For half an hour more they sat together, in that first intimacy of love, which transfigures men and women, so that when they pa.s.s back from it into ordinary life they scarcely recognize life or themselves again. They talked much less of the past than of the future--and that in the light of the glorious war news coming in day by day. Austria was on the point of surrender--the German landslide might come at any moment--then _peace_!--incredible word. Ellesborough would hardly now get to France.

They might be able to marry soon--within a few weeks. As to the farm, he asked her, laughing, whether she would take him in as a junior partner for a time, till they could settle their plans. "I've got a bit of money of my own. But first you must let me go back, as soon as there are ships to go in--to see after my own humble business. We could launch out--get some fine stock--try experiments. It's a going concern, and I've got a good share in it. Why shouldn't you go, too?"

He saw her shrink.

"To Canada? Oh, no!"

He scourged himself mentally for having taken her thoughts back to the old unhappy times. But she soon recovered herself. Then it was time for him to go, and he stood up.

"I should like to have seen Janet!" he said joyously. "She'll have to get used to Christian names. How soon will you tell her? Directly she comes in?"

"Certainly not. I shall wait--till to-morrow morning."

He laughed, whispering into her ear, as her soft, curly head lay against his breast.

"You won't wait ten minutes--you couldn't! Well, I must be going, or they'll shut me out of the camp."

"Why do you hurry so?"

"Hurry? Why, I shall be an hour late, anyway. I shall have to give myself C.B. to-morrow."

She laughed--a sound of pure content. Then she suddenly drew herself away, frowning at him.

"You do love me--you do--you will always!--whatever people may say?"

He was surprised at the note almost of violence in her voice. He answered it by a pa.s.sionate caress, which she bore with trembling. Then she resolutely moved away.

"Do go!" she said to him, imploringly. "I'd like to be a few minutes--alone--before they come back."

He saw her settle herself by the fire, her hands stretched out to the blaze. Seeing that the fire was low, and remembering the chill of her hands in his, he looked around for the wood-basket which was generally kept in a corner behind the piano.

His movement was suddenly arrested. He was looking towards the uncurtained window. The night had grown pitch dark outside, and there were splashes of rain against the gla.s.s. But he distinctly saw as he turned a man's face pressed against the gla.s.s--a strained, sallow, face, framed in straggling black hair, a face with regular features, and eyes deeply set in blackened orbits. It was a face of hatred; the lips tightly drawn over the teeth, seemed to have a curse on them.

The vision lasted only a moment. Ellesborough's trained instinct, the wary instinct of the man who had pa.r.s.ed days and nights with nature in her wilder and lonelier places, checked the exclamation on his lips. And before he could move again, the face had disappeared. The old holly bush growing against the farm wall, from which the apparition seemed to have sprung, was still there, some of its glossy leaves visible in the bright light of the paraffin lamp which stood on the table near the window. And there was nothing else.

Ellesborough quietly walked to the window, drew down the blind, and pulled the curtains together. Rachel looked around at the sound.

"Didn't I do that?" she said, half dreamily.

"We forgot!" He smiled at her. "Now it's all cosy. Ah, there they are!

Perhaps I'll get Janet to come as far as the road with me." For voices were approaching--Janet talking to the girls. Rachel looked up, a.s.senting. The colour had rushed back to her face. Ellesborough took in the picture of her, sitting unconscious by the fire, while his own pulse was thumping under the excitement of what he had seen.

With a last word to her, he closed the sitting-room door behind him, and went out to meet Janet Leighton in the dark.

IX

It was a foggy October evening, and Berkeley Square, from which the daylight had not yet departed, made a peculiarly dismal impression on the pa.s.sers-by, under the mingled illumination of its half-blinded lamps, and of a sunset which in the country was clear and golden, and here in west London could only give a lurid coppery tinge to the fog, to the eastern house-fronts, and to the great plane-trees holding the Square garden, like giants encamped. Landsowne House, in its lordly seclusion from the rest of the Square, seemed specially to have gathered the fog to itself, and was almost lost from sight. Not a ray of light escaped the closely-shuttered windows. The events of the _mensis mirabilis_ were rushing on. Bulgaria, Austria, Turkey, had laid down their arms--the German cry for an armistice had rung through Europe. But still London lay dark and m.u.f.fled. Her peril was not yet over.

