"I don't quite understand you," John confessed; "but if you mean that you are afraid of anything Lady Hilda might say to me about you, why, I feel inclined to laugh at you. Lady Hilda," he added, with a touch of intuition, "is far too clever a woman to make such a mistake."

"I believe you are right," Louise agreed. "I shall pin my faith to Lady Hilda's cleverness and to your--fidelity. Go and spend your week-end there, by all means. I only wish I wasn't bound to go to the Faradays', but that can't possibly be helped. Come and lunch with me on Monday,"

she added impulsively. "It seems a long time since we had a little talk together."

He suddenly held her to him, and she met his lips unresistingly. It was the first time he had even attempted anything of the sort for months.

"You are a dear, John," she said, a little wistfully. "I am terribly divided in my thoughts about you. Just now I feel that I have only one wish--that I could give you all that you want, all that you deserve!"

He was very loverlike. She was once more a slight, quivering thing in his arms.

"Why need we wait any longer?" he begged. "If we told everyone to-night--to-morrow--the Faradays would not expect you to keep your engagement."

She shook herself free from him, but her smile was almost a compensation. The taxicab had stopped opposite her door, and her servant came hurrying out.

"Until Monday!" she murmured.

XXI

Early on the following morning John glided out of London in his two-seated racing-car, on his way to Bourne End. The white mist that hung over the Streets and parks and obscured the sky pa.s.sed away as he left the suburbs behind him. With his first glimpse of the country came a welcome change. There were little flecks of blue in the firmament above him, a distinct if somewhat watery sunshine, and a soft buoyancy in the air, almost an antic.i.p.ation of spring.

John leaned back in his seat, filled with an unexpected sense of contentment. After all, this week-end visit would probably turn out to be pleasant enough, and on Monday night the play was to be produced at last. He felt that for weeks Louise had been living in an atmosphere of high tension. He himself had begun to realize the nervous excitement of a first night, when the work of many months is at last presented in its concrete form. He was content to believe that all that had depressed him in Louise's demeanor had been due to this cause--to anxiety about her success, to the artistic dissatisfaction evolved by the struggle between her desire to conform to the prejudices of the critics and her wish to present truthfully the work of the great French dramatist. Once it was all over and the verdict given, relaxation would come. He was content to wait.

He had no trouble in finding Lady Hilda's cottage in Bourne End--a long, white bungalow-looking building, surrounded by a little stream which led down to the river. A man servant took his dressing case from the back of the car and showed him the way to the garage. Lady Hilda herself came strolling up the lawn and waved her hand.

"Now what about my week-end on the river?" she exclaimed, as they shook hands. "Isn't it delightful? I have ordered lunch early--do you mind?--and I thought, if you felt energetic, it's not too cold for you to take me out on the river; or, if you feel lazy, I'll take you."

"I am not much of an oarsman," John told her, "but I certainly won't ask you to pull me about!"

She led him into the little dining room and answered the question in his eyes when he saw the table laid for two.

"Colonel and Mrs. Dauncey are coming down this afternoon," she said, "and my brother Fred will be here in time for dinner. I wired to Mrs.

Henderson--the woman who writes novels, you know--to come down, too, if she can, but I haven't heard from her. I have been looking at the river this morning, and it's almost like gla.s.s; and I can see little specks of green in the flower-beds where my bulbs are coming up. Richards will show you your room now, if you like, and we'll have lunch in ten minutes."

John found his cottage bedroom, with its view of the river, delightful, and at luncheon Lady Hilda showed him the side of herself that he liked best. She talked of her travels, and of big-game shooting. Afterward they sauntered out to the stream, and John, selecting the more stable of the two boats moored to the little landing-stage, pulled out into the river. Lady Hilda, in a fur coat, leaned back on a pile of cushions and watched him, with a cigarette between her lips. He found the exercise stimulating and delightful. Some of the color which he had lost came back to his cheeks.

