too
much to come out all at once. Of course you know
him — you've known him half your life ; but I see
him in a strong and special light, a light in which
he has scarcely been shown to you and which
puts him to a real test. He has ability ; he has
ideas ; he has absolute honesty ; and he has more
over a good stiff back of his own. He's a fellow of
head ; he's a fellow of heart. In short he's a man
of gold."

" He's a man of gold," Jean repeated with punctual
acceptance, yet as if it mattered much more that
Tony should think so than that she should. " It
would be odd," she went on, " to be talking with
you on a subject so personal to myself if it
were not that I've felt Paul's attitude for so long
past to be rather publicly taken for granted.
He has felt it so, too, I think, poor boy, and
for good or for ill there has been in our situa
tion very little mystery and perhaps not much
modesty."

"Why should there be, of the false kind, when

THE OTHER HOUSE 171

even the true has nothing to do with the matter ?
You and Paul are great people : he's the heir-
apparent and you're the most eligible princess in
the Almanach de Gotha. You can't be there and be
hiding behind the window-curtain : you must step
out on the balcony to be seen of the populace. Your
most private affairs are affairs of state. At the
smallest hint like the one I just mentioned even an
old dunderhead like me catches on — he sees the
strong reasons for Paul's attitude. However, it's
not of that so much that I wanted to say a word.
I thought perhaps you'd just let me touch on your
own." Tony hesitated ; he felt vaguely disconcerted
by the special quality of stillness that, though she
moved beside him, her attention, her expectation
put forth. It came over him that for the purpose of
his plea she was almost too prepared, and this made
him speculate. He stopped short again and, uneasily,
"May I light one more cigarette?" he asked. She
assented with a flicker in her dim smile, and while
he lighted he was increasingly conscious that she
waited. He met the deep gentleness of her eyes
and reflected afresh that if she was always beautiful
she was beautiful at different times from different
sources. What was the source of the impression
she made on him at this moment if not a kind
of refinement of patience, in which she seemed
actually to hold her breath ? " In fact," he said
as he threw away his match, " I have touched on it —
I mean on the great hope we all have that you do see
your way to meeting your friend as he deserves."

172 THE OTHER HOUSE

" You < all ' have it ? " Jean softly asked.

Tony hesitated again. " I'm sure I'm quite right
in speaking for Wilverley at large. It takes the
greatest interest in Paul, and I needn't at this time
of day remind you of the interest it takes in yourself.
But, I repeat, what I meant more particularly to utter
was my own special confidence in your decision.
Now that I'm fully enlightened it comes home to me
that, as regards such a possibility as your taking
your place here as a near neighbour and a permanent
friend " — and Tony fixedly smiled — " why, I can
only feel the liveliest suspense. I want to make
thoroughly sure of you ! "

Jean took this in as she had taken the rest ; after
which she simply said : " Then I think I ought to
tell you that I shall not meet Paul in the way that
what you're so good as to say seems to point to."

Tony had made many speeches, both in public
and in private, and he had naturally been exposed
to replies of the incisive no less than of the massive
order. But no check of the current had ever made
him throw back his head quite so far as this
brief and placid announcement. " You'll not meet
him- — ? "

" I shall never marry him."

He undisguisedly gasped. " In spite of all the
reasons ? "

" Of course I've thought the reasons over —
often and often. But there are reasons on the
other side too. I shall never marry him," she
repeated.

XX

IT was singular that though half an hour before he
had not felt the want of the assurance he had just
asked of her, yet now that he saw it definitely with
held it took an importance as instantly as a mirror
takes a reflection. This importance was so great that
he found himself suddenly scared by what he heard.
He thought an instant with intensity. " In spite of
knowing that you'll disappoint " — he paused a little
— " the universal hope ? "

" I know whom I shall disappoint ; but I must
bear that. I shall disappoint Cousin Kate."

" Horribly/' said Tony.

" Horribly."

"And poor Paul — to within an inch of his life."

" No, not poor Paul, Mr. Bream ; not poor Paul
in the least," Jean said. She spoke without a hint
of defiance or the faintest ring of bravado, as if for
mere veracity and lucidity, since an opportunity quite
unsought had been forced upon her. " I know about
poor Paul. It's all right about poor Paul," she
declared, smiling.

She spoke and she looked at him with a sincerity
so distilled, as he felt, from something deep within
her that to pretend to gainsay her would be in the

i?4 THE OTHER HOUSE

worst taste. He turned about, not very brilliantly,
as he was aware, to some other resource. " You'll
immensely disappoint your own people."

"Yes, my mother and my grandmother — they
both would like it. But they've never had any
promise from me."

Tony was silent awhile. " And Mrs. Beever —
hasn't she had ? "

" A promise ? Never. I've known how much
she has wanted it. But that's all."

"Ah, that's a great deal," said Tony. "If,
knowing how much she has wanted it, you've come
back again and again, hasn't that been tantamount
to giving it ? "

Jean considered. " I shall never come back again."
"Ah, my dear child, what a way to treat us !"
her friend broke out.

She took no notice of this ; she only went
on : " Months ago — the last time I was here — an
assurance, of a kind, was asked of me. But even
then I held off."

"And you've gone on with that intention ? "
He had grown so serious now that he cross-
questioned her, but she met him with a promptitude
that was touching in its indulgence. " I've gone on
without an intention. I've only waited to see, to
feel, to judge. The great thing seemed to me to
be sure I wasn't unfair to Paul. I haven't been —
I'm not unfair. He'll never say I've been — I'm sure
he won't. I should have liked to be able to become
his wife. But I can't."

THE OTHER HOUSE 175

" You've nevertheless excited hopes," said Tony.
" Don't you think you ought to consider that a little
more ? " His uneasiness, his sense of the unex
pected, as sharp as a physical pang, increased so
that he began to lose sight of the importance of
concealing it ; and he went on even while something
came into her eyes that showed he had not concealed
it. " If you haven't meant not to do it, you've, so
far as that goes, meant the opposite. Therefore
something has made you change."

Jean hesitated. " Everything has made me
change."

" Well," said Tony, with a smile so strained that
he felt it almost pitiful, " we've spoken of the dis
appointment to others, but I suppose there's no use
in my attempting to say anything of the disappoint
ment to me. That's not the thing that, in such a
case, can have much effect on you."

Again Jean hesitated : he saw how pale she had
grown. "Do I understand you tell me that you
really desire my marriage ? "

If the revelation of how he desired it had not
already come to him the deep mystery of her beauty
at this crisis might have brought it on the spot — a
spectacle in which he so lost himself for the minute
that he found no words to answer till she spoke
again. " Do I understand that you literally ask me
for it ? "

" 1 ask you for it — I ask you for it," said Tony
Bream.

They stood looking at each other like a pair who,

176 THE OTHER HOUSE

walking on a frozen lake, suddenly have in their
ears the great crack of the ice. " And what are your
reasons ? "

" I'll tell you my reasons when you tell me yours
for having changed."

" I've not changed/' said Jean.

It was as if their eyes were indissolubly engaged.
That was the way he had been looking a while
before into another woman's, but he could think at
this moment of the exquisite difference of Jean's.
He shook his head with all the sadness and all
the tenderness he felt he might permit himself to
show just this once and never again. " You've
changed — you've changed."

Then she gave up. " Wouldn't you much rather
I should never come back ? "

" Far rather. But you will come back," said
Tony.

She looked away from him at last — turned her
eyes over the place in which she had known none
but emotions permitted and avowed, and again
seemed to yield to the formidable truth. " So you
think I had better come back — so different ? "

His tenderness broke out into a smile. "As
different as possible. As different as that will be just
all the difference," he added.

She appeared, with her averted face, to consider
intently how much " all " might in such a case prac
tically amount to. But " Here he comes " was what
she presently replied.

Paul Beever was in sight, so freshly dressed that

THE OTHER HOUSE 177

even at a distance his estimate of the requirements
of the occasion was visible from his necktie to his
boots. Adorned as it unmistakably had never been,
his great featureless person moved solemnly over
the lawn.

" Take him then — take him ! " said Tony Bream.

Jean, intensely serious but with agitation held at
bay, gave him one more look, a look so infinitely
pacific that as, at Paul's nearer approach, he turned
away from her, he had the sense of going off with a
sign of her acceptance of his solution. The light in
her face was the light of the compassion that had
come out to him, and what was that compassion but
the gage of a relief, of a promise ? It made him
walk down to the river with a step quickened to
exhilaration ; all the more that as the girl's eyes
followed him he couldn't see in them the tragic
intelligence he had kindled, her perception — from
the very rhythm of the easy gait she had watched
so often — that he really thought such a virtual
confession to her would be none too lavishly repaid
by the effort for which he had appealed.

Paul Beever had in his hand his little morocco
case, but his glance also rested, till it disappeared,
on Tony's straight and swinging back. " I've
driven him away," he said.

" It was time," Jean replied. " Effie, who wasn't
ready for me, must really come at last." Then
without the least pretence of unconsciousness she
looked straight at the small object Paul carried.

Observing her attention to it he also dropped his

•i;8 THE OTHER HOUSE

eyes on it, while his hands turned it round and
round in apparent uncertainty as to whether he had
better present it to her open or shut. " I hope you
won't be as indifferent as Effie seems to be to the
pretty trifle with which I've thought I should like to
commemorate your birthday." He decided to open
the case and with its lifted lid he held it out to her.
" It will give me great pleasure if you'll kindly accept
this little ornament."

Jean took it from him — she seemed to study it a
moment. " Oh Paul, oh Paul ! " — her protest was
as sparing as a caress with the back of the
hand.

" I thought you might care for the stone/' he
said.

" It's a rare and perfect one — it's magnificent."

" Well, Miss Armiger told me you would know."
There was a hint of relaxed suspense in Paul's tone.

Still holding the case open his companion looked
at him a moment. " Did she kindly select it ? "

He stammered, colouring a little. " No ; mother
and I did. We went up to London for it ; we had
the mounting designed and worked out. They took
two months. But I showed it to Miss Armiger and
she said you'd spot any defect."

" Do you mean," the girl asked, smiling, " that if
you had not had her word for that you would have
tried me with something inferior ? "

Paul continued very grave. " You know well
enough what I mean*"

Without again noticing the contents of the case she

THE OTHER HOUSE 179

softly closed it and kept it in her hand. " Yes,
Paul, I know well enough what you mean." She
looked round her; then, as if her old familiarity
with him were refreshed and sweetened : " Come
and sit down with me." She led the way to a
garden bench that stood at a distance from Mrs.
Beever's tea-table, an old green wooden bench that
was a perennial feature of the spot. " If Miss
Armiger knows that I'm a judge," she pursued as they
went, " it's, I think, because she knows everything
— except one, which I know better than she." She
seated herself, glancing up and putting out her free
hand to him with an air of comradeship and trust.
Paul let it take his own, which he held there a
minute. "I know you." She drew him down, and
he dropped her hand ; whereupon it returned to his
little box, which, with the aid of the other, it tightly
and nervously clasped. " I can't take your present.
It's impossible," she said.

He sat leaning forward with his big red fists on
his knees. " Not for your birthday ? "

" It's too splendid for that — it's too precious,
And how can I take it for that when it isn't for that
you offer it ? How can I take so much, Paul, when
I give you so little ? It represents so much more
than itself — a thousand more things than I've any
right to let you think I can accept. I can't pretend
not to know — I must meet you half way. I want to
do that so much — to keep our relations happy, happy
always, without a break or a cloud. They will be —
they'll be beautiful. We've only to be frank. They

I8d THE OTHER HOUSE

are now : I feel it in the kind way you listen to me*
If you hadn't asked to speak to me I should have
asked it myself. Six months ago I promised I would
tell you, and I've known the time was come."

" The time is come, but don't tell me till you've
given me a chance," said Paul. He had listened
without looking at her, his little eyes pricking with
their intensity the remotest object they could reach.
" I want so to please you — to make you take a
favourable view. There isn't a condition you may
make, you know, of any sort whatever, that I won't
grant you in advance. And if there's any induce
ment you can name that I've the least capacity to
offer, please regard it as offered with all my heart.
You know everything — you understand ; but just let
me repeat that all I am, all I have, all I can ever be
or do "

She laid her hand on his arm as if to help, not to
stop him. " Paul, Paul — you're beautiful ! " She
brushed him with the feather of her tact, but he
reddened and continued to avert his big face, as if
he were aware that the moment of such an assertion
was scarcely the moment to venture to show it.
" You're such a gentleman ! " Jean went on — this
time with a tremor in her voice that made him
turn.

" That's the sort of fine thing I wanted to say to
you" he said. And he was so accustomed, in any
talk, to see his interlocutor suddenly laugh that his
look of benevolence covered even her air of being
amused by these words.

THE OTHER HOUSE 181

She smiled at him ; she patted his arm. " You've
said to me far more than that comes to. I want
you — oh, I want you so to be successful and happy ! "
And her laugh, with an ambiguous sob, suddenly
changed into a burst of tears.

She recovered herself, but she had brought tears
into his own eyes. " Oh, that's of no consequence !
I'm to understand that you'll never, never — — ? "
"Never, never."

Paul drew a long, low breath. "Do you know
that every one has thought you probably would ? "

"Certainly, I've known it, and that's why I'm
glad of our talk. It ought to have come sooner.

You thought I probably would, I think "

" Oh, yes ! " Paul artlessly broke in.
Jean laughed again while she wiped her eyes.
"That's why I call you beautiful. You had my
possible expectation to meet."
" Oh, yes ! " he said again.

" And you were to meet it like a gentleman. I
might have — but no matter. You risked your life —
you've been magnificent." Jean got up. "And
now, to make it perfect, you must take this back."

She put the morocco case into his submissive
hand, and he sat staring at it and mechanically turn
ing it round. Unconsciously, musingly he threw it
a little way into the air and caught it again. Then
he also got up. "They'll be tremendously down
on us."

" On ' us ' ? On me, of course — but why on
you ? "

1 82 THE OTHER HOUSE

" For not having moved you."

" You've moved me immensely. Before me —
let no one say a word about you ! "

" It's of no consequence," Paul repeated.

" Nothing is, if we go on as we are. We're
better friends than ever. And we're happy ! " Jean
announced in her triumph.

He looked at her with deep wistfulness, with
patient envy. " You are ! " Then his eyes took
the direction to which her attention at that moment
passed : they showed him Tony Bream coming up
the slope with his little girl in his hand. Jean went
down instantly to welcome the child, and Paul turned
away with a grave face, giving at the same time
another impulsive toss to the case containing the
token she had declined.

XXI

HE directed his face to the house, however, only to
find himself in the presence of his mother, who had
come back to her tea-table and whom he saw veri
tably glare at the small object in- his hands. From this
object her scrutiny jumped to his own countenance,
which, to his great discomfort, was not conscious of
very successfully baffling it. He knew therefore a
momentary relief when her observation attached
itself to Jean Martle, whom Tony, planted on the
lawn, was also undisguisedly watching and who was
already introducing Effie to the treasure laid up in
the shade of the tea-table. The girl had caught up
the child on her strong young arm, where she sat
robust and radiant, befrilled and besashed, hugging
the biggest of the dolls ; and in this position — erect,
active, laughing, her rosy burden, almost on her
shoulder, mingling its brightness with that of her
crown of hair, and her other hand grasping, for
Effie's further delight, in the form of another puppet
from the pile, a still rosier imitation of it — antici
pated quickly the challenge, which, as Paul saw,
Mrs. Beever was on the point of addressing
her.

" Our wonderful cake's not coming out?"

184 THE OTHER HOUSE

" It's too big to transport," said Mrs. Beever : " it's
blazing away in the dining-room."

Jean Martle turned to Tony. " I may carry her
in to see it ? "

Tony assented. " Only please remember she's
not to partake."

Jean smiled -at him. " I'll eat her share ! " And
she passed swiftly over the lawn while the three
pair of eyes followed her.

" She looks/' said Tony, " like the goddess Diana
playing with a baby-nymph."

Mrs. Beever's attention came back to her son.
" That's the sort of remark one would expect to hear
from you ! You're not going with her ? "

Paul showed vacant and vast. " I'm going in."

" To the dining-room ? "

He wavered. " To speak to Miss Armiger."

His mother's gaze, sharpened and scared, had
reverted to his morocco case. " To ask her to keep
that again ? "

At this Paul met her with spirit. " She may keep
it for ever ! " Giving another toss to his missile,
while his companions stared at each other, he took
the same direction as Jean.

Mrs. Beever, disconcerted and flushed, broke out
on the spot to Tony. " Heaven help us all — she
has refused him ! "

Tony's face reflected her alarm. " Pray, how do
you know ? "

" By his having his present to her left on his

THE OTHER HOUSE 185

hands — a jewel a girl would jump at ! I came back
to hear it was settled

" And you haven't heard it's not ! "

11 What I haven't heard I've seen. That it's < not '
sticks out of them ! If she won't accept the gift,"
Mrs. Beever cried, "how can she accept the
giver ? "

Tony's appearance, for some seconds, was an echo
of her question. "Why, she just promised me she
would ! "

This only deepened his neighbour's surprise.
" Promised you ? "

Tony hesitated. " I mean she left me to infer
that I had determined her. She was so good
as to listen most appreciatively to what I had to
say."

"And, pray, what had you to say?" Mrs. Beever
asked with austerity.

In the presence of a rigour so immediate he found
himself so embarrassed that he considered. " Well
— everything. I took the liberty of urging Paul's
claim."

Mrs. Beever stared. " Very good of you ! What
did you think you had to do with it ? "

" Why, whatever my great desire that she should
accept him gave me."

" Your great desire that she should accept him ?
This is the first I've heard of it."

Once more Tony pondered. " Did I never speak
of it to you ? "

i86 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Never that I can remember. From when does
it date ? " Mrs. Beever demanded.

" From the moment I really understood how much
Paul had to hope."

" How f much ' ? " the lady of Eastmead derisively
repeated. " It wasn't so much that you need have
been at such pains to make it less ! "

Tony's comprehension of his friend's discomfiture
was written in the smile of determined good humour
with which he met the asperity of her successive
inquiries ; but his own uneasiness, which was not
the best thing in the world for his temper, showed
through this superficial glitter. He looked suddenly
as blank as a man can look who looks annoyed.
" How in the world could I have supposed 1 was
making it less ? "

Mrs. Beever faltered in her turn. " To answer
that question I should need to have been present at
your appeal."

Tony's eyes put forth a fire. " It seems to me
that your answer, as it is, will do very well for a.
charge of disloyalty. Do you imply that I didn't act
in good faith ? "

"Not even in my sore disappointment. But I
imply that you made a gross mistake."

Tony lifted his shoulders ; with his hands in his
pockets he had begun to fidget about the lawn —
bringing back to her as he did so the worried figure
that, in the same attitude, the day of poor Julia's
death, she had seen pace the hall at the other house.
" But what the deuce then was I to do ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 187

" You were to let her alone."

" Ah, but I should have had to begin that earlier ! "
he exclaimed with ingenuous promptitude.

Mrs. Beever gave a laugh of despair. " Years
and years earlier ! "

" I mean," returned Tony with a blush, " that from
the first of her being here I made a point of giving
her the impression of all the good I thought of Paul."

His hostess continued sarcastic. " If it was a
question of making points and giving impressions,
perhaps then you should have begun later still ! "
She gathered herself a moment ; then she brought
out : " You should have let her alone, Tony Bream,
because you're madly in love with her ! "

Tony dropped into the nearest chair ; he sat
there looking up at the queen-mother. "Your
proof of that's my plea for your son ? "

She took full in the face his air of pity for her
lapse. " Your plea was not for my son — your plea
was for your own danger."

"My own Manger'?" Tony leaped to his feet
again in illustration of his security. " Need I
inform you at this time of day that I've such
a thing as a conscience ? "

"Far from it, my dear man. Exactly what I
complain of is that you've quite too much of one."
And she gave him, before turning away, what might
have been her last look and her last word. " Your
conscience is as big as your passion, and if both
had been smaller you might perhaps have held your
tongue ! "

i88 THE OTHER HOUSE

She moved off in a manner that added emphasis
to her words, and Tony watched her with his hands
still in his pockets and his long legs a little apart.
He could turn it over that she accused him, after
all, only of having been a particularly injurious
jool. " I was under the same impression as you,"
he said " — the impression that Paul was safe."

This arrested and brought her sharply round,
"And were you under the impression that Jean
was ? "

" On my honour — as far as I'm concerned ! "
" It's of course of you we're talking," Mrs.
Beever replied. " If you weren't her motive are
you able to suggest who was ? "

" Her motive for refusing Paul ? " Tony looked
at the sky for an inspiration. " I'm afraid I'm too
surprised and distressed to have a theory."

