"An opera singer!" he exclaimed, under his breath. "An opera singer!

Herbert to marry an opera singer! The granddaughter of a Yankee sailor and--and--"

"And the daughter of an English thief," put in Hephzy, sharply. "Maybe we'd better leave nationalities out, Doctor Bayliss. The Yankees have the best end of it, 'cordin' to my notion."

He paid no attention to this.

He was greatly upset. "It is impossible!" he declared. "Absolutely impossible! Why haven't we known of this before? Why did not Herbert know of it? Mr. Knowles, I must say that--that you have been most unthinking in this matter."

"I have been thinking of her," I answered, curtly. "It was and is her secret and we rely upon you to keep it as such. We trust to your honor to tell no one, not even your son."

"My son! Herbert? Why I must tell him! I must tell my wife."

"You may tell your wife. And your son as much as you think necessary.

Further than that it must not go."

"Of course, of course. I understand. But an opera singer!"

"She isn't a real opera singer," said Hephzy. "That is, not one of those great ones. And she told me once that she realized now that she never could be. She has a real sweet voice, a beautiful voice, but it isn't powerful enough to make her a place in the big companies. She tried and tried, she said, but all the managers said the same thing."

"Hephzy," I said, "when did she tell you this? I didn't know of it."

"I know you didn't, Hosy. She told me one day when we were alone. It was the only time she ever spoke of herself and she didn't say much then.

She spoke about her livin' with her relatives here in England and what awful, mean, hard people they were. She didn't say who they were nor where they lived, but she did say she ran away from them to go on the stage as a singer and what trials and troubles she went through afterward. She told me that much and then she seemed sorry that she had.

She made me promise not to tell anyone, not even you. I haven't, until now."

Doctor Bayliss was sitting with a hand to his forehead.

"A provincial opera singer," he repeated. "Oh, impossible! Quite impossible!"

"It may seem impossible to you," I couldn't help observing, "but I question if it will seem so to your son. I doubt if her being an opera singer will make much difference to him."

The doctor groaned. "The boy is mad about her, quite mad," he admitted.

I was sorry for him. Perhaps if I were in his position I might feel as he did.

"I will say this," I said: "In no way, so far as I know, has Miss Morley given your son encouragement. He told me himself that he had never spoken to her of his feelings and we have no reason to think that she regards him as anything more than a friend. She left no message for him when she went away."

He seemed to find some ground for hope in this. He rose from the chair and extended his hand.

"Knowles," he said, "if I have said anything to hurt your feelings or those of Miss Cahoon I am very sorry. I trust it will make no difference in our friendship. My wife and I respect and like you both and I think I understand how deeply you must feel the loss of your--of Miss Morley. I hope she--I hope you may be reunited some day. No doubt you will be. As for Herbert--he is our son and if you ever have a son of your own, Mr.

Knowles, you may appreciate his mother's feelings and mine. We have planned and--and--Even now I should not stand in the way of his happiness if--if I believed happiness could come of it. But such marriages are never happy. And," with a sudden burst of hope, "as you say, she may not be aware of his attachment. The boy is young. He may forget."

"Yes," said I, with a sigh. "He IS young, and he may forget."

After he had gone Hephzy turned to me.

"If I hadn't understood that old man's feelin's," she declared, "I'd have given him one talkin' to. The idea of his speakin' as if Frances wouldn't be a wife anybody, a lord or anybody else, might be proud of!

But he didn't know. He's been brought up that way, and he doesn't know.

And, of course, his son IS the only person on earth to him. Well, that's over! We haven't got to worry about them any more. We'll begin to live for each other now, Hosy, same as we used to do. And we'll wait for the rest. It'll come and come right for all of us. Just you see."

CHAPTER XIV

In Which I Play Golf and Cross the Channel

And so we began "to live for each other again," Hephzy and I. This meant, of course, that Hephzy forgot herself entirely and spent the greater part of her time trying to find ways to make my living more comfortable, just as she had always done. And I--well, I did my best to appear, if not happy, at least reasonably calm and companionable. It was a hard job for both of us; certainly my part of it was hard enough.

Appearances had to be considered and so we invented a tale of a visit to relatives in another part of England to account for the unannounced departure of Miss Morley. This excuse served with the neighbors and friends not in the secret and, for the benefit of the servants, Hephzy elaborated the deceit by pretending eagerness at the arrival of the mails and by certain vague remarks at table concerning letters she was writing.

"I AM writing 'em, too, Hosy," she said. "I write to her every few days.

Of course I don't mail the letters, but it sort of squares things with my conscience to really write after talking so much about it. As for her visitin' relatives--well, she's got relatives somewhere in England, we know that much, and she MAY be visitin' 'em. At any rate I try to think she is. Oh, dear, I 'most wish I'd had more experience in tellin' lies; then I wouldn't have to invent so many extra ones to make me believe those I told at the beginnin'. I wish I'd been brought up a book agent or a weather prophet or somethin' like that; then I'd have been in trainin'."