"Aren't you sorry," she asked him once, as they paused to look across a vista of green meadows toward a distant range of hills, "for the people who see nothing in the country except in summer? Look at those lines of bare, sad trees, the stillness of it all, and yet the softness; and think what it will soon be, think what there is underneath, ready to burst into life as the weeks go on! I always come down here early, just to watch the coming of springtime. That wood to our left, with its bare, brown undergrowth, will soon show little flushes of pinky-yellow, and then a few days more sunshine and the primroses will be there. And you see, higher up, that wood where the trees stand so far apart? A little later still, the wild hyacinths will be like a blue carpet there. In the garden we begin with little rings of white snowdrops; then the crocuses come up in lines, yellow and purple; and the daffodils; and then, on those beds behind, the hyacinths. When the wind blows from the south, the perfume of them, as you pa.s.s down the river, is simply wonderful. Be careful, if you are turning round. There's a strong current here."

John nodded. He was watching his hostess a little curiously.

"I had no idea," he said simply, "that you cared about flowers and that sort of thing."

She threw her cigarette away and looked at him for a moment without speaking.

"You see, you don't really understand me very well," she remarked.

The twilight was coming on as they turned into their own little stream, and gleams of light shot from the windows of the few houses that were open. As they strolled up the lawn, they could see a rose-shaded lamp and a silver tea-equipage set out in Lady Hilda's sitting room.

"No one arrived yet, I see," she remarked carelessly, as they entered the cottage. "I'll play you a game of billiards as soon as we have had tea."

John, who had thoroughly enjoyed his exercise, sat in a low chair by her side, drank innumerable small cups of tea, and ate b.u.t.tered toast in thin strips. When they had finished, Lady Hilda rose.

"Go and knock the b.a.l.l.s about for a few minutes," she begged. "I am going to put on a more comfortable gown. If the Daunceys come, you can entertain them. I played a round of golf this morning before you came."

John made his way into the comfortable billiard room, at one end of which a wood fire was burning, lit a cigarette, and took out a cue.

Presently Lady Hilda returned. She was wearing a rose-colored tea-gown, and once more John caught a glimpse of something in her eyes, as she looked at him, which puzzled him.

"I am a little gaudy, I am afraid," she laughed, as she took a cue from the rack, "but so comfortable! How many will you give me in a hundred?"

"I have never seen you play," John reminded her. "I am not much good myself."

They played two games, and John had hard work to escape defeat. As they were commencing the third, the butler entered the room, bearing a telegram. Lady Hilda took it from the salver, glanced at it, and threw it into the fire.

"What a nuisance!" she exclaimed. "The Daunceys can't come."

John, who was enjoying himself very much, murmured only a word or two of polite regret. He had never got over his distaste for meeting strangers.

"Can't be helped, I suppose," Lady Hilda remarked. "There is nothing from Flo Henderson yet. We'll have one more game, and then I'll ring her up."

They played another game of billiards, and sat by the fire for a little while. The silence outside, and the air of repose about the place, were delightful to John after several months of London.

"I wonder you ever leave here," he said.

She laughed softly.

"You forget that I am a lone woman. Solitude, as our dear friend wrote in her last novel, is a paradise for two, but is an irritant for one."

There was a short silence. For the first time since his arrival John's tranquillity was a little disturbed. There was something almost pathetic in the expression which had flashed for a moment over his hostess's face. Was she really lonely, he wondered? Perhaps she had some sort of unhappy love history underneath her rather hard exterior. He was disposed just then to judge the whole world charitably, and he had never believed the stories which people were so anxious to tell of her. He felt no desire to pursue the subject.

"I have never read any of Mrs. Henderson's books," he remarked.

She stretched out an arm, took a volume from the swinging table by her side, and threw it across to him.

"You can glance through that while you dress," she said.

A gong rang through the house a few moments later, and the butler brought in two c.o.c.ktails on a little silver tray.

"We are having quite a solitude _a deux_, aren't we?" Lady Hilda remarked, as she raised her gla.s.s. "I'll go and ring up Flo on my way up-stairs."

They parted a few minutes later, and John went up to his room. He found his clothes carefully laid out, a bright fire burning, and a bath-room leading from his bedroom. He dressed in somewhat leisurely fashion, and the dinner-gong rang as he descended the stairs. He could hear Lady Hilda's voice talking on the telephone, and made his way to her little room. She had just laid down the receiver.

"It seems," she said, "that you and I are the only people who appreciate the country at this time of the year. I have just been talking to Flo.

She declares that nothing in the world would tempt her down here. She is convinced that all the trees are dropping with damp, and that the mud is inches deep. She won't believe a single word about the sunshine."

"She isn't coming, then?"