" Have you one by chance as to why, if you
thought them both so safe, you interfered ? "

" ' Interfered' is a hard word," said Tony. "I
felt a wish to testify to my great sympathy with
Paul from the moment I heard — what I didn't at all
know — that this was the occasion on which he was,
in more senses than one, to present his case."

" May I go so far as to ask," said Mrs. Beever,
"if your sudden revelation proceeded from Paul
himself?"

" No — not from Paul himself."

"And scarcely from Jean, I suppose ?"

" Not in the remotest degree from Jean."

" Thank you," she replied ; " you've told me,"

THE OTHER HOUSE 189

She had taken her place in a chair and fixed her
eyes on the ground. " I've something to tell you
myself, though it may not interest you so much."
Then raising her eyes : " Dennis Vidal is here."

Tony almost jumped. " In the house ? "

" On the river — paddling about." After which,
as his blankness grew, " He turned up an hour
ago," she explained.

" And no one has seen him ? "

"The Doctor and Paul. But Paul didn't know "

" And didn't ask ? " Tony panted.

" What does Paul ever ask ? He's too stupid !
Besides, with all my affairs, he sees my people come
and go. Mr. Vidal vanished when he heard that
Miss Armiger's here."

Tony went from surprise to mystification. " Not
to come back ? "

"On the contrary, I hope, as he took' my boat."

" But he wishes not to see her ? "

" He's thinking it over."

Tony wondered. "What, then, did he corne
for ? "

Mrs. Beever hung fire. " He came to see Effte."

" Effie ? "

" To judge if you're likely to lose her."

Tony threw back his head. " How the devil does
that concern him ? "

Again Mrs. Beever faltered ; then, as she rose,
" Hadn't I better leave you to think it out ? " she
demanded.

Tony, in spite of his bewildered face, thought it

igo THE OTHER HOUSE

out with such effect that in a moment he exclaimed :
" Then he still wants that girl ? "

" Very much indeed. " That's why he's afraid "

Tony took her up. " That Effie may die ? "
" It's a hideous thing to be talking about," said
Mrs. Beever. "But you've perhaps not forgotten

who were present ! "

" I've not forgotten who were present ! I'm
greatly honoured by Mr. Vidal's solicitude," Tony
continued ; " but I beg you to tell him from me
that I think I can take care of my child."

" You must take more care than ever," Mrs.
Beever pointedly observed. " But don't mention him
to her!11 she as sharply added. Rose Armiger's
white dress and red parasol had reappeared on the
steps of the house.

XXII

AT the sight of the two persons in the garden Rose
came straight down to them, and Mrs. Beever,
sombre and sharp, still seeking relief in the oppor
tunity for satire, remarked to her companion in a
manner at once ominous and indifferent that her
guest was evidently in eager pursuit of him. Tony
replied with gaiety that he awaited her with fortitude,
and Rose, reaching them, let him know that as she
had something more to say to him she was glad he
had not, as she feared, quitted the garden. Mrs.
Beever hereupon signified her own intention of
taking this course: she would leave their visitor, as
she said, to Rose to deal with.

Rose smiled with her best grace. " That's as I
leave Paul to you. I've just been with him."

Mrs. Beever testified not only to interest, but to
approval. " In the library ? "

" In the drawing-room." Rose the next moment
conscientiously showed by a further remark her
appreciation of the attitude that, on the part of her
hostess, she had succeeded in producing. " Miss
Martle's in the library."

" And Effie ? " Mrs. Beever asked.

" Effie, of course, is where Miss Martle is4"

1 92 THE OTHER HOUSE

Tony, during this brief colloquy, had lounged
away as restlessly as if, instead of beaming on
the lady of Eastmead, Rose were watching the
master of the other house. He promptly turned
round. "I say, dear lady, you know — be kind to
her ! "

"To Effie?" Mrs. Beever demanded.

"To poor Jean."

Mrs. Beever, after an instant's reflection, took a
humorous view of his request. " I don't know why
you call her ' poor ' ! She has declined an excellent
settlement, but she's not in misery yet." Then she
said to Rose : " I'll take Paul first."

Rose had put down her parasol, pricking the
point of it, as if with a certain shyness, into the
close, firm lawn. " If you like, when you take Miss

Martle " She paused in deep contemplation of

Tony.

" When I take Miss Martle ? " There was a new
encouragement in Mrs. Beever's voice.

The apparent effect of this benignity was to make
Miss Armiger's eyes widen strangely at their com
panion. "Why, I'll come back and take the
child."

Mrs. Beever met this offer with an alertness not
hitherto markedly characteristic of her intercourse
with Rose. " I'll send her out to you." Then by
way of an obeisance to Tony, directing the words
well at him : " It won't indeed be a scene for that
poor lamb ! " She marched off with her duty
emblazoned on her square satin back.

THE OTHER HOUSE 193

Tony, struck by the massive characters in which
it was written there, broke into an indulgent laugh,
but even in his mirth he traced the satisfaction she
took in letting him see that she measured with some
complacency the embarrassment Rose might cause
him. " Does she propose to tear Miss Martle limb
from limb ? " he playfully inquired.

" Do you ask that," said Rose, " partly because
you're apprehensive that it's what I propose to do to
you ? "

" By no means, my dear Rose, after your just
giving me so marked a sign of the pacific as your
coming round "

"On the question," Rose broke in, "of one's
relation to that little image and echo of her adored
mother ? That isn't peace, my dear Tony. You
give me just the occasion to let you formally know
that it's war."

Tony gave another laugh. " War ? "

" Not on you — I pity you too much."

" Then on whom ? "

Rose hesitated. " On any one, on every one,
who may be likely to find that small child — small as
she is ! — inconvenient. Oh, I know," she went on,
" you'll say I come late in the day for this and you'll
remind me of how very short a time ago it was that
I declined a request of yours to occupy myself with
her at all. Only half an hour has elapsed, but what
has happened in it has made all the difference."

She spoke without discernible excitement, and
Tony had already become aware that the face she

194 THE OTHER HOUSE

actually showed him was not a thing to make him
estimate directly the effect wrought in her by the
incongruous result of the influence he had put forth
under pressure of her ardour. He needed no great
imagination to conceive that this consequence might,
on the poor girl's part, well be mainly lodged in
such depths of her nature as not to find an easy or
an immediate way to the surface. That he had her
to reckon with he was reminded as soon as he caught
across the lawn the sheen of her white dress ; but
what he most felt was a lively, unreasoning hope
that for the hour at least, and until he should have
time to turn round and see what his own situation
exactly contained for him, her mere incontestable
cleverness would achieve a revolution during which
he might take breath. This was not a hope that in
any way met his difficulties — it was a hope that only
avoided them ; but he had lately had a vision of
something in which it was still obscure to him whether
the bitter or the sweet prevailed, and he was ready
to make almost any terms to be allowed to surrender
himself to these first quick throbs of response to
what was at any rate an impression of perfect beauty.
He was in bliss with a great chill and in despair
with a great lift, and confused and assured and
alarmed — divided between the joy and the pain of
knowing that what Jean Martle had done she had
done for Tony Bream, and done full in the face of
all he couldn't do to repay her. That Tony Bream
might never marry was a simple enough affair, but
that this rare creature mightn't suddenly figured to

THE OTHER HOUSE 195

him as formidable and exquisite. Therefore he found
his nerves rather indebted to Rose for her being —
if that was the explanation — too proud to be vulgarly
vindictive. She knew his secret, as even after seeing
it so freely handled by Mrs. Beever he still rather
artlessly called the motive of his vain appeal ; knew
it better than before, since she could now read it in
the intenser light of the knowledge of it betrayed by
another. If on this advantage he had no reason to
look to her for generosity, it was at least a comfort
that he might look to her for good manners. Poor
Tony had the full consciousness of needing to think
out a line, but it weighed somewhat against that
oppression to feel that Rose also would have it. He
was only a little troubled by the idea that, ardent
and subtle, she would probably think faster than he.
He turned over a moment the revelation of these
qualities conveyed in her announcement of a change,
as he might call it, of policy.

" What you say is charming," he good-naturedly
replied, " so far as it represents an accession to the
ranks of my daughter's friends. You will never
without touching me remind me how nearly a sister
you were to her mother ; and I would rather express
the pleasure I take in that than the bewilderment I feel
at your allusion to any class of persons whose interest
in her may not be sincere. The more friends she
has, the better — I welcome you all. The only thing
I ask of you," he went on, smiling, <; is not to quarrel
about her among yourselves."

Rose, as she listened, looked almost religiously

196 THE OTHER HOUSE

calm, but as she answered there was a profane
quaver in her voice that told him with what an effort
she achieved that sacrifice to form for which he was
so pusillanimously grateful. " It's very good of you
to make the best of me ; and it's also very clever of
you, let me add, my dear Tony — and add with all
deference to your goodness — to succeed in implying
that any other course is open to you. You may
welcome me as a friend of the child or not. I'm
present for her, at any rate, and present as I've
never been before."

Tony's gratitude, suddenly contracting, left a little
edge for irritation. " You're present, assuredly, my
dear Rose, and your presence is to us all an
advantage of which, happily, we never become uncon
scious for an hour. But do I understand that the
firm position among us that you allude to is one to
which you see your way to attaching any possibility
of permanence ? "

She waited as if scrupulously to detach from its
stem the flower of irony that had sprouted in this
speech, and while she inhaled it she gave her visible
attention only to the little hole in the lawn that she
continued to prick with the point of her parasol.
" If that's a graceful way of asking me," she returned
at last, " whether the end of my visit here isn't near
at hand, perhaps the best satisfaction I can give you
is to say that I shall probably stay on at least as
long as Miss Martle. What I meant, however, just
now," she pursued, " by saying that I'm more on the
spot than heretofore, is simply that while I do stay

THE OTHER HOUSE 197

I stay to be vigilant. That's what I hurried out to
let you definitely know, in case you should be
going home without our meeting again. I told
you before I went into the house that I trusted
you — I needn't recall to you for what. Mr. Beever
after a while came in and told me that Miss Martle
had refused him. Then I felt that, after what
had passed between us, it was only fair to say
to you "

" That you've ceased to trust me ? " Tony inter
jected.

" By no means. I don't give and take back."
And though his companion's handsome head, with
its fixed, pale face, rose high, it became appreciably
handsomer and reached considerably higher, while
she wore once more the air of looking at his mistake
through the enlarging blur of tears. " As I believe
you did, in honour, what you could for Mr. Beever,
I trust you perfectly still."

Tony smiled as if he apologised, but as if also he
couldn't but wonder. " Then it's only fair to say to
me ? "

" That I don't trust Miss Martle."

" Oh, my dear woman ! " Tony precipitately
laughed.

But Rose went on with all deliberation and dis
tinctness. " That's what has made the difference —
that's what has brought me, as you say, round to a
sense of my possible use, or rather of my clear
obligation. Half an hour ago I knew how much you
loved her. Now I know how much she loves you."

IQ8 THE OTHER HOUSE

Tony's laugh suddenly dropped ; he showed the
face of a man for whom a joke has sharply turned
grave. " And what is it that, in possession of this
admirable knowledge, you see ? "

Rose faltered ; but she had not come so far simply
to make a botch of it. " Why, that it's the obvious
interest of the person we speak of not to have too
stupid a patience with any obstacle to her marrying
you."

This speech had a quiet lucidity of which the odd
action was for an instant to make him lose breath
so violently that, in his quick gasp, he felt sick. In
the indignity of the sensation he struck out. " Pray,
why is it the person's obvious interest any more than
it's yours ? "

" Seeing that I love you quite as much as she
does ? Because you don't love me quite so much
as you love her. That's exactly ' why,' dear Tony
Bream ! " said Rose Armiger.

She turned away from him sadly and nobly, as if
she had done with him and with the subject, and he
stood where she had left him, gazing at the foolish
greenness at his feet and slowly passing his hand
over his head. In a few seconds, however, he heard
her utter a strange, short cry, and, looking round,
saw her face to face — across the interval of sloping
lawn — with a gentleman whom he had been suffi
ciently prepared to recognise on the spot as Dennis
Vidal.

XXIII

HE had, in this preparation, the full advantage of
Rose, who, quite thrown for the moment off her
balance, was vividly unable to give any account of
the apparition which should be profitable to herself.
The violence of her surprise made her catch the back
of the nearest chair, on which she covertly rested,
directing at her old suitor from this position the
widest eyes the master of Bounds had ever seen her
unwittingly open. To perceive this, however, was
to be almost simultaneously struck, and even to be
not a little charmed, with the clever quickness of her
recovery — that of a person constitutionally averse to
making unmeasured displays. Rose was capable of
astonishment, as she was capable of other kinds of
emotion ; but she was as little capable of giving way
to it as she was of giving way to other kinds ; so that
both of her companions immediately saw her moved
by the sense that a perturbing incident could at the
worst do her no such evil turn as she might suffer
by taking it in the wrong way. Tony became aware,
in addition, that the fact communicated to him by
Mrs. Beever gave him an advantage even over the
poor fellow whose face, as he stood there, showed
the traces of an insufficient forecast of two things ;

200 THE OTHER HOUSE

one of them the influence on all his pulses of the
sight again, after such an interval, and in the high
insolence of life and strength, of the woman he had
lost and still loved ; the other the instant effect on
his imagination of his finding her intimately engaged
with the man who had been, however without fault,
the occasion of her perversity. Vidal's marked
alertness had momentarily failed him ; he paused in
his advance long enough to give Tony, after noting
and regretting his agitation, time to feel that Rose
was already as colourlessly bland as a sensitive
woman could wish to be.

All this made the silence, however brief — and it
was much briefer than my account of it — vibrate to
such a tune as to prompt Tony to speak as soon as
possible in the interest of harmony. What directly
concerned him was that he had last seen Vidal as
his own duly appreciative guest, and he offered him
a hand freely charged with reminders of that quality.
He was refreshed and even a little surprised to
observe that the young man took it, after all, with
out stiffness ; but the strangest thing in the world
was that as he cordially brought him up the bank he
had a mystic glimpse of the fact that Rose Armiger,
with her heart in her throat, was waiting for some
sign as to whether she might, for the benefit of her
intercourse with himself, safely take the ground of
having expected what had happened — having perhaps
even brought it about. She naturally took counsel
of her fears, and Tony, suddenly more elated
than he could have given a reason for being, was

THE OTHER HOUSE 201

ready to concur in any attempt she might make
to save her appearance of knowing no reproach.
Yet, foreseeing the awkwardness that might arise
from her committing herself too rashly, he made
haste to say to Dennis that he would have been
startled if he had not been forewarned : Mrs.
Beever had mentioned to him the visit she had just
received.

" Ah, she told you ? " Dennis asked.

" Me only — as a great sign of confidence," Tony
laughed.

Rose, at this, could be amazed with superiority.
" What ? — you've already been here ? "

"An hour ago," said Dennis. "I asked Mrs.
Beever not to tell you."

That was a chance for positive criticism. " She
obeyed your request to the letter. But why in the
world such portentous secrecy ? " Rose spoke as if
there was no shade of a reason for his feeling shy,
and now gave him an excellent example of the right
tone. She had emulated Tony's own gesture of
welcome, and he said to himself that no young
woman could have stretched a more elastic arm
across a desert of four cold years.

" I can explain to you better," Dennis replied,
" why I emerged than why I vanished."

" You emerged, I suppose, because you wanted to
see me." Rose spoke to one of her admirers, but
she looked, she even laughed, at the other, showing
him by this time an aspect completely and inscru
tably renewed. " You knew I was here ? "

202 THE OTHER HOUSE

" At Wilverley ? " Dennis hesitated. " I took it
for granted."

" I'm afraid it was really for Miss Armiger you
came," Tony remarked in the spirit of pleasantry.
It seemed to him that the spirit of pleasantry would
help them on.

It had its result — it proved contagious. " I would
still say so — before her — even if it weren't ! "
Dennis returned.

Rose took up the joke. " Fortunately it's true —
so it saves you a fib."

" It saves me a fib ! " Dennis said.

In this way the trick was successfully played —
they found their feet ; with the added amusement for
Tony of hearing the necessary falsehood uttered
neither by himself nor by Rose, but by a man whose
veracity, from the first, on that earlier day, of
looking at him, he had felt to be almost incompatible
with the flow of conversation. It was more and
more distinct while the minutes elapsed that the
secondary effect of her old friend's reappearance
was to make Rose shine with a more convenient
light ; and she met her embarrassment, every way,
with so happy an art that Tony was moved to
deplore afresh the complication that estranged him
from a woman of such gifts. It made up indeed a
little for this that he was also never so possessed of
his own as when there was something to carry off
or to put, as the phrase was, through. His light
hand, his slightly florid facility were the things that
in managing, in presiding, had rendered him so widely

THE OTHER HOUSE 203

popular ; and wasn't he, precisely, a little presiding,
wasn't he a good deal managing just now ? Vidal
would be a blessed diversion — especially if he should
be pressed into the service as one : Tony was content
for the moment to see this with eagerness rather
than to see it whole. His eagerness was quite
justified by the circumstance that the young man
from China did somehow or other — the reasons would
appear after the fact — represent relief, relief not
made vain by the reflection that it was perhaps only
temporary. Rose herself, thank heaven, was, with
all her exaltation, only temporary. He could already
condone the officiousness of a gentleman too inter
ested in Effie's equilibrium : the grounds of that
indiscretion gleamed agreeably through it as soon as
he had seen the visitor's fingers draw together over
the hand held out by Rose. It was matter to
whistle over, to bustle over, that, as had been
certified by Mrs. Beever, the passion betrayed by
that clasp had survived its shipwreck, and there
wasn't a rope's end Tony could throw, or a stray
stick he could hold out, for which he didn't immedi
ately cast about him. He saw indeed from this
moment his whole comfort in the idea of an
organised rescue and of making the struggling
swimmer know, as a preliminary, how little any one
at the other house was interested in preventing him
to land.

Dennis had, for that matter, not been two mjnutes
in touch with him before he really began to see this
happy perception descend. It was, in a manner, to

204 THE OTHER HOUSE

haul him ashore to invite him to dine and sleep
which Tony lost as little time as possible in doing ;
expressing the hope that he had not gone to the inn
and that even if he had he would consent to the quick
transfer of his effects to Bounds. Dennis showed
that he had still some wonder for such an overture,
but before he could respond to it the words were
taken out of his mouth by Rose, whose recovery
from her upset was complete from the moment she
could seize a pretext for the extravagance of tran
quillity.

"Why should you take him away from us and
why should he consent to be taken ? Won't Mrs.
Beever," Rose asked of Dennis — " since you're not
snatching the fearful joy of a clandestine visit to her
— expect you, if you stay anywhere, to give her the
preference ? "

" Allow me to remind you, and to remind Mr.
Vidal," Tony returned, " that when he was here
before he gave her the preference. Mrs. Beever
made no scruple of removing him bodily from under
my roof. I forfeited — I was obliged to — the pleasure
of a visit to him. But that leaves me with my loss
to make up and my revenge to take — I repay Mrs.
Beever in kind." To find Rose disputing with him
the possession of their friend filled him with imme
diate cheer. " Don't you recognise," he went on to
him, " the propriety of what I propose ? I take you
and deal with Mrs. Beever, as she took you and
dealt with me. Besides, your things have not even
been brought here as they had of old been brought

THE OTHER HOUSE 205

to Bounds. I promise to share you with these ladies
and not to grudge you the time you may wish to
spend with Miss Armiger. I understand but too
well the number of hours I shall find you putting in.
You shall pay me a long visit and come over here as
often as you like, and your presence at Bounds may
even possibly have the consequence of making
them honour me there a little oftener with their
own."

Dennis looked from one of his companions to the
other; he struck Tony as slightly mystified, but not
beyond the point at which curiosity was agreeable.
" I think I had better go to Mr. Bream," he after a
moment sturdily said to Rose. "There's a matter
on which I wish to talk with you, but I don't see that
that need prevent."

" It's for you to determine. There's a matter on
which I find myself, to you also, particularly glad of
the opportunity of saying a word."

Tony glanced promptly at his watch and at Rose,
"Your opportunity's before you — say your word
now. I've a little job in the town," he explained to
Dennis ; " I must attend to it quickly and I can easily
stop at the hotel and give directions for the removal
of your traps. All you will have to do then will be
to take the short way, which you know — over the
bridge there and through my garden — to my door.
We shall dine at an easy eight."

