Look, Miss Manvers has seen us. We'll join her in the gardens."

One of Mr. Stirling's pleasantest qualities was that he never remembered he was a man of letters. Consequently it was not necessary for him to show that he was still a boy at heart and that he could elaborately forget that he was a distinguished novelist by joining in sailing Harry's boat. Harry scrambled to his feet and shook hands with both men at Janey's bidding, and then he looked wistfully at Geoff as a possible playfellow and smiled at him, an ingratiating smile. But Geoff at twenty, two years younger than Harry, Geoff the artist, the cultured inquirer after famous Raeburns, the appraiser of broken reflections and relative values, only gaped vacantly at him, hands in pockets, without seeing him.

Harry puffed out an enormous sigh and looked back at his boat, and then he clapped his hands suddenly and ran to meet Annette, who was coming slowly towards them across the gra.s.s.

Mr. Stirling's eyes and Janey's followed him, and Mr. Stirling felt rather than saw that Janey winced as she looked gravely at the approaching figure.

Geoff's hat was at the back of his sugar-cone of a head. His mild face was transfixed.

"Mrs. Le Geyt," he said, below his breath.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Our life is like a narrow raft, Afloat upon the hungry sea.

Thereon is but a little s.p.a.ce, And all men, eager for a place, Do thrust each other in the sea-- And each man, raving for a place, Doth cast his brother in the sea."

Half an hour later, when Annette had left them, Mr. Stirling and his nephew turned with Janey towards the tall Italian gates, which Harry was dutifully holding open for them. As Geoff shambled beside him, glancing backwards in the direction of the path across the park which Annette had taken, Mr. Stirling half wished that his favourite sister's only child stared less at pretty women, that he had less tie and hair, and rather more backbone and deportment.

"Uncle Reggie," blurted out Geoff, "that Miss Georges!"

"Well?"

"Has she divorced him? Is that why she's called Miss Georges?"

"I suppose she's called Miss Georges for the same reason that you are called Geoffrey Lestrange," said his uncle. "Because it happens to be her name."

"But she is Mrs. Le Geyt," continued Geoff, looking with wide-open, innocent eyes from his uncle to Janey. "Mrs. d.i.c.k Le Geyt. I know it. I knew her again directly. I saw her when they were staying at Fontainebleau on their honeymoon. I've never forgotten her. I wanted to draw her. I thought of asking him if I might, but he was rather odd in his manner, and I didn't, and the next day he was ill, and I went away.

But they were down in the visitors' book as Mr. and Mrs. Le Geyt, and I heard him call her Annette, and----"

Mr. Stirling suddenly caught sight of Janey's face. It was crimson, startled, but something in it baffled him. It had become rigid, and he saw with amazement that it was not with horror or indignation, but as if one in torture, terrified at the vision, saw a horrible way of escape over a dead body.

"You are making a mistake, Geoff," he said sternly. "You never get hold of the right end of any stick. You don't in the least realize what you are saying, or that Mr. Le Geyt is Miss Manvers' brother."

"I only wish," said Janey, with dignity and with truth, "that my poor brother were married to Miss Georges. There is no one I should have liked better as a sister-in-law. But you are mistaken, Mr. Lestrange, in thinking such a thing. To the best of my belief he is not married."

"They were at Fontainebleau together as husband and wife," said Geoff.

"They really were. And she had a wedding ring on. She has not got it on now. I looked, and--and----"

But Mr. Stirling swept him down.

"That's enough. You must forgive him, Miss Manvers. He has mistaken his vocation. He ought not to be a painter, but a novelist. Fiction is evidently his forte. Good evening. Good-bye, Harry. Thank you for opening the gate for us. We will take the short cut across the fields to Noyes. Good-bye. Good-bye."

And Mr. Stirling, holding Geoff by the elbow, walked him off rapidly down the lane.

"Uncle Reggie," said the boy, "I think I won't go to j.a.pan to-morrow after all. I think I'll stop on here. I can get a room in the village, and make a picture of the fountain and the lichen and the willow weed, with Mrs. Le Geyt picking flowers. She's just what I want. I suppose there isn't any real chance of her being so kind as to stand for me, is there?--she looks so very kind,--in the nude, I mean. It's quite warm.

But if she wouldn't consent to that, that gown she had on, that mixed colour, cobalt with crimson lake in it----"

"Called lilac for short," interpolated Mr. Stirling.

"It would be glorious against the yews, and knocking up against the grey stone and that yellow lichen in the reflection. The whole thing would be--stupendous. I see it."