Without any definite agreement we had fallen into the habit of not mentioning the name of Little Frank, even when we were alone together.

In consequence, on these occasions, there would be long intervals of silence suddenly broken by Hephzy's bursting out with a surmise concerning what was happening in Bayport, whether they had painted the public library building yet, or how Susanna was getting on with the cat and hens. She had received three letters from Miss Wixon and, as news bearers, they were far from satisfactory.

"That girl makes me so provoked," sniffed Hephzy, dropping the most recent letter in her lap with a gesture of disgust. "She says she's got a cold in the head and she's scared to death for fear it'll get 'set onto her,' whatever that is. Two pages of this letter is nothin' but cold in the head and t'other two is about a new hat she's goin' to have and she don't know whether to trim it with roses or forget-me-nots. If she trimmed it with cabbage 'twould match her head better'n anything else. I declare! she ought to be thankful she's got a cold in a head like hers; it must be comfortin' to know there's SOMETHIN' there. You've got a letter, too, Hosy. Who is it from?"

"From Campbell," I answered, wearily. "He wants to know how the novel is getting on, of course."

"Humph! Well, you write him that it's gettin' on the way a squid gets ahead--by goin' backwards. Don't let him pester you one bit, Hosy. You write that novel just as fast or slow as you feel like. He told you to take a vacation, anyway."

I smiled. Mine was a delightful vacation.

The summer dragged on. The days passed. Pleasant days they were, so far as the weather was concerned. I spent them somehow, walking, riding, golfing, reading. I gave up trying to work; the half-written novel remained half written. I could not concentrate my thoughts upon it and I lacked the courage to force myself to try. I wrote Campbell that he must be patient, I was doing the best I could. He answered by telling me not to worry, to enjoy myself. "Why do you stay there in England?" he wrote.

"I ordered you to travel, not to plant yourself in one place and die of dry rot. A British oyster is mighty little improvement on a Cape Cod quahaug. You have been in that rectory about long enough. Go to Monte Carlo for change. You'll find it there--or lose it."

It may have been good advice--or bad--according to the way in which it was understood, but, good or bad, it didn't appeal to me. I had no desire to travel, unless it were to travel back to Bayport, where I belonged. I felt no interest in Monte Carlo--for the matter of that, I felt no interest in Mayberry or anywhere else. I was not interested in anything or anybody--except one, and that one had gone out of my life.

Night after night I went to sleep determining to forget and morning after morning I awoke only to remember, and with the same dull, hopeless heartache and longing.

July passed, August was half gone. Still we remained at the rectory. Our lease was up on the first of October. The Coles would return then and we should be obliged to go elsewhere, whether we wished to or not. Hephzy, although she did not say much about it, was willing to go, I think. Her "presentiment" had remained only a presentiment so far; no word came from Little Frank. We had heard or learned nothing concerning her or her whereabouts.

Our neighbors and friends in Mayberry were as kind and neighborly as ever. For the first few days after our interview with Doctor Bayliss, Senior, Hephzy and I saw nothing of him or his family. Then the doctor called again. He seemed in better spirits. His son had yielded to his parents' entreaties and had departed for a walking tour through the Black Forest with some friends.

"The invitation came at exactly the right time," said the old gentleman.

"Herbert was ready to go anywhere or do anything. The poor boy was in the depths and when his mother and I urged him to accept he did so. We are hoping that when he returns he will have forgotten, or, if not that, at least be more reconciled."

Heathcroft came and went at various times during the summer. I met him on the golf course and he was condescendingly friendly as ever. Our talk concerning Frances, which had brought such momentous consequences to her and to Hephzy and to me, had, apparently, not disturbed him in the least. He greeted me blandly and cheerfully, asked how we all were, said he had been given to understand that "my charming little niece" was no longer with us, and proceeded to beat me two down in eighteen holes.

I played several times with him afterward and, under different circumstances, should have enjoyed doing so, for we were pretty evenly matched.

His aunt, the Lady of the Manor, I also met. She went out of her way to be as sweetly gracious as possible. I presume she inferred from Frances'

departure that I had taken her hint and had removed the disturbing influence from her nephew's primrose-bordered path. At each of our meetings she spoke of the "invitation golf tournament," several times postponed and now to be played within a fortnight. She insisted that I must take part in it. At last, having done everything except decline absolutely, I finally consented to enter the tournament. It is not easy to refuse to obey an imperial decree and Lady Carey was Empress of Mayberry.

After accepting I returned to the rectory to find that Hephzy also had received an invitation. Not to play golf, of course; her invitation was of a totally different kind.

"What do you think, Hosy!" she cried. "I've got a letter and you can't guess who it's from."