Dennis Vidal assented to this arrangement without
qualification and indeed almost without expression :
there evidently lingered in him an operative sense

206 THE OTHER HOUSE

that there were compensations Mr. Bream might be
allowed the luxurious consciousness of owing him.
Rose, however, showed she still had a communica
tion to make to Tony, who had begun to move in the
quarter leading straight from Eastmead to the town,
so that he would have to pass near the house on
going out. She introduced it with a question about
his movements. " You'll stop, then, on your way
and tell Mrs. Beever ? "

" Of my having appropriated our friend ? Not
this moment," said Tony — u I've to meet a man on
business, and I shall only just have time. I shall if
possible come back here, but meanwhile perhaps
you'll kindly explain. Come straight over and take
possession," he added, to Vidal ; " make yourself at
home — don't wait for me to return to you." He
offered him a hand-shake again, and then, with his
native impulse to accommodate and to harmonise
making a friendly light in his face, he offered one to
Rose herself. She accepted it so frankly that she
even for a minute kept his hand — a response that
he approved with a smile so encouraging that it
scarcely needed even the confirmation of speech.
They stood there while Dennis Vidal turned away as
if they might have matters between them, and Tony
yielded to the impulse to prove to Rose that though
there were things he kept from her he kept nothing
that was not absolutely necessary. " There's some
thing else I've got to do — I've got to stop at the
Doctor's."

Rose raised her eyebrows. "To consult him ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 207

" To ask him to come over."

" I hope you're not ill."

" Never better in my life. I want him to see
Effie."

" She's not ill surely?"

" She's not right — with the fright Gorham had
this morning. So I'm not satisfied."

" Let him then by all means see her," Rose
said.

Their talk had, through the action of Vidal's
presence, dropped from its chilly height to the
warmest domestic level, and what now stuck out of
Tony was the desire she should understand that on
such ground as that he was always glad to meet her.
Dennis Vidal faced about again in time to be called,
as it were, if only by the tone of his host's voice, to
witness this. " A bientot. Let me hear from you
— and from him — that in my absence you've been
extremely kind to our friend here."

Rose, with a small but vivid fever-spot in her
cheek, looked from one of the men to the other,
while her kindled eyes showed a gathered purpose
that had the prompt and perceptible effect of exciting
suspense. " I don't mind letting you know, Mr.
Bream, in advance exactly how kind I shall be. It
would be affectation on my part to pretend to be
unaware of your already knowing something of what
has passed between this gentleman and me. Me
suffered, at my hands, in this place, four years ago,
a disappointment — a disappointment into the rights
and wrongs, into the good reasons of which I won't

208 THE OTHER HOUSE

attempt to go further than just to say that an inevi
table publicity then attached to it." She spoke with
slow and deliberate clearness, still looking from Tony
to Dennis and back again ; after which her strange
intensity fixed itself on her old suitor. " People
saw, Mr. Vidal," she went on, "the blight that
descended on our long relations, and people believed
— and I was at the time indifferent to their believing
— that it had occurred by my act. I'm not indifferent
now — that is to any appearance of having been
wanting in consideration for such a man as you.
I've often wished I might make you some reparation
— some open atonement. I'm sorry for the distress
that I'm afraid I caused you, and here, before the
principal witness of the indignity you so magnani
mously met, I very sincerely express my regret and
very humbly beg your forgiveness." Dennis Vidal,
staring at her, had turned dead white as she kept it
up, and the elevation, as it were, of her abasement
had brought tears into Tony's eyes. She saw them
there as she looked at him once more, and she
measured the effect she produced upon him. She
visibly and excusably enjoyed it and after a moment's
pause she handsomely and pathetically completed it.
" That, Mr. Bream — for your injunction of kindness
— is the kindness I'm capable of showing."

Tony turned instantly to their companion, who
now stood staring hard at the ground. " I change,
then, my appeal — I make it, with confidence, to you.
Let me hear, Mr. Vidal, when we meet again, that
you've not been capable of less ! " Dennis, deeply

THE OTHER HOUSE 209

moved, it was plain, but self-conscious and stiff, gave
no sign of having heard him ; and Rose, on her side,
walked a little away like an actress who has launched
her great stroke. Tony, between them, hesitated ;
then he laughed in a manner that showed he felt
safe. "Oh, you're both all right!" he declared;
and with another glance at his watch he bounded off
to his business. He drew, as he went, a long
breath — filled his lungs with the sense that he should
after all have a margin. She would take Dennis
back.

XXIV

" WHY did you do that ? " Dennis asked as soon as
he was alone with Rose.

She had sunk into a seat at a distance from him,
all spent with her great response to her sudden
opportunity for justice. His challenge brought her
flight to earth ; and after waiting a moment she
answered him with a question that betrayed her
sense of coming down. " Do you really care, after
all this time, what I do or don't do ? "

His rejoinder to this was in turn only another
demand. " What business is it of his that you may
have done this or that to me ? What has passed
between us is still between us : nobody else has
anything to do with it."

Rose smiled at him as if to thank him for being
again a trifle sharp with her. " He wants me, as
he said, to be kind to you."

You mean he wants you to do that sort of
thing ? " His sharpness brought him step by step
across the lawn and nearer to her. " Do you care
so very much what he wants ? "

Again she hesitated; then, with her pleased,
patient smile, she tapped the empty place on the
bench. " Come and sit down beside me, and I'll

THE OTHER HOUSE 211

tell you how much I care." He obeyed her, but not
precipitately, approaching her with a deliberation
which still held her off a little, made her objective
to his inspection or his mistrust. He had said to
Mrs. Beever that he had not come to watch her, but
we are at liberty to wonder what Mrs. Beever might
have called the attitude in which, before seating
himself, he stopped before her with a silent stare.
She met him at any rate with a face that told him
there was no scrutiny she was now enough in the
wrong to fear, a face that was all the promise of
confession and submission and sacrifice. She
tapped again upon her bench, and at this he sat down.
Then she went on : " When did you come back ? "

" To England ? The other day — I don't remem
ber which of them. I think you ought to answer
my question," Dennis said, " before asking any more
of your own."

"No, no," she replied, promptly but gently;
" there's an inquiry it seems to me I've a right to
make of you before I admit yours to make any at
all." She looked at him as if to give him time either
to assent or to object ; but he only sat rather stiffly
back and let her see how fine and firm the added
years had hammered him. " What are you really
here for ? Has it anything to do with me ? "

Dennis remained profoundly grave. " I didn't
know you were here — I had no reason to," he at
last replied.

" Then you simply desired the pleasure of renew
ing your acquaintance with Mrs. Beever ? "

212 THE OTHER HOUSE

" I came to ask her about you."

" How beautiful of you ! " — and Rose's tone, un-
tinged with irony, rang out as clear as the impulse
it praised. " Fancy your caring ! " she added ; after
which she continued: "As I understand you, then,
you've had your chance, you've talked with her ? "

"A very short time. I put her a question or
two."

" I won't ask you what they were," said Rose,
" I'll only say that, since I happen to be here, it
may be a comfort to you not to have to content
yourself with information at second-hand. Ask me
what you like. I'll tell you everything."

Her companion considered. " You might then
begin by telling me what I've already asked."

She took him up before he could go on. " Oh, why
I attached an importance to his hearing what I just
now said ? Yes, yes ; you shall have it." She
turned it over as if with the sole thought of giving
it to him with the utmost lucidity; then she was
visibly struck with the help she should derive from
knowing just one thing more. " But first— are you
at all jealous of him ? "

Dennis Vidal broke into a laugh which might
have been a tribute to her rare audacity, yet which
somehow, at the same time, made him seem only
more serious. " That's a thing for you to find out
for yourself!"

" I see — I see." She looked at him with musing,
indulgent eyes. " It would be too wonderful. Yet
otherwise, after all, why should you care ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 213

" I don't mind telling you frankly," said Dennis,
while, with two fingers softly playing upon her
lower lip, she sat estimating the possibility she had
named — " I don't mind telling you frankly that I
asked Mrs. Beever if you were still in love with
him."

She clasped her hands so eagerly that she almost
clapped them. " Then you do care ? "

He was looking beyond her now — at something
at the other end of the garden ; and he made no
other reply than to say : " She didn't give you
away."

"It was very good of her; but I would tell you
myself, you know, perfectly, if I were."

"You didn't tell me perfectly four years ago,"
Dennis returned.

Rose hesitated a minute ; but this didn't prevent
her speaking with an effect of great promptitude.
" Oh, four years ago I was the biggest fool in
England ! "

Dennis, at this, met her eyes again. " Then

what I asked Mrs. Beever "

" Isn't true ? " Rose caught him up. " It's an
exquisite position," she said, " for a woman to be
questioned as you question me, and to have to
answer as I answer you. But it's your revenge,
and you've already seen that to your revenge I
minister with a certain amount of resolution." She
let him look at her a minute ; at last she said
without flinching : " I'm not in love with Anthony
Bream."

214 THE OTHER HOUSE

Dennis shook his head sadly. " What does that
do for my revenge ? "

Rose had another quick flush. " It shows you
what I consent to discuss with you," she rather
proudly replied.

He turned his eyes back to the quarter to
which he had directed them before. " You do
consent ? "

" Can you ask — after what I've done ? "

" Well, then, he no longer cares ? "

" For me ? " said Rose. " He never cared."

" Never ? "

" Never."

" Upon your honour ? "

" Upon my honour."

" But you had an idea ? " Dennis bravely

pursued.

Rose as dauntlessly met him. " I had an idea."

" And you've had to give it up ? "

" I've had to give it up."

Dennis was silent ; he slowly got upon his feet.
" Well, that does something."

" For your revenge ? " She sounded a bitter
laugh. " I should think it might ! What it does
is magnificent ! "

He stood looking over her head till at last he
exclaimed : " So, apparently, is the child ! "

" She has come ? " Rose sprang up to find that
Effie had been borne toward them, across the grass,
in the arms of the muscular Manning, who, having
stooped to set her down and given her a vigorous

THE OTHER HOUSE 215

impulsion from behind, recovered the military
stature and posture.

" You're to take her, miss, please — from Mrs.
Beever. And you're to keep her."

Rose had already greeted the little visitor.
" Please assure Mrs. Beever that I will. She's
with Miss Martle ? "

"She is indeed, miss."

Manning always spoke without emotion, and the
effect of it on this occasion was to give her the air
of speaking without pity.

Rose, however, didn't mind that. " She may
trust me," she said, while Manning saluted and
retired. Then she stood before her old suitor with
Effie blooming on her shoulder.

He frankly wondered and admired. " She's
magnificent — she's magnificent ! " he repeated.

" She's magnificent ! " Rose ardently echoed.
" Aren't you, my very own ? " she demanded of the
child, with a sudden passion of tenderness.

"What did he mean about her wanting the
Doctor? She'll see us all through — every blessed
one of us ! " Dennis gave himself up to his serious
interest, an odd, voracious manner of taking her in
from top to toe.

" You look at her like an ogre ! " Rose laughed,
moving away from him with her burden and press
ing to her lips as she went a little plump pink arm.
She pretended to munch it; she covered it with
kisses ; she gave way to the joy of her renounced
abstention. " See us all through ? I hope so !

216 THE OTHER HOUSE

Why shouldn't you, darling, why shouldn't you ?
You've got a real friend, you have, you duck ; and
she sees you know what you've got by the won
derful way you look at her ! " This was to attribute
to the little girl's solemn stare a vividness of mean
ing which moved Dennis to hilarity; Rose's pro
fession of confidence made her immediately turn
her round face over her friend's shoulder to the
gentleman who was strolling behind and whose public
criticism, as well as his public mirth, appeared to
arouse in her only a soft sense of superiority.
Rose sat down again where she had sat before,
keeping Effie in her lap and smoothing out her fine
feathers. Then their companion, after a little more
detached contemplation, also took his former
place.

" She makes me remember ! " he presently ob
served.

" That extraordinary scene — poor Julia's mes
sage ? You can fancy whether / forget it ! "

Dennis was silent a little ; after which he said
quietly : " You've more to keep it in mind."

" I can assure you I've plenty ! " Rose replied.

"And the young lady who was also present —
isn't she the Miss Martle ? "

" Whom I spoke of to that woman ? She's the
Miss Martle. What about her ? " Rose asked with
her cheek against the child's.

" Does she also remember? "

" Like you and me ? I haven't the least idea."

Once more Dennis paused ; his pauses were filled

THE OTHER HOUSE 217

with his friendly gaze at their small companion.
" She's here again — like you ? "

" And like you ? " Rose smiled. " No, not like
either of us. She's always here."

" And it's from her you're to keep a certain little
person ? "

" It's from her." Rose spoke with rich brevity.

Dennis hesitated. "Would you trust the little
person to another little person ? "

" To you — to hold ? " Rose looked amused.
" Without a pang ! " The child, at this, profoundly
meditative and imperturbably " good," submitted
serenely to the transfer and to the prompt, long
kiss which, as he gathered her to him, Dennis, in
his turn, imprinted on her arm. "I'll stay with
you ! " she declared with expression ; on which he
renewed, with finer relish, the freedom she per
mitted, assuring her that this settled the question
and that he was her appointed champion. Rose
watched the scene between them, which was charm
ing ; then she brought out abruptly : " What I said
to Mr. Bream just now I didn't say for Mr.
Bream."

Dennis had the little girl close to him ; his arms
were softly round her and, like Rose's just before,
his cheek, as he tenderly bent his head, was pressed
against her cheek. His eyes were on their com
panion. "You said it for Mr. Vidal? He liked
it, all the same, better than I," he replied in a
moment.

" Of course he liked it ! But it doesn't matter

2i8 THE OTHER HOUSE

what he likes/' Rose added. "As for you — I don't
know that your ' liking ' it was what I wanted."
" What then did you want ? "
" That you should see me utterly abased — and all
the more utterly that it was in the cruel presence of
another."

Dennis had raised his head and sunk back into
the angle of the bench, separated from her by such
space as it yielded. His face, presented to her over
Effie's curls, was a combat of mystifications. "Why
in the world should that give me pleasure ? "

"Why in the world shouldn't it?" Rose asked.
"What's your revenge but pleasure?"

She had got up again in her dire restlessness;
she glowed there in the perversity of her sacrifice.
If he hadn't come to Wilverley to watch her, his
wonder-stricken air much wronged him. He shook
his head again with his tired patience. " Oh, damn
pleasure ! " he exclaimed.

" It's nothing to you ? " Rose cried. " Then if it
isn't, perhaps you pity me ? " She shone at him as
if with the glimpse of a new hope.

He took it in, but he only, after a moment, echoed,
ambiguously, her word. " Pity you ? "

" I think you would, Dennis, if you under
stood."

He looked at her hard ; he hesitated. At last he
returned quietly, but relentingly : " Well, Rose, I
don't understand."

"Then I must go through it all — I must empty
the cup. Yes, I must tell you."

THE OTHER HOUSE 219

She paused so long, however, beautiful, candid
and tragic, looking in the face her necessity, but
gathering herself for her effort, that, after waiting a
while, he spoke. " Tell me what ? "

" That I'm simply at your feet. That I'm yours
to do what you will with — to take or to cast away.
Perhaps you'll care a little for your triumph/' she
said, " when you see in it the grand opportunity I
give you. It's your turn to refuse now — you can
treat me exactly as you were treated ! "

A deep, motionless silence followed, between
them, this speech, which left them confronted as if
it had rather widened than bridged their separation.
Before Dennis found his answer to it the sharp
tension snapped in a clear, glad exclamation. The
child threw out her arms and her voice : " Auntie
Jean, Auntie Jean ! "

XXV

THE others had been so absorbed that they had not
seen Jean Martle approach, and she, on her side,
was close to them before appearing to perceive a
stranger in the gentleman who held Effie in his lap
and whom she had the air of having assumed, at a
greater distance, to be Anthony Bream. Effie's
reach towards her friend was so effective that, with
Vidal's obligation to rise, it enabled her to slip from
his hands and rush to avail herself of the embrace
offered her, in spite of a momentary arrest, by Jean.
Rose, however, at the sight of this movement, was
quicker than Jean to catch her; she seized her
almost with violence, and, holding her as she had
held her before, dropped again upon the bench and
presented her as a yielding captive. This act of
appropriation was confirmed by the flash of a fine
glance — a single gleam, but direct — which, how
ever, producing in Jean's fair face no retort, had
only the effect of making her look, in gracious
recognition, at Dennis. He had evidently, for the
moment, nothing but an odd want of words to
meet her with ; but this, precisely, gave her
such a sense of having disturbed a scene of
intimacy that, to be doubly courteous, she said :

THE OTHER HOUSE 221

" Perhaps you remember me. We were here
together "

" Four years ago — perfectly," Rose broke in,
speaking for him with an amenity that might have
been intended as a quick corrective of any impres
sion conveyed by her grab of the child. " Mr.
Vidal and I were just talking of you. He has
come back, for the first time since then, to pay us a
little visit."

"Then he has things to say to you that I've
rudely interrupted. Please excuse me — I'm off
again," Jean went on to Dennis. " I only came for
the little girl." She turned back to Rose. " I'm
afraid it's time I should take her home.".

Rose sat there like a queen-regent with a baby
sovereign on her knee. " Must I give her up to
you ? "

" I'm responsible for her, you know, to Gorham,"
Jean returned.

Rose gravely kissed her little ward, who, now
that she was apparently to be offered the entertain
ment of a debate in which she was so closely
concerned, was clearly prepared to contribute to it
the calmness of impartial beauty at a joust. She
was just old enough to be interested, but she was
just young enough to be judicial; the lap of her
present friend had the compass of a small child-
world, and she perched there in her loveliness as if
she had been Helen on the walls of Troy. " It's
not to Gorman I'm responsible," Rose presently
answered.

222 THE OTHER HOUSE

Jean took it good-humouredly. " Are you to Mr.
Bream ? "

" I'll tell you presently to whom." And Rose
looked intelligently at Dennis Vidal.

Smiled at in alternation by two clever young
women, he had yet not sufficiently to achieve a
jocose manner shaken off his sense of the strange
climax of his conversation with the elder of them.
He turned away awkwardly, as he had done four
years before, for the hat it was one of the privileges
of such a colloquy to make him put down in an odd
place. " I'll go over to Bounds," he said to Rose.
And then to Jean, to take leave of her : "I'm stay
ing at the other house."

"Really? Mr. Bream didn't tell me. But I
must never drive you away. You've more to say to
Miss Armiger than I have. I've only come to get
Effie," Jean repeated.

Dennis at this, brushing off his recovered hat,
gave way to his thin laugh. " That apparently may
take you some time ! "

Rose generously helped him off. " I've more to
say to Miss Martle than I've now to say to you. I
think that what I've already said to you is quite
enough.

" Thanks, thanks — quite enough. I'll just go
over."

" You won't go first to Mrs. Beever ? "

" Not yet — I'll come in this evening. Thanks,
thanks ! " Dennis repeated with a sudden dramatic
gaiety that was presumably intended to preserve

THE OTHER HOUSE 223

appearances — to acknowledge Rose's aid and, in a
spirit of reciprocity, cover any exposure she might
herself have incurred. Raising his hat, he passed
down the slope and disappeared, leaving our young
ladies face to face.

Their situation might still have been embarrassing
had Rose not taken immediate measures to give it a
lift. " You must let me have the pleasure of
making you the first person to hear of a matter that
closely corfcerns me." She hung fire, watching her
companion ; then she brought out : " I'm engaged to
be married to Mr. Vidal."

" Engaged ? " — Jean almost bounded forward,
holding up her relief like a torch.

Rose greeted with laughter this natural note.
11 He arrived half an hour ago, for a supreme appeal
— and it has not, you see, taken long. I've just had
the honour of accepting him."

Jean's movement had brought her so close to the
bench that, though slightly disconcerted by its
action on her friend, she could only, in consistency,
seat herself. " That's very charming — I congratu
late you."

" It's charming of you to be so glad," Rose
returned. " However, you've the news in all its
freshness."

" I appreciate that too," said Jean. " But fancy
my dropping on a conversation of such impor
tance ! "

" Fortunately you didn't cut it short. We had
settled the question. He had got his answer."

224 THE OTHER HOUSE

" If I had known it I would have congratulated
Mr. Vidal," Jean pursued.

" You would have frightened him out of his wits
— he's so dreadfully shy," Rose laughed.

"Yes — I could see he was dreadfully shy. But
the great thing," Jean candidly observed*, " is that
he was not too dreadfully shy to come back to you."

Rose continued to be moved to mirth. " Oh, I
don't mean with me I He's as bold with me as I
am — for instance — with you." Jean had riot touched
the child, but Rose smoothed our her ribbons as if
to redress some previous freedom. " You'll think
that says everything. I can easily imagine how you
judge my frankness," she added. " But of course
I'm grossly immodest — I always was."