Geoff wrenched his elbow away from his uncle's grip, and stopped short in the path, looking at Mr. Stirling, through him.

"I see it," he said, and his pink, silly face became pale, dignified, transfigured.

Mr. Stirling's heart smote him.

"Geoff," he said gently, taking his arm again, and making him walk quietly on beside him, "listen to me. There are other things in the world to be attended to besides pictures."

"No, there aren't."

"Yes, there are. I put it to you. You have made a statement about Miss Georges which will certainly do her a great deal of harm if it is repeated. You blurt out things about her which are tantamount to making a very serious accusation against her character, and then in the same breath you actually suggest that you should make use of her in your picture--when you have done your level best to injure her reputation.

Now, as one man of the world to another, is that honourable, is it even 'cricket'?"

Geoff's face became weak and undecided again. The vision had been shattered.

Mr. Stirling saw his advantage, and pressed it with all the more determination because he perceived that Geoff at any rate was firmly convinced of the truth of what he had said, incredible as it seemed.

"You will take no rooms in this village," he said with decision, "and you will start for j.a.pan to-morrow as arranged. I shall see you off, and before you go you will promise me on your oath never to say another word to anyone, be they who they may, about having seen Miss Georges at Fontainebleau, or any other 'bleau,' in that disreputable d.i.c.k Le Geyt's company."

Janey's heart beat violently as she walked slowly home.

During the last few weeks she had sternly faced the fact that Roger was attracted by Annette, and not without many pangs had schooled herself to remain friends with her. There had been bitter moments when a choking jealousy had welled up in her heart against Annette. She might have let Roger alone. Beautiful women always hypocritically pretended that they could not help alluring men. But they could. Annette need not have gratified her vanity by trying to enslave him.

But after the bitter moment Janey's st.u.r.dy rect.i.tude and sense of justice always came to her rescue.

"Annette has not tried," she would say stolidly to herself. "And why shouldn't she try, if she likes him? I am not going to lose her if she does try. She doesn't know I want him. She is my friend, and I mean to keep her, whatever happens."

_Whatever happens._ But Janey had never dreamed of anything like this happening. As she walked slowly home with her bunch of snap-dragons, she realized that if Roger knew what she and Mr. Stirling knew about Annette, he would leave her. It was not too late yet. His mind was not actually made up--that slow mind, as tenacious as her own. He was gravitating towards Annette. But if she let it reach his ears that Annette had been d.i.c.k's mistress he would turn from her, and never think of her as a possible wife again. After an interval he would gradually revert to her, Janey, without having ever realized that he had left her.

Oh! if only Roger had been present when that foolish young man had made those horrible allegations!--if only he had heard them for himself!

Janey reddened at her own cruelty, her own disloyalty.

But was it, could it be true that Annette with her clear, unfathomable eyes had an ugly past behind her? It was unthinkable. And yet--Janey had long since realized that Annette had a far wider experience of men and women than she had. How had she gained it, that experience, that air of mystery which, though Janey did not know it, was a more potent charm than her beauty?

Was it possible that she might be d.i.c.k's wife after all, as that young man had evidently taken for granted? _No._ No wife, much less Annette, would have left her husband at death's door, and have fled at the advent of his relations. His mistress might have acted like that, had actually acted like that; for Janey knew that when her aunt arrived at Fontainebleau a woman who till then had pa.s.sed as d.i.c.k's wife and had nursed him devotedly _had_ decamped, and never been heard of again.

Was it possible that Annette had been that woman? Mr. Lestrange had been absolutely certain of what he had seen. His veracity was obvious. And Annette's was not a face that one could easily forget, easily mistake for anyone else. In her heart Janey was convinced that he had indeed seen Annette with her brother, pa.s.sing as his wife. And she saw that Mr.

Stirling was convinced also.

She had reached the garden of the Dower House, and she sank down on the wooden seat round the cedar. The sun had set behind the long line of the Hulver woods, and there was a flight of homing rooks across the amber sky.

Then Annette must be guilty, in spite of her beautiful face and her charming ways! Janey clasped her hands tightly together. Her outlook on life was too narrow, too rigid, to differentiate or condone. Annette had been immoral.

And was she, Janey, to stand by, and see Roger, her Roger, the straightest man that ever walked, and the most unsuspicious, marry her brother's mistress? Could she connive at such a wicked thing? Would Roger forgive her, would she ever forgive herself, if she coldly held aloof and let him ruin his life, drench it in dishonour, because she was too proud to say a word? It was her duty to speak, her bounden duty.