Abruptly she drew back and closed the window and turned up the lights in the room.

"I wish he wasn't coming quite so soon," she said, crouching down by the dying fire, a shivering, shrinking figure, with rain-wet hair, and eyes which were wet also, but not with rain.

The memories were shut out with the rain-washed night. She was back in the present again, with the disturbing reflection that the morrow, the last day of sad November, would see the arrival of Edward Morgan and the end of her girlish dreams.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

Mr Edward Morgan arrived on the following afternoon. Prudence watched him from the window disentangling himself from the carriage rugs, and fussing with the m.u.f.fler which he wore wound carefully about his throat.

The wind was in the north-east, and he was subject to bronchitis.

Swathed in wraps he did not cut a romantic figure: he looked what he was, a prosperous, middle-aged man who valued his health and refrained from taking liberties with it. Prudence told herself that he was wise to be cautious, at the same time she wished that he was of an age at which such caution was unnecessary.

He mounted the steps, and was welcomed in the hall by Mr Graynor and taken to the library for purposes of refreshment stronger than tea after his cold and tedious journey. Later, he made his appearance in the drawing-room, divested of his outdoor wear and improved on that account.

A subtle blending of whisky and cigar smoke emanated from his person, of which Prudence was critically aware as she shook hands and replied to his inquiries as to her health. He was in immense spirits, as became a successful lover; also he was a little shy and nervously anxious to please.

He talked about his journey and discussed politics and business and the weather; and Prudence listened, taking no part in the conversation, and feeling grateful to him for refraining from addressing her directly. He was, while intensely alive to her presence, seemingly unmindful of it.

He credited her, not without reason, with sharing his shyness; and was anxious to give her time to get used to him and feel her way back to their former easy relations. Miss Agatha received the greater part of his attention, and in return pressed the hot scones on him hospitably.

He refused these on the plea that they gave him indigestion; but he accepted cake, and a cup of the eighteenpenny tea, which he p.r.o.nounced excellent.

"Mrs Morgan is well, I hope?" Miss Agatha inquired conversationally, filling in one of those abrupt, unaccountable, and disconcerting pauses in the talk, which flowed with even dulness between the hitches.

"Thank you, yes. My mother enjoys excellent health. Henry's wife has been laid up; they had to operate for appendicitis. She's about again now. Henry and the boys are flourishing."

There followed polite expressions of regret for Mrs Henry Morgan's indisposition, broken into by the arrival of William, whose greeting of Mr Morgan overflowed with cordiality.

"Been looking to see you in these parts for months," he said. "Beastly weather for travelling; the wind is cutting. Are those hot scones, Prudence?"

William was so accustomed to being waited upon by the different members of his family that it never occurred to him to attend to his own needs.

He did not observe the flush of annoyance that overspread Prudence's face, nor the reluctance with which she rose to fetch the scones in question; Mr Morgan observed it, however, and was before her in reaching the fireplace where the scones lay on a hot plate inside the fender. He stooped for the plate; and the stiffness of his movements, while apparent to Prudence, pa.s.sed uncriticised on this occasion.

William protested loudly.

"Oh, come!" he said. "You shouldn't do that. I can't allow a visitor to wait on me. One of the girls will do it."

Mr Morgan disregarded the remonstrance, refusing to relinquish the dish of scones.

"My mother brought me up to wait upon her," he said, smiling. "It comes natural to me."

Prudence felt pleased; but she had no faith in the lesson proving beneficial to William; he would a.s.suredly miss the point.

"Well, you're a younger man than I," said William jocularly. "I shouldn't show such energy after a long journey."

Which speech, delivered for Prudence's benefit, William considered particularly tactful. He had in mind his sister's reflections on Mr Morgan's age. But Mr Morgan was not helpful.

"I'm forty-three to-day," he acknowledged, with, in William's opinion, quite unnecessary candour. "I decided on this date for making the journey from sentimental reasons; it occurred to me as an altogether agreeable way of celebrating the occasion."

He did not look in Prudence's direction while he spoke, for which consideration she was obliged to him: she felt the eyes of the rest focussed upon herself, and guessed what was in their thoughts in connection with these confidences. It did not in the least surprise her to hear William playfully observe that they would have to contrive something special in the way of entertainment to mark the event and make this birthday a memorable one. He looked meaningly at Prudence, and slyly at Mr Morgan, and remarked that birthdays conferred peculiar privileges and gave a right to indulgence. But Mr Morgan repudiated this.

"At my age one doesn't insist on those prerogatives," he said. "The only advantage I take of the day is to give myself pleasure. I have done that."

From which Prudence gathered to her relief that he did not intend to press his suit that day. Nor did he. He rather skilfully evaded the _tete-a-tetes_ with her, which every member of the household seemed in conspiracy to bring about. He was giving her time to commit to heart the lesson which he had told her he wanted her to learn. It was a lesson which she could not master with him for teacher; but she came to feel a very warm friendship for him, which in lieu of anything better seemed not insufficient to begin with.