Jean wistfully watched her light hands play here
and there over Effie's adornments. " 1 think you're
a person of great courage — if you'll let me also be
frank. There's nothing in the world I admire so
much — for I don't consider that I've, myself, a great
deal. I daresay, however, that I should let you
know just as soon if I were engaged."

" Which, unfortunately, is exactly what you're
not ! " Rose, having finished her titivation of the
child, sank comfortably back on the bench. "Do
you object to my speaking to you of that ? " she

asked.

Jean hesitated ; she had only after letting them
escape become conscious of the reach of her words,
the inadvertence of which showed how few waves of
emotion her scene with Paul Beever had left to

THE OTHER HOUSE 225

subside. She coloured as she replied : " I don't
know how much you know."

" I know everything," said Rose. " Mr. Beever
has already told me."

Jean's flush, at this, deepened. " Mr. Beever
already doesn't care ! "

" That's fortunate for you, my dear ! Will you
let me tell you," Rose continued, "how much /do ?"
Jean again hesitated, looking, however, through
her embarrassment, very straight and sweet. " I
don't quite see that it's a thing you should tell me
or that I'm really obliged to hear. It's very good

of you to take an interest "

"But however good it may be, it's none of my
business : is that what you mean ? " Rose broke
in. " Such an answer is doubtless natural enough.
My having hoped you would accept Paul Beever,
and above all my having rather publicly expressed
that hope, is an apparent stretch of discretion that
you're perfectly free to take up. But you must
allow me to say that the stretch is more apparent
than real. There's discretion and discretion — and
it's all a matter of motive. Perhaps you can guess
mine for having found a reassurance in the idea
of your definitely bestowing your hand. It's a
very small and a very pretty hand, but its possible
action is out of proportion to its size and even to
its beauty. It was not a question of meddling in
your affairs — your affairs were only one side of the
matter. My interest was wholly in the effect of
your marriage on the affairs of others. Let me

226 THE OTHER HOUSE

say, moreover," Rose went smoothly and inexorably
on, while Jean, listening intently, drew shorter
breaths and looked away, as if in growing pain,
from the wonderful white, mobile mask that
supplied half the meaning of this speech — " let
me say, morever, that it strikes me you hardly
treat me with fairness in forbidding me an allusion
that has after all so much in common with the fact,
in my own situation, as to which you've no scruple
in showing me your exuberant joy. You clap your
hands over my being — if you'll forgive the vulgarity
of my calling things by their names — got out of the
way ; yet I must suffer in silence to see you rather
more in it than ever."

Jean turned again upon her companion a face
bewildered and alarmed : unguardedly stepping into
water that she had believed shallow, she found
herself caught up in a current of fast-moving
depths — a cold, full tide that set straight out to
sea. " Where am I ? " her scared silence seemed
for the moment to ask. Her quick intelligence
indeed, came to her aid, and she spoke in a voice
out of which she showed that she tried to keep
her heart-beats. "You call things, certainly, by
names that are extraordinary ; but I, at any rate,
follow you far enough to be able to remind
you that what I just said about your engage
ment was provoked by your introducing the
subject."

Rose was silent a moment, but without prejudice,
clearly, to her firm possession of the ground she

THE OTHER HOUSE 227

stood on — a power to be effectively cool in exact
proportion as her interlocutress was troubled. " I
introduced the subject for two reasons. One of
them was that your eager descent upon us at that
particular moment seemed to present you in the
light of an inquirer whom it would be really rude
not to gratify. The other was just to see if you
would succeed in restraining your glee."

" Then your story isn't true ? " Jean asked with
a promptitude that betrayed the limits of her cir
cumspection.

" There you are again ! " Rose laughed. " Do
you know your apprehensions are barely decent ?
I haven't, however, laid a trap with a bait that's
all make-believe. It's perfectly true that Mr. Vidal
has again pressed me hard — it's not true that I've
yet given him an answer completely final. But as
I mean to at the earliest moment, you can say so
to whomever you like."

"I can surely leave the saying so to you!11 Jean
returned. " But I shall be sorry to appear to have
treated you with a want of confidence that may
give you a complaint to make on the score of my
manners — as to which you set me too high an
example by the rare perfection of your own. Let
me simply let you know, then, to cover every
possibility of that sort, that I intend, under no
circumstances — ever — ever — to marry. So far as
that knowledge may satisfy you, you're welcome
to the satisfaction. Perhaps in consideration of
it," Jean wound up, with an effect that must have

223 THE OTHER HOUSE

struck her own ear as the greatest she had ever
produced — " perhaps in consideration of it you'll
kindly do what I ask you."

The poor girl was destined to see her effect
reduced to her mere personal sense of it. Rose
made no movement save to lay her hands on Effie's
shoulders, while that young lady looked up at the
friend of other occasions in round-eyed detachment,
following the talk enough for curiosity, but not
enough either for comprehension or for agitation.
"You take my surrender for granted, I suppose,
because you've worked so long to produce the
impression, which no one, for your good fortune,
has gainsaid, that she's safe only in your hands.
But / gainsay it at last, for her safety becomes a
very different thing from the moment you give
such a glimpse of your open field as you must
excuse my still continuing to hold that you do
give. My ' knowledge ' — to use your term — that
you'll never marry has exactly as much and as
little weight as your word for it. I leave it to your
conscience to estimate that wonderful amount. You
say too much — both more than I ask you and more
than I can oblige you by prescribing to myself to
take seriously. You do thereby injustice to what
must be always on the cards for you — the possible
failure of the great impediment, fm disinterested
in the matter — I shall marry, as" I've had the honour
to inform you, without having to think at all of
impediments or failures. That's the difference
between us, and it seems to me that it alters

THE OTHER HOUSE 229

everything. I had a delicacy — but now I've nothing
in the world but a fear."

Jean had got up before these remarks had gone
far, but even though she fell back a few steps her
dismay was a force that condemned her to take
them in. "God forbid I should understand you,"
she panted ; "I only make out that you say and
mean horrible things and that you're doing your
best to seek a quarrel with me from which you
shall derive some advantage that, I'm happy to feel,
is beyond my conception." Both the women*were
now as pale as death, and Rose was brought to her
feet by the pure passion of this retort. The manner
of it was such as to leave Jean nothing but to walk
away, which she instantly proceeded to do. At the
end of ten paces, however, she turned to look at
their companion, who stood beside Rose, held by
the hand, and whom, as if from a certain considera
tion for infant innocence and a certain instinct of
fair play, she had not attempted to put on her side
by a single direct appeal from intimate eyes. This
appeal she now risked, and the way the little girl's
face mutely met it suddenly precipitated her to
blind supplication. She became weak — she broke
down. " I beseech you to let me have her."

Rose Armiger's countenance made no secret of
her appreciation of this collapse. " I'll let you have
her on one condition," she presently replied.

" What condition ? "

"That you deny to me on the spot that you've
but one feeling in your soul. Oh, don't look vacant

230 THE OTHER HOUSE

and dazed," Rose derisively pursued; "don't look
as if you didn't know what feeling I mean!
Renounce it — repudiate it, and I'll never touch
her again ! "

Jean gazed in sombre stupefaction. "I know
what feeling you mean," she said at last, "and
I'm incapable of meeting your condition. I ' deny,'
I ' renounce,' I ' repudiate ' as little as I hope, as I
dream, or as I feel that I'm likely ever again even

to utter ! " Then she brought out in her baffled

sadness, but with so little vulgarity of pride that
she sounded, rather, a note of compassion for a
perversity so deep : " It's because of that that I
want her ! "

" Because you adore him — and she's his ? "

Jean faltered, but she was launched. " Because
I adore him — and she's his."

" / want her for another reason," Rose declared.
" I adored her poor mother — and she's hers. That's
my ground, that's my love, that's my faith." She
caught Effie up again ; she held her in two strong
arms and dealt her a kiss that was a long consecra
tion. " It's as your dear dead mother's, my own
my sweet, that — if it's time — I shall carry you to
bed ! " She passed swiftly down the slope with
her burden and took the turn which led her out of
sight. Jean stood watching her till she disappeared
and then waited till she had emerged for the usual
minute on the rise in the middle of the bridge.
She saw her stop again there, she saw her again,
as if in the triumph — a great open-air insolence —

THE OTHER HOUSE 231

of possession, press her face to the little girl's.
Then they dipped together to the further end and
were lost, and Jean, after taking a few vague steps
on the lawn, paused, as if sick with the aftertaste
of her encounter, and turned to the nearest seat.
It was close to Mrs. Beever's blighted tea-table,
and when she had sunk into the chair she threw
her arms upon this support and wearily dropped
her head.

XXVI

AT the end of some minutes, with the sense of being
approached, she looked up and saw Paul Beever.
Returning to the garden, he had stopped short at
sight of her, and his arrival made her spring to her
feet with the fear of having, in the belief that she
was unobserved, shown him something she had
never shown. But as he bent upon her his kind,
ugly face there came into her own the comfort of a
general admission, the drop of all attempt at a
superfine surface : they stood together without
saying a word, and there passed between them
something sad and clear, something that was in its
essence a recognition of the great, pleasant oddity
of their being drawn closer by their rupture. They
knew everything about each other now and, young
and clean and good as they were, could meet not
only without attenuations, but with a positive
friendliness that was for each, from the other, a
moral help. Paul had no need of speech to show
Jean how he thanked her for understanding why he
had not besieged her with a pressure more heroic,
and she, on her side, could enter with the tread of
a nurse in a sick-room into the spirit of that accom
modation. They both, moreover, had been closeted

THE OTHER HOUSE 233

with his mother — an experience on which they
could, with some dumb humour, compare notes.
The girl, finally, had now, to this dear boy she
didn't love, something more to give than she had
ever given ; and after a little she could see the
dawn of suspicion of it in the eyes with which he
searched her grave face.

" I knew Miss Armiger had come back here, and
I thought I should find her," he presently ex
plained.

" She was here a few minutes ago — she has just
left me," Jean said.

" To go in again ? " Paul appeared to wonder he
had not met her on his way out.

" To go over to Bounds."

He continued to wonder. " With Mr. Bream ? "

" No — with his little girl."

Paul's surprise increased. "She has taken her up ?"

Jean hesitated ; she uneasily laughed. " Up — up
—up : away up in her arms ! "

Her companion was more literal. "A young
woman of Effie's age must be a weight ! "

" I know what weight — I've carried her. Miss
Armiger did it precisely to prevent that."

" To prevent your carrying her ? "

" To prevent my touching or, if possible, looking
at her. She snatched her up and fled with her — to
get her away from me."

"Why should she wish to do that?" Paul
inquired.

" I think you had better ask her directly." Then

234 THE OTHER HOUSE

Jean added : " As you say, she has taken her up.
She's her occupation, from this time."

" Why, suddenly, from this time ? "

" Because of what has happened."

" Between you and me ? "

" Yes — that's one of her reasons."

" One of them ? " laughed Paul. " She has so
many ? "

" She tells me she has two."

"Two? She speaks of it ?"

Jean saw, visibly, that she mystified him ; but she
as visibly tried to let him see that this was partly
because she spared him. " She speaks of it with
perfect frankness."

" Then what's her second reason ? "

"That if I'm not engaged" — Jean hung fire, but
she brought it out — " at least she herself is."

" She herself ?— instead of you ? "

Paul's blandness was so utter that his com
panion's sense of the comic was this time, and in
spite of the cruelty involved in a correction, really
touched. "To you? No, not to you, my dear
Paul. To a gentleman I found with her here. To
that Mr. Vidal," said Jean.

Paul gasped. " You found that Mr. Vidal with her ? "
He looked bewilderedly about. " Where then is he ? "

" He went over to Bounds."

" And she went with him ? "

" No, she went after."

Still Paul stood staring. "Where the dickens
did he drop from ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 235

" I haven't the least idea."

The young man had a sudden light. "Why, I
saw him with mamma ! He was here when I came
off the river — he borrowed the boat."

" But you didn't know it was he ? "

" I never dreamed — and mamma never told me."

Jean thought a moment. " She was afraid. You
see I'm not."

Paul Beever more pitifully wondered ; he re
peated again the word she had left ringing in his
ears. "She's 'engaged'?"

" So she informed me."

His little eyes rested on her with a stupefaction
so candid as almost to amount to a challenge ; then
they moved away, far away, and he stood lost in
what he felt. She came, tenderly, nearer to him,
and they turned back to her : on which he saw they
were filled with the tears that another failure she
knew of had no power to draw to them. " It's
awfully odd ! " he said.

" I've had to hurt you," she replied. " I'm very
sorry for you."

" Oh, don't mind it 1 " Paul smiled.

" These are things for you to hear of — straight."

"From her? Ah, I don't want to do that! You
see, of course, I shan't say anything." And he covered,
for an instant, working it clumsily, one of his little
eyes with the base of one of his big thumbs.

Jean held out her hand to him. " Do you love
her?"

He took it, embarrassed, without meeting her

236 THE OTHER HOUSE

look ; then, suddenly, something of importance
seemed to occur to him and he replied with simple
alertness : " I never mentioned it ! "

Dimly, but ever so kindly, Jean smiled. " Because
you hadn't had your talk with me ? " She kept hold
of his hand. " Dear Paul, I must say it again —
you're beautiful ! "

He stared, not as yet taking this approval home;
then with the same prompt veracity, " But she
knows it, you know, all the same ! " he exclaimed.

Jean laughed as she released him ; but it kept no
gravity out of the tone in which she presently
repeated : " I'm sorry for you."

" Oh, it's all right ! May I light a cigarette ? " he
asked.

" As many as you like. But I must leave you."

He had struck a match, and at this he paused.
" Because I'm smoking ? "

" Dear, no. Because I must go over to see
Effie." Facing wistfully to her little friend's
quarter, Jean thought aloud. " I always bid her
' Good-night/ I don't see why — on her birthday, of
all evenings — I should omit it."

"Well, then, bid her ' Good-night ' for me too."
She was halfway down the slope ; Paul went in the
same direction, puffing his cigarette hard. Then,
stopping short, " Tony puts him up ? " he abruptly
asked.

" Mr. Vidal ? So it appears."

He gazed a little, blowing his smoke, at this
appearance. " And she has gone over to see him ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 237

" That may be a part of her errand."

He hesitated again. " They can't have lost much
time ! "

" Very little indeed."

Jean went on again ; but again he checked her
with a question. "What has he, what has the

matter you speak of, to do with her cutting in ? "

He paused as if in the presence of things painfully
obscure.

" To the interest others take in the child ? Ah,"
said Jean, "if you feel as you do" — she hesitated —
" don't ask me. Ask her I"

She went her way, and, standing there in thought,
he waited for her to come, after an interval, into
sight on the curve of the bridge. Then as the
minutes elapsed without her doing so, he lounged,
heavy and blank, up again to where he had found
her. Manning, while his back was turned, had
arrived with one of her aids to carry off the tea-
things ; and from a distance, planted on the lawn,
he bent on these evolutions an attention unnaturally
fixed. The women marched and countermarched,
dismantling the table; he broodingly and vacantly
watched them ; then, as he lighted a fresh cigarette,
he saw his mother come out of the house to give
an eye to their work. She reached the spot and
dropped a command or two ; after which, joining him,
she took in that her little company had dispersed.

" What has become of every one ? "

Paul's replies were slow ; but he gave her one
now that was distinct. " After the talk on which I

238 THE OTHER HOUSE

lately left you I should think you would know
pretty well what had become of me"

She gave him a keen look ; her face softened.
" What on earth's the matter with you ? "

He placidly smoked. "I've had my head
punched."

" Nonsense — for all you mind me ! " She scanned
him again. " Are you ill, Paul ? "

" I'm all right," he answered philosophically.

" Then kiss your old mammy." Solemnly, silently
he obeyed her ; but after he had done so she still
held him before her eyes. She gave him a sharp
pat. " You're worth them all ! "

Paul made no acknowledgment of this tribute
save to remark after an instant rather awkwardly :
" I don't know where Tony is."

" I can do without Tony," said his mother.
" But where's Tony's child ? "

" Miss Armiger has taken her home."

" The clever thing!" — Mrs. Beever fairly applauded
the feat. " She was here when you came out ? "

" No, but Jean told me."

" Jean was here ? "

" Yes ; but she went over."

" Over to Bounds — after what has happened ? "
Mrs. Beever looked at first incredulous ; then she
looked stern again. " What in the name of good
ness possesses her ? "

" The wish to bid Effie good-night."
Mrs. Beever was silent a moment. " I wish to
heaven she'd leave Effie alone ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE 239

" Aren't there different ways of looking at that ? "
Paul indulgently asked.

" Plenty, no doubt — and only one decent one."
The grossness of the girl's error seemed to loom
larger. "I'm ashamed of her ! " she declared.

" Well, I'm not ! " Paul quietly returned.

" Oh, you — of course you excuse her ! " In the
agitation that he had produced Mrs. Beever bounced
across an interval that brought her into view of an
object from which, as she stopped short at the sight
of it, her emotion drew fresh sustenance. " Why,
there's the boat ! "

" Mr. Vidal has brought it back," said Paul.

She faced round in surprise. "You've seen
him ? "

" No, but Jean told me."

The lady of Eastmead stared. "She has seen
him ? Then where on earth is he ? "

" He's staying at Bounds," said Paul.

His mother's wonderment deepened. "He has
got there already ? "

Paul smoked a little : then he explained. " It's
not very soon for Mr. Vidal — he puts things
through. He's already engaged to her."

Mystified, at sea, Mrs. Beever dropped upon a
bench. " Engaged to Jean ? "

" Engaged to Miss Armiger."

She tossed her head with impatience. "What
news is that ? He was engaged to her five years
ago!"

" Well, then he is still. They've patched it up."

240 THE OTHER HOUSE

Mrs. Beever was on her feet. " She has seen
him ? "

Tony Bream at this moment came rapidly down
the lawn and had the effect of staying Paul's
answer. The young man gave a jerk to the stump
of his cigarette and turned away with marked
nervousness.

XXVII

THE lady of Eastmead fronted her neighbour with a
certain grimness. " She has seen him — they've
patched it up."

Breathless with curiosity, Tony yet made but a
bite of her news. " It's on again — it's all right ? "

" It's whatever you like to call it. I only know
what Paul tells me."

Paul, at this, stopped in his slow retreat, wheeling
about. " I only know what I had just now from
Jean."

Tony's expression, in the presence of his young
friend's, dropped almost comically into the con
siderate. "Oh, but I daresay it's so, old man. I
was there when they met," he explained to Mrs.
Beever, " and I saw for myself pretty well how it
would go."

" I confess I didn't," she replied. Then she added :
"It must have gone with a jump ! "

" With a jump, precisely — and the jump was
hers ! " laughed Tony. " All's well that ends well ! "
He was heated — he wiped his excited brow, and
Mrs. Beever looked at him as if it struck her that
she had helped him to more emotion than she wished
him. " She's a most extraordinary girl," he went on

242 THE OTHER HOUSE

" and the effort she made there, all unprepared for
it" — he nodded at the very spot of the exploit —
" was magnificent in its way, one of the finest things
I've ever seen." His appreciation of the results of
this effort seemed almost feverish, and his elation
deepened so that he turned, rather blindly, to poor
Paul. " Upon my honour she's cleverer, she has
more domestic resources, as one may say, than — I
don't care whom ! "

" Oh, we all know how clever she is ! " Mrs. Beever
impatiently grunted.

Tony's enthusiasm, none the less, overflowed ; he
was nervous for joy. " I thought I did myself, but
she had a lot more to show me ! " He addressed
himself again to Paul. " She told you — with her
coolness ? "

Paul was occupied with another cigarette ; he
emitted no sound, and his mother, with a glance at
him, spoke for him. " Didn't you hear him say it
was Jean who told him ? "

" Oh, Jean ! "—Tony looked graver. " She told
Jean ? " But his gaiety, at this image, quickly came
back. " That was charming of her I "

Mrs. Beever remained cold. " Why on earth was
it charming ? "

Tony, though he reddened, was pulled up but an
instant — his spirits carried him on. " Oh, because
there hasn't been much between them, and it was
a pretty mark of confidence." He glanced at his
watch. " They're in the house ? "

" Not in mine — in yours."

THE OTHER HOUSE 243

Tony looked surprised. " Rose and Vidal ? "

Paul spoke at last. " Jean also went over — went
after them."

Tony thought a moment. " ' After them ' — Jean ?
How long ago ? "

" About a quarter of an hour," said Paul.