In the drawing-room of one of the houses on the eastern side, belonging to a Warwickshire baronet and M.P.--Sir Richard Winton by name--a lady was standing in front of a thrifty fire, which in view of the coal restrictions of the moment, she had been very unwilling to light at all.

The restrictions irritated her; so did the inevitable cold of the room; and most of all was she annoyed and hara.s.sed by the thought of a visitor who might appear at any moment. She was tall, well-made, and plain. One might have guessed her age at about thirty-five. She had been out in the earlier afternoon, attending a war meeting on behalf of some charities in which she was interested, and she had not yet removed a high and stately hat with two outstanding wings and much jet ornament, which she had worn at the meeting, to the huge indignation of her neighbours. The black of her silk dress was lightened by a rope of pearls, and various diamond trinkets. Her dress fitted her to perfection. Competence and will were written in her small, shrewd eyes and in the play of a decided mouth.

There was a knock at the door. At Lady Winton's "Come in!" a stout, elderly maid appeared. She came up to her mistress, and said in a lowered voice,--

"You'll see Mr. Roger here?"

"Why, I told you so, Nannie!" was the impatient answer. "Is everybody out of the way?"

The maid explained that all was ready. Jones the butler had been sent with a note to the City, and the housemaid was sitting with the kitchen-maid, who was recovering from the flu.

"I told them I'd answer the bell. And I'll keep an eye that no one comes down before he's gone. There he is!"

For the bell had rung, and the maid hastened to the hall door to answer it.

A tall man entered--coughing.

"Beastly night, Nannie!" he said, as soon as the cough would let him.

"Don't suit my style. Well?--how are you? Had the flu, like everybody else?"

"Not yet, Mr. Roger--though it's been going through the house. Shall I take your coat?"

"You'd better not. I'm too shabby underneath."

"Sir Richard's in the country, Mr. Roger."

"Oh, so her ladyship's alone? Well, that's how I generally find her, isn't it?"

But Nannie--with her eye on the stairs--was not going to allow him any lingering in the hall. She led him quickly to the drawing-room, opened it, and closed it behind him. Then she herself retreated into a small smoking-den at the farther end of the hall, and sat there, without a light, with the door open--watching.

Roger Delane instinctively straightened himself to his full height as he entered his sister's drawing-room. His overcoat, though much worn, was of an expensive make and cut; he carried the Malacca cane which had been his companion in the Brookshire roads; and the eyegla.s.s that he adjusted as he caught sight of his sister completed the general effect of shabby fashion. His manner was jaunty and defiant.

"Well, Marianne," he said, pausing some yards from her. "You don't seem particularly glad to see me. Hullo!--has d.i.c.k been buying some more china?"

And before his sister could say anything, he had walked over to a table covered with various bric-a-brac, where, taking up a fine Nankin vase, he looked closely at the marks on its base.

Lady Winton flushed with anger.

"I think you had better leave the china alone, Roger. I have only got a very few minutes. What do you want? Money, I suppose--as usual! And yet I warned you in my last letter that you would do this kind of thing once too often, and that we were _not_ going to put up with it!" She struck the table beside her with her glove.

Delane put down the china and surveyed her.

"The vase is Ming all right--better stuff than d.i.c.k generally buys. I congratulate him. Well, I'm sorry for you, my dear Marianne--but you _are_ my sister--and you can't help yourself!"

He looked at her, half-smiling, with a quiet bravado which enraged her.

"Don't talk like that, Roger! Tell me directly what it is you want. You seem to think you can force me to see you at any time, whatever I may be doing. But--"