Mr Morgan had been at Court Heatherleigh a week before he broached the question of marriage with her; and Prudence, lulled into a sense of security by his avoidance of the subject, doubted whether he intended to propose to her, and was divided between a state of mortification and relief. The proposal when it came startled her the more by reason of this adaptation of Mr Morgan from the role he had been cast for to the less romantic role of friend. It found her immensely unprepared, as the delayed falling of anything long expected is apt to do when launched suddenly and with irrelevant haste. She was altogether unaware of what was in his mind at the moment when he sprung the thing upon her.

They were playing billiards together after dinner, with Mary acting as marker and making a third in the conversation that confined itself almost exclusively to the game. Prudence, in the interest of making a brake, did not observe when Mary left the room; she became aware of her absence for the first time on looking round to call the score. Mr Morgan marked for her. When he approached the table, instead of playing, he laid his cue on the cloth and took Prudence's hand.

"Come and sit down," he said, drawing her to the settee. "We'll finish the game presently."

Prudence relinquished her cue to him and sat down. He put the cue away in the rack and seated himself beside her.

"I've been a long time coming to my point," he said, coming to it rather abruptly now that he was once started; "but I think you must have understood my reason for delay. I did not want to hurry you. You know why I came down... Prudence, will you marry me?"

Prudence gave a little sigh, and sat perfectly still, staring with amazed eyes at the neglected b.a.l.l.s on the green cloth. Oddly, the thought which struck her at the moment was that it was unnecessary to break off in the middle of a game to ask her that. There was no need to make opportunities; they were thrust at him.

"Let me think," she said. "Give me time. You--startled me."

"But you knew that I meant to ask you that question?" He took her hand again and pressed it gently. "When you sent that letter, wasn't it intended for permission to speak? I interpreted it that way."

"I--don't--know." She was still for a moment; then she turned to him and looked him uncertainly in the eyes. "I was very miserable when I wrote that letter. Yes; I suppose that was what I meant--then."

She broke off, and her gaze wandered away and came to rest again on the b.a.l.l.s.

"It's silly of me," she said, speaking very low. "I feel a little afraid."

"Just shyness," he said rea.s.suringly, stroking the hand which lay limply in his. "I am old for you; but you will find me the more gentle, possibly the more understanding, on that account. My darling, I love you very dearly. You are so young--you don't know yet what love is. I did not know either until recently. I come to it rather late. But my feeling for you is very deep. Prudence, my dear, I want you. I love you. If you give yourself to me I will do everything in my power to make your life happy. Will you marry me, dear?"

It seemed to Prudence that there was only one possible answer. She had understood when she invited him to come down the significance of what she did. She had no right to encourage him to hope and then fail in her part. He was too good a man to play with. She kept her face averted while she answered him, staring fixedly at the shining b.a.l.l.s, lying where her last stroke had left them placed conveniently, she realised with grim appreciation of her mistake, for him to score off.

"I want to be quite frank with you," she said, her breathing fast through sheer nervousness, an earnest expression on her face, which he thought very modest and gentle. "I don't love you, Mr Morgan,--not in that way--not, I mean, as you love me. I've thought--I should like to marry you. I think that still--only I'm afraid sometimes,--afraid that you'll find me disappointing."

He placed his arm very gently round her shoulders and held her so without attempting any warmer caress. He smiled into her troubled eyes.

"There is only one thing that could possibly disappoint me," he said, "and that is if I fail to make you happy. Trust me, and all will be well."

And so Prudence secured her pa.s.sage through the door which it seemed he alone could open for her into those wider s.p.a.ces where she imagined freedom was to be found. But emerging with Edward Morgan at her side, it gradually became clear to her that she was doubly fettered. In blindly groping for her freedom she had given herself to a new and more complete bondage. She would leave the old tyranny behind her, only to pa.s.s to another condition of fresh and more pressing obligations. The certainty of these things came to her with the realisation of her distaste for her new responsibility.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

Prudence insisted upon a long engagement.

That was the first hitch in the amicable relations between her and her fiance. Mr Morgan could see no reason why they should not marry immediately. He had less time than she to waste, and he was impatient of delay. But Prudence remained firm. She held out for a six months'

engagement; and Mr Graynor from purely selfish reasons ranged himself on her side. He was glad that her choice had fallen so wisely on this trusty friend of long standing. He could hand her over to the care of Edward Morgan with no anxiety for her future well-being; but he did not want to part with her too soon. When she was married the opportunities for seeing her would be few, and he dreaded the separation.

"Six months is not so very long," he told the exasperated Mr Morgan.

"And Prudence is only twenty."

"If I were twenty," Mr Morgan retorted, "I might see the matter in that light. Unfortunately I am not that age. But I shall have to exercise patience, I suppose."

He bought his fiancee a magnificent half hoop of diamonds, and slipped it on her fingers, where it looked, Prudence considered, oddly out of place. It was altogether too valuable for constant wear. She did not tell him so for fear of hurting his feelings; but she wished that he would buy her less extravagant gifts. Whenever he gave her anything it was of the costliest description that he could procure. It seemed to give him peculiar satisfaction to surround her with expensive things.

And he was amazingly kind and considerate for her unexpressed wishes.