Tony continued to wonder. " Aren't you mis
taken ? They're not there now."

" How do you know," asked Mrs. Beever, "if
you've not been home ? "

" I have been home — I was there five minutes ago."

" Then how did you get here ? "

" By the long way ? I took a fly. I went back
to get a paper I had stupidly forgotten and that I
needed for a fellow with whom I had to talk. Our
talk was a bore for the want of it, so I drove over
there and got it, and, as he had his train to catch, I
then overtook him at the station. I ran it close, but
I saw him off; and here I am." Tony shook his
head. " There's no one at Bounds."

Mrs. Beever looked at Paul. "Then where's
Effie ? "

" Effie's not here ? " Tony asked.

" Miss Armiger took her home," said Paul.

" You saw them go ? "

" No, but Jean told me."

" Then where's Miss Armiger ? " Tony continued.
" And where's Jean herself? "

"Where's Effie herself— that's the question," said
Mrs. Beever.

" No," Tony laughed, " the question's Where's

244 THE OTHER HOUSE

Vidal ? He's the fellow I want to catch. I asked him
to stay with me, and he said he'd go over, and it was
my finding just now he hadn't come over that made
me drive on here from the station to pick him up."

Mrs. Beever gave ear to this statement, but she
gave nothing else. " Mr. Vidal can take care of
himself; but if Effie's not at home, where is she?"
She pressed her son. " Are you sure of what Jean
said to you ? "

Paul bethought himself. " Perfectly, mamma.
She said Miss Armiger carried off the little
girl."

Tony appeared struck with this. " That's exactly
what Rose told me she meant to do. Then they're
simply in the garden — they simply hadn't come
in."

" They've been in gardens enough ! " Mrs. Beever
declared. " I should like to know the child's simply
in bed."

" So should I," said Tony with an irritation that
was just perceptible ; " but I none the less deprecate
the time-honoured custom of a flurry — I may say
indeed of a panic — whenever she's for a moment out
of sight." He spoke almost as if Mrs. Beever were
trying to spoil for him by the note of anxiety the
pleasantness of the news about Rose. The next
moment, however, he questioned Paul with an evident
return of the sense that toward a young man to whom
such a hope was lost it was a time for special tact.
" You, at any rate, dear boy, .saw Jean go ? "

" Oh, yes — I saw Jean go."

THE OTHER HOUSE 245

" And you understood from her that Rose and
Effie went with Vidal ? "

Paul consulted his memory. " I think Mr. Vidal
went first."

Tony thought a moment. " Thanks so much, old
chap." Then with an exaggerated gaiety that might
have struck his companions had it not been the sign
of so much of his conversation : " They're all a jolly
party in the garden together. I'll go over."

Mrs. Beever had been watching the bridge. " Here
comes Rose — she'll tell us."

Tony looked, but their friend had already dropped
on the hither side, and he turned to Paul. " You
wouldn't object — a — to dining ? "

" To meet Mr. Vidal ? " Mrs. Beever interposed.
11 Poor Paul," she laughed, " you're between two
fires ! You and your guest," she said to her
neighbour, " had better dine here."

" Both fires at once ? " — Tony smiled at her son.
" Should you like that better ? "

Paul, where he stood, was lost in the act of
watching for Rose. He shook his head absently.
" I don't care a rap ! " Then he turned away again,
and his mother, addressing Tony, dropped her voice.

" He won't show."

" Do you mean his feelings ? "

" I mean for either of us."

Tony observed him a moment. " Poor lad, I'll
bring him round ! " After which, " Do you mind if I
speak to her of it ? " he abruptly inquired.

" To Rose — of this news ? " Mrs. Beever looked

246 THE OTHER HOUSE

at him hard, and it led her to reply with severity :
" Tony Bream, I don't know what to make of you 1 "
She was apparently on the point of making some
thing rather bad, but she now saw Rose at the bottom
of the slope and straightway hailed her. " You took
Effie home ? "

Rose came quickly up. " Not I ! She isn't
here ? "

"She's gone," said Mrs. Beever, "Where is
she ? "

" I'm afraid I don't know. I gave her up." Paul
had wheeled round at her first negation ; Tony had
not moved. Bright and handsome, but a little out
of breath, she looked from one of her friends to the
other. " You're sure she's not here ? " Her sur
prise was fine.

Mrs. Beever's, however, had greater freedom. "How
can she be, when Jean says you took her away ? "

Rose Armiger stared ; she threw back her head.
"' Jean says ?"' She looked round her. "Where
is ' Jean ' ? "

" She's nowhere about — she's not in the house."
Mrs. Beever challenged the two men, echoing the
question as if it were indeed pertinent. " Where is
the girl ? "

" She has gone to Bounds," said Tony. " She's
not in my garden ? "

" She wasn't five minutes ago — I've just come out
of it."

" Then what took you there?" asked Mrs. Beever.

" Mr. Vidal." Rose smiled at Tony : " You know

THE OTHER HOUSE 247

what ! " She turned again to Mrs. Beever, looking
her full in the face. " I've seen him. I went over
with him."

" Leaving Effie with Jean — precisely," said Tony,
in his arranging way.

" She came out — she begged so hard," Rose
explained to Mrs. Beever. " So I gave in."

" And yet Jean says the contrary ? " this lady
demanded in stupefaction of her son.

Rose turned, incredulous, to Paul. " She said to
you — anything so false ? "

" My dear boy, you simply didn't understand 1 "
Tony laughed. " Give me a cigarette."

Paul's eyes, contracted to the pin-points we have
already seen them become in his moments of emotion,
had been attached, while he smoked still harder,
to Rose's face. He turned very red and, before
answering her, held out his cigarette-case. " That
was what I remember she said — that you had gone
with Effie to Bounds."

Rose stood wonderstruck. " When she had
taken her from me herself ? "

Mrs. Beever referred her to Paul. " But she
wasn't with Jean when he saw her ! "

Rose appealed to him. " You saw Miss Martle
alone ? "

"Oh yes, quite alone." Paul now was crimson
and without visible sight.

"My dear boy," cried Tony, impatient, "you
simply don' I remember."

"Yes, Tony. I remember."

248 THE OTHER HOUSE

Rose had turned grave — she gave Paul a sombre
stare. " Then what on earth had she done with
her ? "

" What she had done was evident : she had taken
her home ! " Tony declared with an air of incipient
disgust. They made a silly mystery of nothing.

Rose gave him a quick, strained smile. " But if
the child's not there ? "

"You just told us yourself she isn't!" Mrs.
Beever reminded him.

He hunched his shoulders as if there might be
many explanations. " Then she's somewhere else.
She's wherever Jean took her."

" But if Jean was here without her ? "

" Then Jean, my dear lady, had come back."

" Come back to lie ? " asked Mrs. Beever.

Tony coloured at this, but he controlled himself.
" Dearest Mrs. Beever, Jean doesn't lie."

" Then somebody does ! " Mrs. Beever roundly
brought out.

" It's not you, Mr. Paul, I know ! " Rose declared,
discomposed but still smiling. "Was it you who
saw her go over ? "

"Yes; she left me here."

" How long ago ? "

Paul looked as if fifty persons had been watching
him. " Oh, not long ! "

Rose addressed herself to the trio. " Then why
on earth haven't I met her ? She must explain her
astounding statement ! "

" You'll see that she'll explain it easily," said Tony.

THE OTHER HOUSE 249

" Ah, but, meanwhile, where's your daughter,
don't you know?" Rose demanded with resent
ment.

" I'm just going over to see."

" Then please go ! " she replied with a nervous
laugh. She presented to the others, as a criticism
of his inaction, a white, uneasy face.

" I want first," said Tony, " to express to you my
real joy. Please believe in it."

She thought — she seemed to come back from a
distance. " Oh, you know ? " Then to Paul :
" She told you ? It's a detail," she added impa
tiently. " The question " — she thought again — " is
the poor child." Once more she appealed to Paul.
" Will you go and see?"

" Yes, go, boy." Tony patted his back.

" Go this moment," his mother put in.

He none the less lingered long enough to offer
Rose his blind face. " I want also to express "

She took him up with a wonderful laugh. " Your
real joy, dear Mr. Paul ? "

"Please believe in that too." And Paul, at an
unwonted pace, took his way.

" I believe in everything — I believe in every one,"

Rose went on. " But I don't believe " She

hesitated, then checked herself. " No matter. Can
you forgive me ? " she asked of Mrs. Beever.

" For giving up the child ? " The lady of East-
mead looked at her hard. " No ! " she said curtly,
and, turning straight away, went and dropped into
a seat from which she watched the retreating figures

250 THE OTHER HOUSE

of her two parlourmaids, who carried off between
them a basket containing the paraphernalia of tea.
Rose, with a queer expression, but with her straight
back to the painful past, quietly transferred her plea
to Tony. " It was his coming — it made the
difference. It upset me."

" Upset you ? You were splendid ! "

The light of what had happened was in her face
as she considered him. " You are ! " she replied.
Then she added : " But he's finer than either of
us!"

" I told you four years ago what he is. He's all
right."

" Yes," said Rose— " he's all right. And / am—
now," she went on. " You've been good to me."
She put out her hand. " Good-bye."

" Good-bye ? You're going ? "

" He takes me away."

" But not to-night ! " — Tony's native kindness,
expressed in his inflection, felt that it could now risk
almost all the forms he essentially liked.

From the depth of Rose's eyes peeped a dis
tracted, ironic sense of this. But she said with all
quietude: ''To-morrow early. I may not see you."

" Don't be absurd ! " laughed Tony.

" Ah, well — if you will ! " She stood a moment
looking down ; then raising her eyes, " Don't hold
my hand so long," she abruptly said. " Mrs. Beever,
who has dismissed the servants, is watching us."

Tony had the appearance of having felt as if he
had let it go; but at this, after a glance at the

THE OTHER HOUSE 251

person indicated, staring and smiling with a clear
face, he retained his grasp of it. " How in the
world, with your back turned, can you see
that ? "

" It's with my back turned that I see most. She's
looking at us hard."

" I don't care a hang ! " said Tony gaily.

" Oh, I don't say it for myself! " But Rose with
drew her hand.

Tony put both his own into his pockets. " I hope
you'll let me say to you — very simply — that I believe
you'll be very happy."

" I shall be as happy as a woman can be who has
abandoned her post."

" Oh, your post ! " — Tony made a joke of that
now. But he instantly added : " Your post will be
to honour us with your company at Bounds again ;
which, as a married woman, you see, you'll be per
fectly able to do."

She smiled at him. li How you arrange things ! "
Then with a musing headshake : " We leave Eng
land."

" How you arrange them ! " Tony exclaimed.
" He goes back to China ? "

" Very soon — he's doing so well."

Tony hesitated. " I hope he has made money."

"A great deal. I should look better — shouldn't
I ? — if he hadn't. But I show you enough how little
I care how I look. I blow hot and cold ; I'm all
there — then I'm off. No matter," she repeated. In
a moment she added : "I accept your hopes for

252 THE OTHER HOUSE

my happiness. It will do, no doubt, soon as I

learn ! " Her voice dropped for impatience ;

she turned to the quarter of the approach from the
other house.

" That Effie's all right ? " Tony saw their mes
senger already in the shrubbery. " Here comes
Paul to tell us."

Mrs. Beever rejoined them as he spoke. " It
wasn't Paul on the bridge. It was the Doctor-
without his hat."

" Without his hat ? " Rose murmured.

" He has it in his hand," Tony cheerfully asserted
as their good friend emerged from cover.

But he hadn't it in his hand, and at sight of them
on the top of the slope he stopped short, stopped
long enough to give Rose time to call eagerly : "Is
Effie there ? "

It was long enough also to give them all time to
see, across the space, that his hair was disordered
and his look at them strange ; but they had no
sooner done so than he made a violent gesture — a
motion to check the downward rush that he evidently
felt his aspect would provoke. It was so imperative
that, coming up, he was with them before they had
moved, showing them splashed, wet clothes and a
little hard white face that Wilverley had never seen.
"There has been an accident." Neither had Wilverley,
gathered into three pair of ears, heard that voice.

The first effect of these things was to hold it an
instant while Tony cried : " She's hurt ? "

" She's killed ? " cried Mrs. Beever.

THE OTHER HOUSE 253

" Stay where you are ! " was the Doctor's stern
response. Tony had given a bound, but, caught by
the arm, found himself jerked, flaming red, face to
face with Rose, who had been caught as tightly by
the wrist. The Doctor closed his eyes for a second
with this effort of restraint, but in the force he had
put into it, which was not all of the hands, his captives
submissively quivered. " You're not to go I " he
declared — quite as if it were for their own good.

" She's dead ? " Tony panted.

" Who's with her — who was ? " cried Rose.

" Paul's with her — by the water."

" By the water ? " Rose shrieked.

" My child's drowned?" — Tony's cry was strange.

The Doctor had been looking from one of them to
the other ; then he looked at Mrs. Beever, who,
instantly, admirably, with a strength quickly acknow
ledged by the mute motion of his expressive little
chin toward her, had stilled herself into the appeal
of a blanched, breathless wait. " May / go ? "
sovereignly came from her.

" Go. There's no one else," he said as she bounced
down the bank.

" No one else ? Then where's that girl ? "—Rose's
question was fierce. • She gave, as fiercely, to free
herself, a great wrench of her arm, but the Doctor
held her as if still to spare her what he himself had
too dreadfully seen. He looked at Tony, who said
with quick quietness —

" Ramage, have I lost my child ? "

" You '11 see — be brave. Not yet — I've told Paul.

254 THE OTHER HOUSE

Be quiet ! " the Doctor repeated ; then his hand
dropped on feeling that the movement he had meant
to check in his friend was the vibration of a man
stricken to weakness and sickened on the spot.
Tony's face had turned black ; he was rooted to the
ground ; he stared at Rose, to whom the Doctor said :
" Who, Miss Armiger, was with her ? "

All her lividness wondered. " When was it ? "

" God knows ! > She was there — against the
bridge."

" Against the bridge — where I passed just now ?
/ saw nothing ! " Rose jerked, while Tony dumbly
closed his eyes.

"I came over because she wasn't at the house,
and — from the bank — there she was. I reached her
— with the boat, with a push. She might have been
half an hour "

" It was half an hour ago she took her ! " Rose
broke in. " She's not there ? "

The Doctor looked at her hard. " Of whom do
you speak ? "

"Why, of Miss Martle — whose hands are never
off her." Rose's mask was the mask of Medusa.
" What has become of Miss Martle ? "

Dr. Ramage turned with the question to Tony,
whose eyes, open now, were half out of his head.
" What has become of her ? "

" She's not there ? " Tony articulated.

" There's no one there."

" Not Dennis ? " sprang bewilderedly from Rose.

The Doctor stared. "Mr. Vidal ? No, thank

THE OTHER HOUSE 255

God — only Paul." Then pressing Tony : " Miss
Martle was with her ? "

Tony's eyes rolled over all space. " No — not
Miss Martle."

" But somebody was ! " Rose clamoured. " She
wasn't alone ! "

Tony fixed her an instant. " Not Miss Martle,"
he repeated.

" But who then ? And where is she now ? "

" It's positive she's not here ? " the Doctor asked
of Rose.

" Positive — Mrs. Beever knew. Where is she ? "
Rose rang out.

" Where in the name ? " passed, as with the

dawn of a deeper horror, from their companion to
Tony.

Tony's eyes sounded Rose's, and hers blazed back.
His silence was an anguish, his face a convulsion.
" It isn't half an hour," he at last brought out.

" Since it happened ? " The Doctor blinked at his
sudden knowledge. " Then when ? "

Tony looked at him straight. "When I was
there."

" And when was that ? "

"After I called for you."

" To leave word for me to go ? " The Doctor set
his face. " But you were not going home then."

" I did go — I had a reason. You know it," Tony
said to Rose.

" When you went for your paper ? " She thought.
" But Effie wasn't there then."

256 THE OTHER HOUSE

"Why not? She was there, but Miss Martle
wasn't with her."

"Then, in God's name, who was?" cried the
Doctor.

" / was," said Tony.

Rose gave the inarticulate cry of a person who
has been holding her breath, and the Doctor an
equally loud, but more stupefied "You?"

Tony fixed upon Rose a gaze that seemed to
count her respirations. " I was with her," he re
peated ; " and I was with her alone. And what was
done — / did." He paused while they both gasped :
then he looked at the Doctor. " Now you know."
They continued to gasp ; his confession was a
blinding glare, in the shock of which the Doctor
staggered back from Rose and she fell away with a
liberated spring. " God forgive me ! " howled Tony
— he broke now into a storm of sobs. He dropped
upon a bench with his wretched face in his hands,
while Rose, with a passionate wail, threw herself,
appalled, on the grass, and their companion, in a
colder dismay, looked from one prostrate figure to
the other.

END OF BOOK SECOND

BOOK THIRD

'•V ,,

XXVIII

THE greatest of the parlourmaids came from the hall
into the drawing-room at Eastmead — the high,
square temple of mahogany and tapestry in which,
the last few years, Mrs. Beever had spent much
time in rejoicing that she had never set up new
gods. She had left it, from the first, as it was —
full of the old things that, on succeeding to her
husband's mother, she had been obliged, as a young
woman of that period, to accept as dolefully different
from the things thought beautiful by other young
women whose views of drawing-rooms, all about
her, had also been intensified by marriage. She
had not unassistedly discovered the beauty of her
heritage, and she had not from any such subtle
suspicion kept her hands off it. She had never in
her life taken any course with regard to any object
for reasons that had so little to do with her duty.
Everything in her house stood, at an angle of its
own, on the solid rock of the discipline rt had cost
her. She had therefore lived with mere dry wist-
fulness through the age of rosewood, and had been
rewarded by finding that, like those who sit still in
runaway vehicles, she was the only person not
thrown out. Her mahogany had never moved, but

26o THE OTHER HOUSE

the way people talked about it had, and the people
who talked were now eager to sit down with her on
everything that both she and they had anciently
thought plainest and poorest. It was Jean, above
all, who had opened her eyes — opened them in
particular to the great wine-dark doors, polished and
silver-hinged, with which the lady of Eastmead,
arriving at the depressed formula that they were
" gloomy," had for thirty years, prudently on the
whole, as she considered, shut out the question of
taste. One of these doors Manning now softly
closed, standing, however, with her hand on the
knob and looking across, as if, in the stillness, to
listen at another which exactly balanced with it on
the opposite side of the room. The light of the long
day had not wholly faded, but what remained of it
was the glow of the western sky, which showed
through the wide, high window that was still open
to the garden. The sensible hush in which Man
ning waited was broken after a moment by a
movement, ever so gentle, of the other door.
Mrs. Beever put her head out of the next
room ; then, seeing her servant, closed the door
with precautions and came forward. Her face,
hard but overcharged, had pressingly asked a
question.

" Yes, ma'am — Mr. Vidal. I showed him, as you
told me, into the library."

* Mrs. Beever thought. " It may be wanted. I'll
see him here." But she checked the woman's
retreat. " Mr. Beever's in his room ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 261

"No, ma'am — he went out."

" But a minute ago ? "

" Longer, ma'am. After he carried in "

Mrs. Beever stayed the phrase on Manning's lips
and quickly supplied her own. '"The dear little girl
—yes. He went to Mr. Bream ? "

" No, ma'am — the other way."

Mrs. Beever thought afresh. " But Miss Armiger's
in?"

" Oh, yes — in her room."

" She went straight ? "

Manning, on her side, reflected. "Yes, ma'am.
She always goes straight."

" Not always," said Mrs. Beever. " But she's
quiet there ? "

"Very quiet."

"Then call Mr. Vidal." While Manning obeyed
she turned to the window and stared at the gather
ing dusk. Then the door that had been left open
closed again, and she faced about to Dennis Vidal.

" Something dreadful has happened ? " he instantly
asked.

" Something dreadful has happened. You've
come from Bounds ? "

" As fast as I could run. I saw Doctor Ramage
there."

" And what did he tell you ? "

" That I must come straight here."

" Nothing else ? "

"That you would tell me," Dennis said. " I saw
the shock in his face."

262 THE OTHER HOUSE

" But you didn't ask ? "

"Nothing. Here I am,"

" Here you are, thank God ! " Mrs. Beever gave
a muffled moan.

She was going on, but, eagerly, he went before
her. " Can I help you ? "

" Yes — if there is help. You can do so first by
not asking me a question till I have put those I wish
to yourself."

" Put them — put them ! " he said impatiently.

At his peremptory note she quivered, showing
him she was in the state in which every sound
startles. She locked her lips and closed her eyes an
instant ; she held herself together with an effort.
" I'm in great trouble, and I venture to believe that
if you came back to me to-day it was because "

He took her up shorter than before. " Because I
thought of you as a friend ? For God's sake, think
of me as one ! "

She pressed to her lips while she looked at him
the small tight knot into which her nerves had
crumpled her pocket-handkerchief. She had no
tears — only a visible terror. " I've never appealed
to one," she replied, " as I shall appeal to you now.
Effie Bream is dead." Then as instant horror was
in his eyes : " She was found in the water."

" The water ? " Dennis gasped.

" Under the bridge — at the other side. She had
been caught, she was held, in the slow current by
some obstruction, and by the pier. Don't ask me
how — when I arrived, by the mercy of heaven, she

THE OTHER HOUSE 263

had been brought to the bank. But she was gone."
With a movement of the head toward the room she
had quitted, " We carried her back here," she went
on. Vidal's face, which was terrible in the intensity
of its sudden vision, struck her apparently as for
the instant an echo, wild but interrogative, of what
she had last said ; so she explained quickly : " To
think — to get more time." He turned straight away
from her ; he went, as she had done, to the window
and, with his back presented, stood looking out in
the mere rigour of dismay.

She was silent long enough to show a respect for
the particular consternation that her manner of
watching him betrayed her impression of having
stirred ; then she went on : " How long were you at
Bounds with Rose ? "

Dennis turned round without meeting her eyes or,
at first, understanding her question. " At Bounds ? "

" When, on your joining her, she went over with
you."

He thought a moment. " She didn't go over with
me. I went alone — after the child came out."

" You were there when Manning brought her ? "
—Mrs. Beever wondered. " Manning didn't tell
me that."

"I found Rose on the lawn — with Mr. Bream —
when I brought back your boat. He left us
together — after inviting me to Bounds — and then
the little girl arrived. Rose let me hold her, and
I was with them till Miss Martle appeared. Then
I — rather uncivilly — went off."

264 THE OTHER MOUSE

" You went without Rose ? " Mrs. Beever asked.

"Yes — I left her with the little girl and Miss
Martle." The marked effect of this statement made
him add : " Was it your impression I didn't ? "

His companion, before answering him, dropped
into a seat and stared up at him ; after which she
articulated : " I'll tell you later. You left them,"
she demanded, " in the garden with the child ? "

" In the garden with the child."

" Then you hadn't taken her ? "

Dennis had for some seconds a failure either of
memory or of courage ; but whichever it was he
completely overcame it. "By no means. She was
in Rose's arms."

Mrs. Beever, at this image, lowered her eyes to
the floor ; after which, raising them again, she
continued : " You went to Bounds ? "

" No — I turned off short. I was going, but if I
had a great deal to think of," Dennis pursued, "after
I had learned from you she was here, the quantity
wasn't of course diminished by our personal en
counter." He hesitated. " I had seen her with him.11

"Well?" said Mrs. Beever as he paused again.

" I asked you if she was in love with him.''

" And 1 bade you find out for yourself."

" I've found out," Dennis said.

"Well?" Mrs. Beever repeated.

It was evidently, even in this tighter tension,
something of an ease to all his soreness to tell
her. " I've never seen anything like it — and there's
not much I've not seen."

THE OTHER HOUSE 265

"That's exactly what the Doctor says ! "

Dennis stared, but after a moment, "And does
the Doctor say Mr. Bream cares ? " he somewhat
artlessly inquired.

" Not a farthing."

" Not a farthing. I'm bound to say — I could see
it for myself," he declared, "that he has behaved
very well." Mrs. Beever, at this, turning in torment
on her seat, gave a smothered wail which pulled
him up so that he went on in surprise : " Don't
you think that ? "

"I'll tell you later," she answered. "In the
presence of this misery I don't judge him.

" No more do I. But what I was going to say
was that, all the same, the way he has with a
woman, the way he had with her there, and his
damned good looks and his great happiness —

" His great happiness ? God help him ! " Mrs.
Beever broke out, springing up again in her emotion.
She stood before him with pleading hands. " Where
ivere you then ? "

"After I left the garden? I was upset, I was
dissatisfied — I didn't go over. I lighted a cigar;
I passed out of the gate by your little closed pavilion
and kept on by the river."

" By the river ? " — Mrs. Beever was blank.
" Then why didn't you see ? "

"What happened to the child? Because if it
happened near the bridge I had left the bridge
behind."

" But you were in sight "

266 THE OTHER HOUSE

" For five minutes," Dennis said. " I was in sight
perhaps even for ten. I strolled there, I turned
things over, I watched the stream and, finally —
just at the sharp bend — I sat a little on the stile
beyond that smart new boat-house."

" It's a horrid thing." Mrs. Beever considered.
" But you see the bridge from the boat-house."

Dennis hesitated. "Yes — it's a good way, but
you've a glimpse."

" Which showed you nothing at all ? "

" Nothing at all ? " — his echo of the question was
interrogative, and it carried him uneasily to the
window, where he again, for a little, stared out.
The pink of the sky had faded and dusk had begun
in the room. At last he faced about. "No — I
saw something. But I'll not tell you what it was,
please, till I've myself asked you a thing or two."

Mrs. Beever was silent at this : they stood face
to face in the twilight. Then she slowly exhaled
a throb of her anguish. " I think you'll be a
help."

"How much of one," he bitterly demanded,
"shall I be to myself?" But he continued before
she could meet the question : " I went back to the
bridge, and as I approached it Miss Martle came
down to it from your garden."

Mrs. Beever grabbed his arm. " Without the
child ? " He was silent so long that she repeated
it: "Without the child?"

He finally spoke. "Without the child."

She looked at him as she showed that she felt

THE OTHER HOUSE 267

she had never looked at any man. " On your
sacred honour ? "

"On my sacred honour."

She closed her eyes as she had closed them at the
beginning of their talk, and the same defeated spasm
passed over her face. " You are a help," she said.

"Well," Dennis replied straightforwardly, "if it's
being one to let you know that she was with me
from that moment

Breathless she caught him up. " With you ? —
till when ? "

" Till just now, when we again separated at the
gate-house : I to go over to Bounds, as I had
promised Mr. Bream, and Miss Martle —

Again she snatched the words from him. "To
come straight in ? Oh, glory be to God 1 "

Dennis showed some bewilderment. "She did
come ? "

" Mercy, yes — to meet this horror. She's with
Effie." She returned to it, to have it again. " She
was with you ? "

"A quarter of an hour — perhaps more." At this
Mrs. Beever dropped upon her sofa again and gave
herself to the tears that had not sooner come. She
sobbed softly, controlling them, and Dennis watched
her with hard, haggard pity ; after which he said :
" As soon as I saw her I spoke to her — I felt that
I wanted her."

" You wanted her ? " — in the clearer medium
through which Mrs. Beever now could look up
there were still obscurities.

268 THE OTHER HOUSE

He hesitated. " For what she might say to me.
I told you, when we spoke of Rose after my arrival,
that I had not come to watch her. But while I was
with them" — he jerked his head at the garden —
" something remarkable took place."

Mrs. Beever rose again. " I know what took
place."

He seemed struck. " You know it ? "

"She told Jean."

Dennis stared. " I think not."

" Jean didn't speak of it to you ? "

" Not a word."

"She spoke of it to Paul," said Mrs. Beever.
Then, to be more specific: "Something highly re
markable. I mean your engagement."

Dennis was mute ; but at last, in the gathered
gloom, his voice was stranger than his silence.
" My engagement ? "

" Didn't you, on the spot, induce her to renew
it?"

Again, for some time, he was dumb. " Has she
said so ? " he then asked.

" To every one."

Once more he waited. " I should like to see
her."

" Here she is."

The door from the hall had opened as he spoke :
Rose Armiger stood there. She addressed him
straight and as if she had not seen Mrs. Beever.
" I knew you'd be here — I must see you."

Mrs. Beever passed quickly to the side of the

THE OTHER HOUSE 269

room at which she had entered, where her fifty
years of order abruptly came out to Dennis. " Will
you have lights ? "

It was Rose who replied. "No lights, thanks."
But she stayed her hostess. " May I see her ? "

Mrs. Beever fixed a look through the dusk.
" No ! " And she slipped soundlessly away.

XXIX

ROSE had come for a purpose, Vidal saw, to which
she would make but a bound, and she seemed in
fact to take the spring as she instantly broke out :
" For what did you come back to me ? — for what
did you come back ? " She approached him quickly,
but he made, more quickly, a move that gained him
space and that might well have been the result of
two sharp impressions : one of these the sense that
in a single hour she had so altered as to be ugly,
without a trace of the charm that had haunted him ;
and the other the sense that, thus ravaged and dis
figured, wrecked in the gust that had come and
gone, she required of him something that she had
never required. A monstrous reality flared up in
their relation, the perception of which was a shock
that he was conscious for the moment of betraying
that he feared, finding no words to answer her and
showing her, across the room, while she repeated
her question, a face blanched by the change in her
own. " For what did you come back to me ? — for
what did you come back ? "

He gaped at her ; then as if there were help for
him in the simple fact that on his own side he could
immediately recall, he stammered out : " To you —

THE OTHER HOUSE 271

to you ? I hadn't the slightest notion you were
here ! "

" Didn't you come to see where I was ? Didn't
you come absolutely and publicly for me ? " He
jerked round again to the window with the vague,
wild gesture of a man in horrible pain, and she went
on without vehemence, but with clear, deep inten
sity : " It was exactly when you found I was here
that you did come back. You had a perfect chance,
on learning it, not to show ; but you didn't take the
chance, you quickly put it aside. You reflected,
you decided, you insisted we should meet." Her
voice, as if in harmony with the power of her plea,
dropped to a vibration more muffled, a soft but
inexorable pressure. " I hadn't called you, I
hadn't troubled you, I left you as perfectly alone as
I've been alone. It was your own passion and your
own act — you've dropped upon me, you've over
whelmed me. You've overwhelmed me, I say,
because I speak from the depths of my surrender.
But you didn't do it, I imagine, to be cruel, and if
you didn't do it to be cruel you did it to take what it
would give you." Gradually, as she talked, he faced
round again ; she stood there supported by the high
back of a chair, either side of which she held tight.
" You know what I am, if any man has known, and
it's to the thing I am — whatever that is — you've
come back at last from so far. It's the thing I
am — whatever that is — I now count on you to
stand by."

" Whatever that is ? " — Dennis mournfully mar-

272 THE OTHER HOUSE

veiled. " I feel, on the contrary, that I've never,
never known ! "

"Well, it's before anything a woman who has
such a need as no woman has ever had." Then she
eagerly added : " Why on earth did you descend on
me if you hadn't need of me ? "

Dennis took for an instant, quite as if she were
not there, several turns in the wide place ; moving
in the dumb distress of a man confronted with the
greatest danger of his life and obliged, while pre
cious minutes lapse, to snatch at a way of safety.
His whole air was an instinctive retreat from being
carried by assault, and he had the effect both of
keeping far from her and of revolving blindly round
her. At last, in his hesitation, he pulled up before
her. " What makes, all of a sudden, the tremendous
need you speak of? Didn't you remind me but an
hour ago of how remarkably low, at our last meeting,
it had dropped ? "

Rose's eyes, in the dimness, widened with their
wonder. " You can speak to me in harshness of what
I did an hour ago ? You can taunt me with an act
of penance that might have moved you — that did
move you ? Does it mean/' she continued, " that
you've none the less embraced the alternative that
seems to you most worthy of your courage ? Did
I only stoop, in my deep contrition, to make it
easier for you to knock me down ? I gave you
your chance to refuse me, and what you've come back
for then will have been only, most handsomely, to
take it. In that case you did injustice there to the

THE OTHER HOUSE 273

question of your revenge. What fault have you to
find with anything so splendid ? "

Dennis had listened with his eyes averted, and he
met her own again as if he had not heard, only
bringing out his previous words with a harder
iteration : " What makes your tremendous need ?
what makes your tremendous need ? " — he spoke as
if that tone were the way of safety. " I don't in the
least see why it should have taken such a jump.
You must do justice, even after your act of this
afternoon — a demonstration far greater than any I
dreamed of asking of you — you must do justice to
my absolute necessity for seeing everything clear.
I didn't there in the garden see anything clear at
all — I was only startled and wonder-struck and
puzzled. Certainly I was touched, as you say — I
was so touched that I particularly suffered. But I
couldn't pretend I was satisfied or gratified, or even
that I was particularly convinced. You often failed
of old, I know, to give me what I really wanted
from you, and yet it never prevented the success of
your effect on — what shall I call it ? " He stopped
short. " On God knows what baser, obscurer part
of me ! I'm not such a brute as to say," he quickly
went on, " that that effect was not produced this
afternoon "

" You confine yourself to saying," Rose inter
rupted, " that it's not produced in our actual situa
tion."

He stared through the thicker dusk ; after which,
" I don't understand you ! " he dropped. " I do

274 THE OTHER HOUSE

say," he declared, "that, whatever your success to
day may be admitted to consist of, I didn't at least
then make the admission. I didn't at that moment
understand you any more than I do now ; and I
don't think I said anything to lead you to suppose
I did. I showed you simply that I was bewildered,
and I couldn't have shown it more than by the
abrupt way I left you. I don't recognise that I'm
committed to anything that deprives me of the right
of asking you for a little more light."

"Do you recognise by chance," Rose returned,
" the horrible blow ?"

" That has fallen on all this wretched place ?
I'm unutterably shocked by it. But where does it
come into our relations ? "

Rose smiled in exquisite pity, which had the air,
however, of being more especially for herself.
" You say you were painfully affected ; but you
really invite me to go further still. Haven't I put
the dots on all the horrid i's and dragged myself
through the dust of enough confessions ? "

Dennis slowly and grimly shook his head ; he
doggedly clung to his only refuge. " I don't under
stand you — I don't understand you."

Rose, at this, surmounted her scruples. " It would
be inexpressibly horrible to me to appear to be free
to profit by Mr. Bream's misfortune."

Dennis thought a moment. " To appear, you
mean, to have an interest in the fact that the death
of his daughter leaves him at liberty to invite you
to become his wife ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 275

" You express it to admiration."

He discernibly wondered. " But why should
you be in danger of that torment to your delicacy
if Mr. Bream has the best of reasons for doing
nothing to contribute to it ? "

"The best of Mr. Bream's reasons," Rose re
joined, "won't be nearly so good as the worst of
mine."

" That of your making a match with some one
else ? I see," her companion said. " That's the
precaution I'm to have the privilege of putting in
your power."

She gave the strangest of smiles ; the whites of
her excited eyes shimmered in the gloom. " Your
loyalty makes my position perfect."

Dennis hesitated. " And what does it make my
own ? "

" Exactly the one you came to take. You have
taken it by your startling presence ; you're up to
your eyes in it, and there's nothing that will become
you so as to wear it bravely and gallantly. If you
don't like it," Rose added, "you should have thought
of that before ! "

"You like it so much on your side," Dennis
retorted, "that you appear to have engaged in
measures to create it even before the argument for
it had acquired the force that you give such a fine
account of."

" Do you mean by giving it out as an accomplished
fact ? It was never too soon to give it out ; the right
moment was the moment you were there. Your

2;6 THE OTHER HOUSE

arrival changed everything; it gave me on the spot
my advantage ; it precipitated my grasp of it."

Vidal's expression was like a thing battered dead,
and his voice was a sound that matched it. " You
call your grasp your announcement ? "

She threw back her head. " My announcement
has reached you ? Then you know I've cut off your
retreat." Again he turned away from her ; he flung
himself on the sofa on which, shortly before, Mrs.
Beever had sunk down to sob, and, as if with the
need to hold on to something, buried his face in one
of the hard, square cushions. She came a little
nearer to him ; she went on with her low lucidity :
" So you can't abandon me — you can't. You came
to me through doubts — you spoke to me through
fears. You're mine ! "

She left him to turn this over ; she moved off and
approached the door at which Mrs. Beever had gone
out, standing there in strained attention till, in the
silence, Dennis at last raised his head. " What is it
you look to me to do ? " he asked.

She came away from the door. " Simply to see
me through."

He was on his feet again. " Through what, in the
name of horror ? "

"Through everything. If I count on you, it's to
support me. If I say things, it's for you to say
them."

" Even when they're black lies ? " Dennis brought
out.

Her answer was immediate. " What need should I

THE OTHER HOUSE 277

have of you if they were white ones ? " He was
unable to tell her, only meeting her mettle with
his stupor, and she continued, with the lightest
hint of reproach in her quiet pain : "I thank you
for giving that graceful name to my weak boast
that you admire me."

He had a sense of comparative idiotcy. " Do you
expect me — on that admiration — to marry you ? "

" Bless your innocent heart, no ! — for what do you
take me ? I expect you simply to make people
believe that you mean to."

" And how long will they believe it if I don't ? "

" Oh, if it should come to that," said Rose, "you
can easily make them believe that you have I " She
took a step so rapid that it was almost a spring ; she
had him now and, with her hands on his shoulders,
she held him fast. " So you see, after all, dearest,
how little I ask ! "

He submitted, with no movement but to close his
eyes before the new-born dread of her caress. Yet
he took the caress when it came — the dire confes
sion of her hard embrace, the long entreaty of her
stony kiss. He might still have been a creature
trapped in steel ; after she had let him go he still
stood at a loss how to turn. There was something,
however, that he presently opened his eyes to try.
" That you went over with me — that's what you wish
me to say ? "

" Over to Bounds ? Is that what / said ? I can't
think." But she thought all the same. " Thank you
for fixing it. If it's that, stick to it ! "

278 THE OTHER HOUSE

"And to our having left the child with Miss
Martle ? "

This brought her up a moment. " Don't ask me
— simply meet the case as it comes. I give you,"
she added in a marvellous manner, " a perfectly free
hand ! "

" You're very liberal," said Dennis, " but I think
you simplify too much."

" I can hardly do that if to simplify is to leave it
to your honour. It's the beauty of my position that
you're believed."

" That, then, gives me a certain confidence in
telling you that Miss Martle was the whole time
with me."

Rose stared. " Of what time do you speak ? "

" The time after you had gone over to Bounds with
Effie."

Rose thought again. " Where was she with you?"

" By the river, on this side."

" On this side ? You didn't go to Bounds ? "

" Not when I left you for the purpose. I obeyed
an impulse that made me do just the opposite. You
see," said Dennis, "that there's a flaw in my
honour ! You had filled my cup too full — I couldn't
carry it straight. I kept by the stream — I took a
walk."

Rose gave a low, vague sound. " But Miss Martle
and I were there together."

"You were together till you separated. On my
return to the bridge I met her."

Rose hesitated. " Where was she going ? "

THE OTHER HOUSE 279

" Over to Bounds — but I prevented her."

" You mean she joined you ? "

" In the kindest manner — for another turn. I took
her the same way again."

Once more Rose thought. " But if she was
going over, why in the world should she have let
you ? "

Dennis considered. " I think she pitied me."

" Because she spoke to you of me ? "

" No ; because she didn't. But I spoke to her of
you," said Dennis.

" And what did you say ? "

He hung fire a moment. "That — a short time
before — I saw you cross to Bounds."

Rose slowly sat down. " You saw me ? "

"On the bridge, distinctly. With the child in
your arms."

" Where were you then ? "

" Far up the stream — beyond your observation."

She looked at him fixedly, her hands locked
together between her knees. "You were watch
ing me ? " Portentous and ghostly, in the darker
room, had become their confronted estrange
ment.

Dennis waited as if he had a choice of answers ;
but at last he simply said : " I saw no more."

His companion as slowly rose again and moved
to the window, beyond which the garden had now
grown vague. She stood before it a while ; then,
without coming away, turned her back to it, so that
he saw her handsome head, with the face obscure,

280 THE OTHER HOUSE

against the evening sky. " Shall I tell you who did
it ? " she asked.

Dennis Vidal faltered. "If you feel that you're
prepared."

"I've been preparing. I see it's best." Again,,
however, she was silent.

This lasted so long that Dennis finally spoke.
"Who did it?"

" Tony Bream — to marry Jean."

A loud sound leaped from him, which was thrown
back by the sudden opening of the door and a
consequent gush of light. Manning marched in with
a high lamp, and Doctor Ramage stood on the
threshold.

XXX

THE Doctor remained at the door while the maid put
down her lamp, and he checked her as she pro
ceeded to the blinds and the other duties of the
moment.

" Leave the windows, please ; it's warm. That
will do — thanks." He closed the door on her extin
guished presence and he held it a little, mutely,
with observing eyes, in that of Dennis and Rose.

11 Do you want me ?" the latter promptly asked, in
the tone, as he liked, of readiness either to meet
him or to withdraw. She seemed to imply that at
such an hour there was no knowing what any one
might want. Dennis's eyes were on her as well
as the Doctor's, and if the lamp now lighted her
consciousness of looking horrible she could at
least support herself with the sight of the crude
embarrassment of others.

The Doctor, resorting to his inveterate practice
when confronted with a question, consulted his
watch. " I came in for Mr. Vidal, but I shall be
glad of a word with you after I've seen him. I
must ask you, therefore " — and he nodded at the
third door of the room — " kindly to pass into the
library."

282 THE OTHER HOUSE

Rose, without haste or delay, reached the point he
indicated. " You wish me to wait there ? "

" If you'll be so good."

" While you talk with him ? "

" While I talk with « him.' "

Her eyes held Vidal's a minute. "I'll wait."
And she passed out.

The Doctor immediately attacked him. " I must
appeal to you for a fraction of your time. I've seen
Mrs. Beever."

Dennis hesitated. " I've done the same."

" It's because she has told me of your talk that I
mention it. She sends you a message."

" A message ? " Dennis looked as if it were open to
him to question indirectness. "Where then is she ? "

" With that distracted girl."

" Miss Martle ?" Dennis hesitated. "Miss Martle
so greatly feels the shock ? "

" ' Feels ' it, my dear sir ? " the Doctor cried.
" She has been made so pitifully ill by it that there's
no saying just what turn her condition may take,
and she now calls for so much of my attention as
to force me to plead, with you, that excuse for
my brevity. Mrs. Beever," he rapidly pursued,
"requests you to regard this hurried inquiry as
the sequel to what you were so good as to say
to her."

Dennis thought a moment ; his face had changed
as if by the action of Rose's disappearance and the
instinctive revival, in a different relation, of the
long, stiff habit of business, the art of treating

THE OTHER HOUSE 283

affairs and meeting men. This was the art of not
being surprised, and, with his emotion now con
trolled, he was discernibly on his guard. " I'm
afraid," he replied, " that what I said to Mrs. Beever
was a very small matter."

" She doesn't think it at all a small matter to have
said you'd help her. You can do so — in the cruel
demands our catastrophe makes of her — by con
sidering that I represent her. It's in her name,
therefore, that I ask you if you're engaged to be
married to Miss Armiger."

Dennis had an irrepressible start; but it might
have been quite as much at the freedom of the
question as at the difficulty of the answer. " Please
say to her that — I am." He spoke with a clearness
that proved the steel surface he had in a few minutes
forged for his despair.

The Doctor took the thing as he gave it, only
drawing from his pocket a key, which he held
straight up. " Then I feel it to be only right to say
to you that this locks " — and he indicated the quarter
to which Rose had retired — " the other door."

Dennis, with a diffident hand cfut, looked at him
hard ; but the good man showed with effect that he
was professionally used to that. " You mean she's
a prisoner ? "

" On Mr. Vidal's honour."

" But whose prisoner ? "

" Mrs. Beever's."

Dennis took the key, which passed into his
pocket. " Don't you forget," he then asked with

284 THE OTHER HOUSE

inscrutable gravity, " that we're here, all round, on a
level "

"With the garden ?" the Doctor broke in. "I
forget nothing. We've a friend on the terrace."

"A friend?"

" Mr. Beever. A friend of Miss Armiger's," he
promptly added.

Still showing nothing in his face, Dennis perhaps
showed something in the way that, with his eyes
bent on the carpet and his hands interclenched behind
him, he slowly walked across the room. At the end
of it he turned round. " If I have this key, who has
the other ? "

"The other?"

" The key that confines Mr. Bream."

The Doctor winced, but he stood his ground. " I
have it." Then he said as if with a due recognition of
the weight of the circumstance : " She has told you ? "

Dennis turned it over. " Mrs. Beever ? "

" Miss Armiger." There was a faint sharpness in
the Doctor's tone.

It had something evidently to do with the tone in
which Dennis replied. " She has told me. But if
you've left him "

" I've not left him. I've brought him over."

Dennis showed himself at a loss. " To see me ? "

The Doctor raised a solemn, reassuring hand ;
then, after an instant, " To see his child," he colour
lessly said.

" He desires that ? " Dennis asked with an accent
that emulated this detachment.

THE OTHER HOUSE 285

" He desires that." Dennis turned away, and in
the pause that followed the air seemed charged with
a consciousness of all that between them was repre
sented by the unspoken. It lasted indeed long
enough to give to an auditor, had there been one, a
sense of the dominant unspeakable. It was as if
each were waiting to have something from the other
first, and it was eventually clear that Dennis, who
had not looked at his watch, was prepared to wait
longest. The Doctor had moreover to recognise
that he himself had sought the interview. He impa
tiently summed up his sense of their common attitude.
" I do full justice to the difficulty created for you
by your engagement. That's why it was important
to have it from your own lips." His companion
said nothing, and he went on : " Mrs. Beever, all
the same, feels that it mustn't prevent us from putting
you another question, or rather from reminding you
that there's one that you led her just now to expect
that you'll answer." The Doctor paused again, but
he perceived he must go all the way. " From the
bank of the river you saw something that bears
upon this " — he hesitated ; then daintily selected his
words — "remarkable performance. We appeal to
your sense of propriety to tell us what you saw."

Dennis considered. " My sense of propriety is
strong ; but so — just now — is my sense of some
other things. My word to Mrs. Bccver was con
tingent. There are points /want made clear."

" I'm here," said the Doctor, " to do what I can to
satisfy you. Only be go good as to remember that

286 THE OTHER HOUSE

time is everything." He added, to drive this home,
in his neat, brisk way : " Some action has to be
taken."

" You mean a declaration made ? "
" Under penalty," the Doctor assented, " of con
sequences sufficiently tremendous. There has been

an accident of a gravity "

Dennis, with averted eyes, took him up. "That
can't be explained away ? "

The Doctor looked at his watch ; then, still
holding it, he quickly looked up at Dennis. " You
wish her presented as dying of a natural cause ? "

Vidal's haggard face turned red, but he instantly
recovered himself. " Why do you ask, if you've a
supreme duty ? "

" I haven't one — worse luck. I've fifty."
Dennis fixed his eyes on the watch. " Does that
mean you can keep the thing quiet ? "

The Doctor put his talisman away. " Before I
say I must know what you'll do for me."

Dennis stared at the lamp. " Hasn't it gone
too far ? "

" I know how far : not so far, by a peculiar
mercy, as it might have gone. There has been
an extraordinary coincidence of chances — a miracle
of conditions. Everything appears to serve." He
hesitated; then with great gravity: "We'll call it
a providence and have done with it."

Dennis turned this over. "Do you allude to

the absence of witnesses ? "

" At the moment the child was found. Only the

THE OTHER HOUSE 287

blessed three of us. And she had been there —
Stupefaction left him counting.

Dennis jerked out a sick protest. " Don't tell me

how long ! What do / want ? " What he

wanted proved, the next moment, to be more
knowledge. " How do you meet the servants ? "

" Here ? By giving a big name to her complaint.
None of them have seen her. She was carried in
with a success ! " The Doctor threw up trium
phant little hands.

" But the people at the other house ? "

" They know nothing but that over here she has
had an attack which it will be one of the fifty duties
of mine I mentioned to you to make sufficiently
remarkable. She was out of sorts this morning —
this afternoon I was summoned. That call of
Tony's at my house is the providence ! "

But still Dennis questioned. " Hadn't she some
fond nurse — some devoted dragon ? "

" The great Gorham ? Yes : she didn't want her
to come; she was cruelly overborne. Well," the
Doctor lucidly pursued, " I must face the great
Gorham. I'm already keeping her at bay — doctors,
you see, are so luckily despots ! They're blessedly
bullies. She'll be tough — but it's all tough 1 "

Dennis, pressing his hand to his head, began
wearily to pace again : it was far too tough for
him. But he suddenly dropped upon the sofa, all
but audibly moaning, falling back in the despair
that broke through his false pluck. His interlocutor
watched his pain as if he had something to hope

288 THE OTHER HOUSE

from it ; then abruptly the young man began : " I

don't in the least conceive how " He stopped

short : even this he couldn't bring out.

" How was it done ? Small blame to you ! It
was done in one minute — with the aid of a boat
and the temptation (we'll call it !) of solitude.
The boat's an old one of Tony's own — pad
locked, but with a long chain. To see the place,'
said the Doctor after an instant, " is to see the
deed."

Dennis threw back his head ; he covered his
distorted face with his two hands. "Why in thun
der should I see it ? "

The Doctor had moved towards him ; at this he
seated himself beside him and, going on with quiet
clearness, applied a controlling, soothing grasp to
his knee. "The child was taken into the boat and
it was tilted : that was enough — the trick was
played." Dennis remained motionless and dumb,
and his companion completed the picture. "She
was immersed — she was held under water — she was
made sure of. Oh, I grant you it took a hand —
and it took a spirit ! But they were there. Then
she was left. A pull of the chain brought back -the
boat ; and the author of the crime walked away."

Dennis slowly shifted his position, dropped his
head, dropped his hands, sat staring lividly at the
floor. " But how could she be caught?"

The Doctor hesitated, as if in the presence of an
ambiguity. " The poor little girl ? You'd see if
you saw the place."

THE OTHER HOUSE 289

" I passed it to come back here," Dennis said.
" But I didn't look, for I didn't know."

The Doctor patted his knee. " If you had known
you would have looked still less. She rose ; she
drifted some yards ; then she was washed against
the base of the bridge, and one of the openings of
her little dress hooked itself to an old loose clamp.
There she wras kept."

" And no one came by ? "

"No one came till, by the mercy of God, /
came ! "

Dennis took it in as if with a long, dry gulp, and
the two men sat for a minute looking at each other.
At last the younger one got up. "And yet the risk
of anything but a straight course is hideous."

The Doctor kept his place. " Everything's hideous.
I appreciate greatly," he added, " the gallantry of
your reminding me of my danger. Don't think I
don't know exactly what it is. But I have to think
of the danger of others. I can measure mine ; I
can't measure theirs."

" I can return your compliment," Dennis replied.
" ' Theirs,' as you call it, seems to me such a fine
thing for you to care for."

The Doctor, with his plump hands folded on his
stomach, gave a small stony smile. " My dear man,
I care for my friends ! "

Dennis stood before him ; he was visibly mys
tified. "There's a person whom it's very good
of you to take this occasion of calling by that
name ! "

290 THE OTHER HOUSE

Doctor Ramage stared ; with his vision of his
interlocutor's mistake all his tight curves grew
tense. Then, as he sprang to his feet, he seemed
to crack in a grim little laugh. " The person you
allude to is, I confess, not, my dear sir —

"One of the persons," said Dennis, "whom you
wish to protect ? It certainly would have surprised
me to hear it ! But you spoke of your ' friends.'
Who then is your second one ? "

The Doctor looked astonished at the question.
"Why, sweet Jean Martle."

Dennis equally wondered. " I should have sup
posed her the first ! Who then is the other ? "

The Doctor lifted his shoulders. "Who but
poor Tony Bream ? "

Dennis thought a moment. " What's his danger? "
The Doctor grew more amazed. "The danger
we've been talking of! "

u Have we been talking of that ? "

" You ask me, when you told me you knew ? "

Dennis, hesitating, recalled. " Knew that he's

accused ?"

His companion fairly sprang at him. "Accused
by her too ? "

Dennis fell back at his onset. " Is he by anybody
else ? "

The Doctor, turning crimson, had grabbed his
arm ; he blazed up at him. " You don't know it
all ? "

Dennis faltered. " Is there any more ? "

" Tony cries on the housetops that he did it ! "

THE OTHER HOUSE 291

Dennis, blank and bewildered, sank once more on
his sofa. " He cries ? "

" To cover Jean."

Dennis took it in. " But if she is covered ? "

" Then to shield Miss Armiger."

Poor Dennis gazed aghast. " Who meanwhile
denounces him ? " He was on his feet again ; again
he moved to the open window and stood there while
the Doctor in silence waited. Presently he turned
round. " May I see him ? ".

The Doctor, as if he had expected this, was
already at the door. " God bless you ! " And he
flashed out.

Dennis, left alone, remained rigid in the middle
of the room, immersed apparently in a stupor of
emotion ; then, as if shaken out of it by a return
of conscious suffering, he passed in a couple of
strides to the door of the library. Here, however,
with his hand on the knob, he yielded to another
impulse, which kept him irresolute, listening, drawing
his breath in pain. Suddenly he turned away — Tony
Bream had come in.

XXXI

" IF in this miserable hour I've asked you for a
moment of your time," Dennis immediately said, " I
beg you to believe it's only to let you know that

anything in this world I can do for you " Tony

raised a hand that mutely discouraged as well as
thanked him, but he completely delivered himself:
" I'm ready, whatever it is, to do on the spot."

With his handsome face smitten, his red eyes
contracted, his thick hair disordered and his black
garments awry, Tony had the handled, hustled look
of a man just dragged through some riot or some
rescue and only released to take breath. Like Rose,
for Dennis, he was deeply disfigured, but with a
change more passive and tragic. His bloodshot
eyes fixed his interlocutor's. " I'm afraid there's
nothing any one can do for me. My disaster's over
whelming ; but I must meet it myself."

There was courtesy in his voice ; but there was
something hard and dry in the way he stood there,
something so opposed to his usual fine overflow that
for a minute Dennis could only show by pitying
silence the full sense of his wretchedness. He was
in the presence of a passionate perversity — an atti
tude in which the whole man had already petrified.

THE OTHER HOUSE 293

" Will it perhaps help you to think of something,"
he presently said, " if I tell you that your disaster
is almost as much mine as yours, and that what's of
aid to one of us may perhaps therefore be of aid to
the other?"

"It's very good of you," Tony replied, "to be
willing to take upon you the smallest corner of so
big a burden. Don't do that — don't do that, Mr.
Vidal," he repeated, with a heavy head-shake.
" Don't come near such a thing ; don't touch it ;
don't know it ! " He straightened himself as if with
a long, suppressed shudder ; and then with a sharper
and more sombre vehemence, " Stand from under
it ! " he exclaimed. Dennis, in deeper compassion,
looked at him with an intensity that might have
suggested submission, and Tony followed up what
he apparently took for an advantage. " You came
here for an hour, for your own reasons, for your
relief : you came in all kindness and trust. You've
encountered an unutterable horror, and you've only
one thing to do."

" Be so good as to name it," said Dennis.
" Turn your back on it for ever — go your way this
minute. I've come to you simply to say that."

" Leave you, in other words ? "

" By the very first train that will take you."
Dennis appeared to turn this over ; then he spoke
with a face that showed what he thought of it. " It
has been my unfortunate fate in coming to this place
— so wrapped, as one might suppose, in comfort and
peace — to intrude a second time on obscure, unhappy

294 THE OTHER HOUSE

things, on suffering and danger and death. I should
have been glad, God knows, not to renew the adven
ture, but one's destiny kicks one before it, and I
seem myself not the least part of the misery I speak
of. You must accept that as my excuse for not
taking your advice. I must stay at least till you
understand me." On this he waited a moment ;
after which, abruptly, impatiently, " For God's
sake, Mr. Bream, believe in me and meet me ! " he
broke out.

11 Meet you ? "

" Make use of the hand I hold out to you ! "
Tony had remained just within the closed door, as
if to guard against its moving from the other side.
At this, with a faint flush in his dead vacancy, he
came a few steps further. But there was something
still locked in his conscious, altered eyes, and coldly
absent from the tone in which he said : " You've
come, I think, from China ? "

" I've come, Mr. Bream, from China."
11 And it's open to you to go back ? "
Dennis frowned. " I can do as I wish."
" And yet you're not off like a shot ? "
" My movements and my inclinations are my own
affair. You won't accept my aid ? "

Tony gave his sombre stare. " You ask me, as
you call it, to meet you. I beg you to excuse
me if on my side I first inquire on what definite

ground ? "

Dennis took him straight up. " On the definite
ground on which Doctor Ramage is good enough to

THE OTHER HOUSE 295

*

do so. I'm afraid there's no better ground than
my honour."

Tony's stare was long and deep ; then he put out
his hand, and while Dennis held it, " I understand
you," he said. " Good-bye."

Dennis kept hold of him. " Good-bye ? "

Tony had a supreme hesitation, " She's safe."

Dennis had a shorter one. (<.Do you speak of
Miss Martle ? "

" Not of Miss Martle."

" Then I can. She's safe."

" Thank you," said Tony. He drew away his hand,

(( As for the person you do speak of, if you say
it — " and Dennis paused.

(( She's safe," Tony repeated.

" That's all I ask of you. The Doctor will do the
rest."

" I know what the Doctor will do." Tony was
silent a moment. " What will you do ? "

Dennis waited, but at last he spoke. " Every
thing but marry her."

A flare of admiration rose and fell in Tony's eyes.
" You're beyond me I "

" I don't in the least know where I am, save that
I'm in a black, bloody nightmare and that it's not I,
it's not she, it's not you, it's not any one. I shall
wake up at last, I suppose, but meanwhile —

" There's plenty more to come ? Oh, as much as
you like ! " Tony excitedly declared.

" For me, but not for you. For you the worst's
over," his companion boldly observed.

296 THE OTHER HOUSE

" Over? with all my life made hideous ? "

There was a certain sturdiness in Vidal's momentary

silence. " You think so now ! " Then he added

more gently : " I grant you it's hideous enough."

Tony stood there in the agony of the actual ; the
tears welled into his hot eyes. " She murdered —
she tortured my child. And she did it to incriminate
Jean."

He brought it all back to Dennis, who exclaimed
with simple solemnity : " The dear little girl — the
sweet, kind little girl ! " With a sudden impulse
that, in the midst of this tenderness, seemed almost
savage, he laid on Tony's shoulder a hard, consci
entious hand. " She forced her in. She held her
down. She left her."

The men turned paler as they looked at each
other. " I'm infamous — I'm infamous," said Tony.

There was a long pause that was like a strange
assent from Dennis, who at last, however, brought
out in a different tone : " It was her passion."

" It was her passion."

" She loves you ! " Dennis went on with a

drop, before the red real, of all vain terms.

11 She loves me ! " — Tony's face reflected the mere
monstrous fact. " It has made what it has made —
her awful act and my silence. My silence is a part
of the crime and the cruelty — I shall live to be a
horror to myself. But I see it, none the less, as I
see it, and I shall keep the word I gave her in the
first madness of my fear. It came to me — there

THE OTHER HOUSE 297

" I know what came to you," Dennis said.

Tony wondered. " Then you've seen her ? "

Dennis hesitated. " I know it from the Doctor."

" I see " Tony thought a moment. " She,

I imagine "

"Will keep it to herself? Leave that to me!"
Dennis put out his hand again. " Good-bye."

" You take her away ? "

" To-night."

Tony kept his hand. "Will her flight help
Ram age ? "

" Everything falls in. Three hours ago I came
for her."

" So it will seem pre-arranged ? "

" For the event she announced to you. Our happy
union ! " said Dennis Vidal.

He reached the door to the hall, where Tony
checked him. " There's nothing, then, I shall do for
you ? "

" It's done. We've helped each other."

What was deepest in Tony stirred again. " I mean
when your trouble has passed."

" It will never pass. Think of that when you're
happy yourself."

Tony's grey face stared. " How shall I ever
be ? "

The door, as he spoke, opened from the room to
which Mrs. Beever had returned, and Jean Martle
appeared to them. Dennis retreated. " Ask her ! "
he said from the threshold.

XXXII

RUSHING to Tony, she wailed under her breath : " I
must speak to you — I must speak to you ! But
how can you ever look at me ? — how can you ever
forgive me ? " In an instant he had met her ; in a
flash the gulf was bridged : his arms had opened
wide to her and she had thrown herself into them.
They had only to be face to face to let themselves
go ; he making no answer but to press her close
against him, she pouring out her tears upon him
as if the contact quickened the source. He held
her and she yielded with a passion no bliss could
have given; they stood locked together in their
misery with no sound and no motion but her sobs.
Breast to breast and cheek to cheek, they felt simply
that they had ceased to be apart. This long embrace
was the extinction of all limits and questions —
swept away in a flood which tossed them over the
years and in which nothing remained erect but the
sense and the need of each other. These things had
now the beauty of all the tenderness that they had
never spoken and that, for some time, even as they
clung there, was too strange and too deep for speech.
But what was extraordinary was that as Jean dis
engaged herself there was neither wonder nor fear

THE OTHER HOUSE 299

between them ; nothing but a recognition in which
everything swam and, on the girl's part, the still
higher tide of the remorse that harried her and that,
to see him, had made her break away from the
others. " They tell me I'm ill, I'm insane," she went
on — "they want to shut me up, to give me things —
they tell me to lie down, to try to sleep. But it's all
to me, so dreadfully, as if it were / who had done it,
that when they admitted to me that you were here I
felt that if I didn't see you it would make me as crazy
as they say. It's to have seen her go — to have seen
her go : that's what I can't bear — it's too horrible ! "
She continued to sob ; she stood there before him
swayed to and fro in her grief. She stirred up his
own, and that added to her pain ; for a minute, in
their separate sorrow, they moved asunder like
creatures too stricken to communicate. But they
were quickly face to face again, more intimate, with
more understood, though with the air, on either side
and in the very freedom of their action, of a clear
vision of the effect of their precipitated union — the
instinct of not again touching it with unconsecrated
hands. Tony had no idle words, no easy consola
tion ; she only made him see more vividly what had
happened, and they hung over it together while she
accused and reviled herself. " I let her go — I let her
go ; that's what's so terrible, so hideous. I might
have got her — have kept her ; I might have screamed,
I might have rushed for help. But how could I
know or dream ? How could the worst of my
fears— - ? " She broke off, she shuddered ancj

300 THE OTHER HOUSE

dropped ; she sat and sobbed while he came and
went. " I see her little face as she left me — she
looked at me as if she knew. She wondered and
dreaded : she knew — she knew ! It was the last
little look I was to have from her, and I didn't even
answer it with a kiss. She sat there where I could
seize her, but I never raised a hand. I was close, I
was there — she must have called for me in her terror !
I didn't listen — I didn't come — I only gave her up to
be murdered ! And now I shall be punished for
ever : I shall see her in those arms — in those arms ! "
Jean flung herself down and hid her face ; her
smothered wild lament filled the room.

Tony stopped before her, seeing everything she
brought up, but only the more helpless in his pity.
" It was the only little minute in all the years that
you had been forced to fail her. She was always
more yours than mine."

Jean could only look out through her storm-beaten
window. " It was just because she was yours that
she was mine. It was because she was yours from

the first hour that I ! " She broke down again ;

she tried to hold herself; she got up. " What could
I do, you see ? To you I couldn't be kind." She
was as exposed in her young, pure woe as a bride
might have been in her joy.

Tony looked as if he were retracing the saddest
story on earth. " I don't see how you could have
been kinder."

She wondered with her blinded eyes. " That
wasn't what thought I was — it couldn't be, ever,

THE OTHER HOUSE 301

ever. Didn't I try not to think of you ? But the
child was a beautiful part of you — the child I could
take and keep. I could take her altogether, without
thinking or remembering. It was the only thing I
could do for you, and you let me, always, and she
did. So I thought it would go on, for wasn't it
happiness enough ? But all the horrible things —
I didn't know them till to-day ! There they were —
so near to us ; and there they closed over her, and
— oh 1 " She turned away in a fresh wild spasm,
inarticulate and distracted.

They wandered in silence, as if it made them more
companions ; but at last Tony said : " She was a
little radiant, perfect thing. Even if she had not
been mine you would have loved her." Then he
went on, as if feeling his way through his thickest
darkness : " If she had not been mine she wouldn't
be lying there as I've seen her. Yet I'm glad she
was mine ! " he said.

" She lies there because I loved her and because
I so insanely showed it. That's why it's I who
killed her ! " broke passionately from Jean.

He answered nothing till he quietly and gently
answered : " It was / who killed her."

She roamed to and fro, slowly controlling herself,
taking this at first as a mere torment like her own.
" We seem beautifully eager for the guilt 1 "

" It doesn't matter what any one else seems. I
must tell you all — now. I've taken the act on myself.'*

She had stopped short, bewildered. " How have
you taken it ? "

362 THE OTHER HOUSE

" To meet whatever may come."

She turned as white as ashes. " You mean you've
accused yourself? "

"Any one may accuse me. Whom is it more
natural to accuse ? What had she to gain ? My
own motive is flagrant. There it is," said Tony.

Jean withered beneath this new stroke. " You'll
say you did it ? "

" I'll say I did it."

Her face grew old with terror. " You'll lie ?
You'll perjure yourself? "

" I'll say I did it for you."

She suddenly turned crimson. "Then what do
you think Til say ? "

Tony coldly considered. " Whatever you say will
tell against me."

" Against you ? "

" If the crime was committed for you."

" ' For ' me ? " she echoed again.

" To enable us to marry."

"Marry? — we?" Jean looked at it in blighted
horror.

" It won't be of any consequence that we shan't,
that we can't : it will only stand out clear that we
can" His sombre ingenuity halted, but he achieved
his demonstration. " So I shall save — whom I wish
to save."

Jean gave a fiercer wail. " You wish to save
her ? "

" I don't wish to hand her over. You can't con
ceive it?"

THE OTHER HOUSE 303

" I ? " The girl looked about her for a negation
not too vile. " I wish to hunt her to death ! I wish
to burn her alive!" All her emotion had changed
to stupefaction ; the flame in her eyes had dried them.
" You mean she's not to suffer ? "

" You want her to suffer— all ? "

She was ablaze with the light of justice. " How
can anything be enough ? I could tear her limb from
limb. That's what she tried to do to me ! "

Tony lucidly concurred. " Yes — what she tried
to do to you."

But she had already flashed round. " And yet
you condone the atrocity ? "

Tony thought a moment. " Her doom will be to
live."

" But how will such a fiend be suffered tfo live —
when she went to it before my eyes ? " Jean stared
at the mountain of evidence; then eagerly: "And
Mr. Vidal — her very lover, who'll swear what he
knows — what he saw ! "

Tony stubbornly shook his head. " Oh, Mr. Vidal ! "

"To make me," Jean cried, "seem the mon
ster— - ! "

Tony looked at her so strangely that she stopped.
" She made it for the moment possible —

She caught him up. " To suspect me ? "

" I was mad — and you're weren't there." With a
muffled moan she sank down again ; she covered
her face with her hands. " I tell you all — I tell
you all," he said. " He knows nothing — he saw
nothing — he'll swear nothing. He's taking her away.''

304 THE OTHER HOUSE

Jean started as if he had struck her. "She's
here?" .

Tony wondered. " You didn't know it ? "

" She came back ? " the girl panted.

" You thought she had fled ? "

Jean hung there like a poised hawk. " Where is
she ? "

Tony gave her, with a grave gesture, a long,
absolute look before which, gradually, her passion
fell. " She has gone. Let her go."

She was silent a little. " But others : how will
they ? "

" There are no others." After a moment he
added : " She would have died for me."

The girl's pale wrath gave a flare. "So you want
to die for her?"

" I shan't die. But I shall remember." Then, as
she watched him, " I must tell you all," he said
once more. " I knew it — I always knew it. And I
made her come."

"You were kind to her — as you're always
kind."

" No ; I was more than that. And I should have
been less." His face showed a rift in the blackness.
" I remember."

She followed him in pain and at a distance.
" You mean you liked it ? "

" I liked it — while I was safe. Then I grew
afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Afraid of everything. You don't know— but

THE OTHER HOUSE 305

we're abysses. At least /'/;/ one ! " he groaned.
He seemed to sound this depth. "There are other
things. They go back far."

" Don't tell me all," said Jean. She had evidently
enough to turn over. " What will become of her ? "
she asked.

" God knows. She goes forth."

" And Mr. Vidal with her ? "

" Mr. Vidal with her."

Jean gazed at the tragic picture. " Because he
still loves her ? "

" Yes," said Tony Bream.

"Then what will he do?"

" Put the globe between them. Think of her
torture," Tony added.

Jean looked as if she tried. " Do you mean
that?"

He meant another matter. " To have only made
us free."

Jean protested with all her woe. " It's her triumph
—that our freedom is horrible ! "

Tony hesitated ; then his eyes distinguished in
the outer dusk Paul Beever, who had appeared at
the long window which in the mild air stood open
to the terrace. " It's horrible," he gravely replied.

Jean had not seen Paul ; she only heard Tony's
answer. It touched again the the source of tears ;
she broke again into stifled sobs. So, blindly,
slowly, while the two men watched her, she passed
from the room by the door at which she had
entered.

u

XXXIII

" YOU'RE looking for me ? " Tony quickly asked.

Paul, blinking in the lamplight, showed the dismal
desert of his face. " I saw you through the open
window, and I thought I would let you know —

" That some one wants me ? " Tony was all
ready.

" She hasn't asked for you ; but I think that if
you could do it —

" I can do anything," said Tony. " But of whom
do you speak ? "

" Of one of your servants — poor Mrs. Gorham."

11 Effie's nurse ? — she has come over ? "

" She's in the garden," Paul explained. "I've
been floundering about — I came upon her."

Tony wondered. " But what's she doing ? "

" Crying very hard — without a sound."

" And without coming in ? "

" Out of discretion."

Tony thought a moment. " You mean because
Jean and the Doctor ? "

" Have taken complete charge. She bows to
that, but she sits there on a bench "

" Weeping and wailing?" Tony asked. " Dear
thing, I'll speak to her."

THE OTHER HOUSE 3°7

He was about to leave the room in the summary
manner permitted by the long widow when Paul
checked him with a quiet reminder. " Hadn't you
better have your hat ? "

Tony looked about him — he had not brought it in.
" Why ?— if it's a warm night ? "

Paul approached him, laying on him as if to stay
him a heavy but friendly hand. "You never go
out without it — don't be too unusual."

" I see what you mean — I'll get it." And he
made for the door to the hall.

But Paul had not done with him. "It's much
better you should see her — it's unnatural you
shouldn't. But do you mind my just thinking for
you the least bit — asking you for instance what it's
your idea to say to her ? "

Tony had the air of accepting this solicitude ;
but he met the inquiry with characteristic candour.
" I think I've no idea but to talk with her of Effie."

Paul visibly wondered. " As dangerously ill ?
That's all she knows."

Tony considered an instant. "Yes, then — as
dangerously ill. Whatever she's prepared for."

" But what are you prepared for ? You're not
afraid ? " Paul hesitated.

"Afraid of what?"

" Of suspicions — importunities ; her making some
noise."

Tony slowly shook his head. "I don't think,"
he said very gravely, "that I'm afraid of poor
Gorham."

3c8 THE OTHER HOUSE

Paul looked as if he felt that his warning half
failed. " Every one else is. She's tremendously
devoted."

" Yes— that's what I mean."

Paul sounded him a moment. " You mean to
you?"

The irony was so indulgent — and *all irony on
this young man's part was so rare — that Tony was
to be excused for not perceiving it. " She'll do
anything. We're the best of friends."

"Then get your hat," said Paul.

" It's much the best thing. Thank you for telling
me." Even in a tragic hour there was so much in
Tony of the ingenuous that, with his habit of good
nature and his hand on the door, he lingered for the
comfort of his friend. " She'll be a resource — a fund
of memory. She'll know what I mean — I shall
want some one. So we can always talk."

" Oh, you1 re safe ! " Paul went on.

It had now all come to Tony. " I see my way
with her."

" So do I ! " said Paul.

Tony fairly brightened through his gloom. " I'll
keep her on ! " And he took his course by the front.
Left alone Paul closed the door on him, holding it
a minute and lost evidently in reflections of which
he was the subject. He exhaled a long sigh that
was burdened with many things ; then as he moved
away his eyes attached themselves as if in sympathy
with a vague impulse to the door of the library.
He stood a moment irresolute ; after which, deeply

THE OTHER HOUSE 309

restless, he went to take up the hat that, on coming
in, he had laid on one of the tables. He was in the
act of doing this when the door of the library opened
and Rose Armiger stood before him. She had
since their last meeting changed her dress and,
arrayed for a journey, wore a bonnet and a longf
dark mantle. For some time after she appeared
no word came from either ; but at last she said :
" Can you endure for a minute the sight of
me?"

" I was hesitating — I thought of going to you,"
Paul replied. " I knew you were there."

At this she came into the room. " I knew you
were here. You passed the window."
" I've passed and repassed — this hour."
" I've known that too, but this time I heard you
stop. I've no light there," she went on, "but the
window, on this side, is open. I could tell that you
had come in."

Paul hesitated. " You ran a danger of not rinding
me alone."

" I took my chance — of course 1 knew. I've been
in dread, but in spite of it I've seen nobody. I've
been up to my room and come down. The coast was
clear."

" You've not then seen Mr. Vidal ? "
" Oh yes — him. But he's nobody." Then as if
conscious of the strange sound of this : " Nobody, I
mean, to fear."

Paul was silent a moment. " What in the world
is it you fear ? "

310 THE OTHER HOUSE

" In the sense of the awful things — you know ?
Here on the spot nothing. About those things I'm
quite quiet. There may be plenty to come ; but
what I'm afraid of now is my safety. There's some
thing in that !" She broke down; there was

more in it than she could say.

" Are yon so sure of your safety ? "

" You see how sure. It's in your face," said Rose.
" And your face — for what it says — is terrible."

Whatever it said remained there as Paul looked
at her. " Is it as terrible as yours ? " he asked.

" Oh, mine — mine must be hideous ; unutterably
hideous forever ! Yours is beautiful. Everything,
every one here is beautiful."

"I don't understand you," said Paul.

" How should you ? It isn't to ask you to do that
that I've come to you."

He waited in his woful wonder. " For what
have you come ? "

" You can endure it, then, the sight of me ? "

" Haven't I told you that I thought of going to
you ? "

"Yes— but you didn't go," said Rose. "You
came and went like a sentinel, and if k was to watch
me "

Paul interrupted her. " It wasn't to watch you."

" Then what was it for ? "

" It was to keep myself quiet," said Paul.

" But you're anything but quiet."

" Yes," he dismally allowed ; " I'm anything but
quiet"

THE OTHER HOUSE 311

11 There's something then that may help you : it's
one of two things for which I've come to you. And
there's no one but you to care. You may care a very
little ; it may give you a grain of comfort. Let your
comfort be that I've failed."

Paul, after a. -long look at her, turned away with
a vague, dumb gesture, and it was a part of his
sore trouble that, in his wasted strength, he had
no outlet for emotion, no channel even for pain.
She took in for a moment his clumsy, massive
misery. " No — you loathe my presence," she
said.

He stood awhile in silence with his back to her, as
if within him some violence were struggling up ;
then with an effort, almost with a gasp, he turned
round, his open watch in his hand. " I saw Mr.
Vidal," was all he produced.

"And he told you too he would come back for
me?"

" He said there was something he had to do, but
that he would meanwhile get ready. He would
return immediately with a carriage."

"That's why I've waited," Rose replied. "I'm
ready enough. But he won't come."

" He'll come," said Paul. " But it's more than
time."

She drearily shook her head. "Not after getting
off — 'not back to the horror and the shame. He
thought so ; no doubt he has tried. But it's beyond
him."

" Then what are you waiting for ? "

312 TH'E OTHER HOUSE

She hesitated. " Nothing— now. Thank you."
She looked about her. " How shall I go?"

Paul went to the window ; for a moment he
listened. " I thought I heard wheels."

She gave ear; but once more she shook her
head. "There are no wheels, buf I can go that
way."

He turned back again, heavy and uncertain ; he
stood wavering and wondering in her path. " What
will become of you ? " he asked.

" How do I know and what do I care ? "

" What will become of you ? what will become
of you ? " he went on as if he had not heard
her.

"You pity me too much," she answered after an
instant. " I've failed, but I did what I could. It
was all that I saw — it was all that was left me. It
took hold of me, it possessed me : it was the last
gleam of a chance."

Paul flushed like a sick man under a new wave of
weakness. " Of a chance for what ? "

"To make him take her. You'll say my calcu
lation was grotesque — my stupidity as ignoble as my
crime. All I can answer is that I might none the
less have succeeded. People have — in worse con
ditions. But I don't defend myself — I'm face to face
with my mistake. I'm face to face with it forever —
and that's how I wish you to see me. Look at me
well 1 "

" I would have done anything for you ! " Paul as if
all talk with her were vain, wailed under his breath.

THE OTHER HOUSE 313

She considered this ; her dreadful face was lighted
by the response it kindled, " Would you do any
thing now ? " He answered nothing ; he seemed
lost in the vision of what was carrying her through.
" I saw it as I saw it," she continued : " there it was
and there it is. There it is — there it is," she repeated
in a tone sharp, for a flash, with all the excitement
she contrived to keep under. " It has nothing to do
now with any part or any other possibility even of
what may be worst in me. It's a storm that's past,
it's a debt that's paid. I may literally be better." At
the expression this brought out in him she inter
rupted herself. "You don't understand a word I
utter 1 "

He was following her — as she showed she could
see — only in the light of his own emotion ; not in
that of any feeling that she herself could present.
" Why didn't you speak to me — why didn't you tell
me what you were thinking? There was nothing
you couldn't have told me, nothing that wouldn't
have brought me nearer. If I had known your
abasement "

" What would you have done ? " Rose demanded.

" I would have saved you."

"What would you have done ? " she pressed.

" Everything."

She was silent while he went to the window.
"Yes, I've lost you — I've lost you," she said at last.
"And you were the thing I might have had. He
told me that, and I knew it."

" ' He ' told you ? " Paul had faced round.

314 THE OTHER HOUSE

" He tried to put me off on you. That was what
finished me. Of course they'll marry," she abruptly
continued.

" Oh yes, they'll marry."

" But not soon, do you suppose ? "

" Not soon. But sooner than they think."

Rose looked surprised. "Do you already know
what they think ? "

" Yes — that it will never be."

"Never?"

"Coming about so horribly. But some day — it
will be."

"It will be," said Rose. "And I shall have done
it for him. That's more," she said, "than even you
would have done for me"

Strange tears had found their way between Paul's
closed lids. "You're too horrible," he breathed;
"you're too horrible."

" Oh, I talk only to you : it's all for you. Remem
ber, please, that I shall never speak again. You
see," she went on, " that he daren't come."

Paul looked afresh at his watch. " I'll go with
you."

Rose hesitated. " How far ? "

" I'll go with you," he simply repeated.

She looked at him hard ; in her eyes too there
were tears. " My safety — my safety ! " she mur
mured as if awestruck.

Paul went round for his hat, which on his
entrance he had put down. " I'll go with you,"
he said once more.

THE OTHER HOUSE 315

Still, however, she hesitated. " Won't he need
you ? "

" Tony ?— for what ? "

" For help."

It took Paul a moment to understand. " He
wants none."

" You mean he has nothing to fear ? "

" From any suspicion ? Nothing."

" That's his advantage," said Rose. " People like
him too much."

" People like him too much," Paul replied.
Then he exclaimed: "Mr. Vidal ! " — to which, as
she looked, Rose responded with a low, deep moan.

Dennis had appeared at the window ; he gave
signal in a short, sharp gesture and remained
standing in the dusk of the terrace. Paul put
down his hat ; he turned away to leave his com
panion free. She approached him while Dennis
waited ; she lingered desperately, she wavered, as
if with a last word to speak. As he only stood
rigid, however, she faltered, choking her impulse
and giving her word the form of a look. The look
held her a moment, held her so long that Dennis
spoke sternly from the darkness : " Come ! " At
this, for a space as great, she fixed her eyes on
him ; then while the two men stood motionless
she decided and reached the window. He put out
a hand and seized her, and they passed quickly
into the night. Paul, left alone, again sounded a
long sigh ; this time it was the deep breath of a
man who has seen a great danger averted. It had

316 THE OTHER HOUSE

scarcely died away before Tony Bream returned.
He came in from the hall as eagerly as he had
gone out, and, finding Paul, gave him his news :
" Well— I took her home."

Paul required a minute to carry his thoughts back
to Gorham. " Oh, she went quietly ? "

" Like a bleating lamb. She's too glad to stay on."

Paul turned this over; but as if his confidence
now had solid ground he asked no question. " Ah,
you're all right ! " he simply said.

Tony reached the door through which Jean had
left the room ; he paused there in surprise at this
incongruous expression. Yet there was something
absent in the way he echoed " All right ? "

" I mean you have such a pull. You'll meet
nothing but sympathy.

Tony looked indifferent and uncertain ; but his
optimism finally assented. " I daresay I shall get
on. People perhaps won't challenge me."

" They like you too much."

Tony, with his hand on the door, appeared struck
with this ; but it embittered again the taste of his
tragedy. He remembered with all his vividness to
what tune he had been "liked," and he wearily
bowed his head. " Oh, too much, Paul ! " he sighed
as he went out.

THE END

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