"I never went in for that kind of racket myself, Miss St. Quentin," he continued. "Not being conspicuously faithful, I should only have made a _fiasco_ of it. But I give you my word it touches me all the same when I do run across it. I think it's awfully lucky for a man to be made that way. And Decies is. So there seemed no help for it. I had to chuck discretion, as I told you, and give him his chance."

He paused, and then asked with a somewhat humorous air of self-depreciation:--"What do you think now, have I done more harm than good, made confusion worse confounded, and played the fool generally?"

But again Honoria vouchsafed him no immediate reply. The meditative mood still held her, and the present conversation offered much food for meditation. Her companion's confession of faith in true love, if you had the good fortune to be born that way, had startled her. That the speaker enjoyed the reputation of being something of a profligate lent singular point to that confession. She had not expected it from Lord Shotover, of all men. And, as coming from him, the sentiment was in a high degree arresting and interesting. Her own ideals, so far, had a decidedly anti-matrimonial tendency, while being in love appeared to her a much overrated, if not actively objectionable, condition.

Personally she hoped to escape all experience of it. Then her thought traveled back to Lady Calmady,--the charm of her personality, her sorrows, her splendid self-devotion, and to the object of that devotion--namely, Richard Calmady, a being of strange contrasts, at once maimed and beautiful, a being from whom she--Honoria--shrank in instinctive repulsion, while unwillingly acknowledging that he exercised a permanent and intimate fascination over her imagination.

She dwelt, in quick pity, too, upon the frightened, wide-eyed, childish face recently seen rising from out its diaphanous cloud of tulle, the prettiness of it heightened by fair wealth of summer roses and flash of costly diamonds, and upon Mr. Decies, the whole-hearted, young soldier lover, whose existence threatened such dangerous complications in respect of the rest of this strangely a.s.sorted company. Finally her meditative survey returned to its point of departure. In thought she surveyed her present companion,--his undeniable excellence of sentiment and clear-seeing, his admittedly defective conduct in matters ethical and financial. Never before had she been at such close quarters with living and immediate human drama, and, notwithstanding her detachment, her lofty indifference and high-spirited theories, she found it profoundly agitating. She was sensible of being in collision with unknown and incalculable forces. Instinctively she rose from her place on the sofa, and, moving to the open window, looked out into the night.

Below, the Park, now silent and deserted, slept peacefully, as any expanse of remote country pasture and woodland, in the mildly radiant moonlight. Here and there were blottings of dark shadow cast by the clumps or avenues of trees. Here and there the timid, yellow flame of gas lamps struggled to a.s.sert itself against the all-embracing silver brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale, glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging cl.u.s.ters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently caressed the girl's bare arms and shoulders.

Seen under these unaccustomed conditions familiar objects a.s.sumed a fantastic aspect. For the night is a mighty magician, with power to render even the weighty brick and stone, even the hard, uncomprising outlines of a monster, modern city, delicately elusive, mockingly tentative and unsubstantial. Meanwhile, within, from all along the vista of crowded and brilliantly illuminated rooms, came the subdued, yet confused and insistent, sound of musical instruments, of many voices, many footsteps, the hush of women's trailing garments, the rise and fall of unceasing conversation. And to Honoria standing in this quiet, dimly-seen place, the sense of that moonlit world without, and this gas and candle-lit world within, increased the nameless agitation which infected her. A haunting persuasion of the phantasmagoric character of all sounds that saluted her ears, all sights that met her eyes, possessed her. A vast uncertainty surrounded and pressed in on her, while those questionings of appearances and actualities, of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, justice and injustice, with which she had played idly earlier in the evening, took on new and almost terrible proportions, causing her intelligence, nay, her heart itself, to reach out, as never before, in search of some sure rock and house of defense against the disintegrating apprehension of universal instability and illusion.

"Ah! it is all very difficult, difficult to the point of alarm!" she exclaimed suddenly, turning to Lord Shotover and looking him straight in the face, with an unself-consciousness and desire of support so transparent, that that gentleman found himself at once delighted and slightly abashed.

"Bless my soul, but Ludovic is a lucky devil!" he said to himself.--"What's--what's so beastly difficult, Miss St. Quentin?" he asked aloud. And the sound of his cheery voice recalled Honoria to the normal aspects of existence with almost humorous velocity. She smiled upon him.

"I really believe I don't quite know," she said. "Perhaps that the two people, of whom we were speaking, really care for each other, and that this engagement has come between them, and that you have chucked discretion and given him his chance. Tell me, what sort of man is he--strong enough to make the most of his chance when he's got it?"

But at that moment Lord Shotover stepped forward, adroitly planting himself right in front of her and thus screening her from observation.

"By George!" he said under his breath, in tones of mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and consternation, "he's making the most of his chance now Miss St.

Quentin, and that most uncommonly comprehensively, unless I'm very much mistaken."

Her companion's tall person and the folds of a heavy curtain, while screening Honoria from observation, also, in great measure, obscured her view of the room. Yet not so completely but that she saw two figures cross it, one black, one white, those of a man and a girl. They were both speaking, the man apparently pleading, the girl protesting and moving hurriedly, the while, as though in actual flight. She must have been moving blindly, at random, for she stumbled against the outstanding, gilded leg of a consol table, set against the further wall, causing the ornaments on it to rattle. And so doing, she gave a plaintive exclamation of alarm, perhaps even of physical pain. Hearing which, that nameless agitation, that sense of collision with unknown and incalculable forces, seized hold on Honoria again, while Lord Shotover's features contracted and he turned his head sharply.

"By George!" he repeated under his breath.

But the girl recovered herself, and, followed by her companion,--he still pleading, she still protesting,--pa.s.sed by the further window on to the balcony and out of sight. There followed a period of embarra.s.sed silence on the part of the usually voluble Shotover, while his pleasant countenance expressed a certain half-humorous concern.

"Really, I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I'd not the slightest intention of landing you in for the thick of the brown like this.".

"Or yourself either," she replied, smiling, though, with that sense of nameless agitation still upon her, her heart beat rather quick.

"Well, perhaps not. Between ourselves, moral courage isn't my strong point. There's nothing I funk like a row. I say, what shall we do?

Don't you think we'd better quietly clear out?"

But just then a sound caught Honoria's ear before which all vague questions of ultimate truth and falsehood, right and wrong fled away.

Whatever might savour of illusion, here was something real and actual, something pitiful, moreover, arousing the spirit of knight-errantry in her, pushing her to lay lance in rest and go forth, reckless of conventionalities, reckless even of considerations of justice, to the succour of oppressed womanhood. What words the man, on the balcony without, was saying she could not distinguish--whether cruel or kind, but that the young girl was weeping, with the abandonment of long-resisted tears, she could not doubt.

"No, no, listen Lord Shotover," she exclaimed authoritatively. "Don't you hear? She is crying as if her poor heart would break. You must stay. If I understand you rightly your sister has only got you to depend on. Whatever happens you must stand by her and see her through."

"Oh! but, my dear Miss St. Quentin----" The young man's aspect was entertaining. He looked at the floor, he looked at Honoria, he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as though there might be placed the seat of fort.i.tude. "You're inviting me to put my head into the liveliest hornet's nest. What the deuce--excuse me--am I to say to her and all the rest of them? Decies, even, mayn't quite understand my interference and may resent it. I think it is very much safer, all round, to let them--him and her--thrash it out between them, don't you know. I say though, what a beastly thing it is to hear a woman cry! I wish to goodness we'd never come into this confounded place and let ourselves in for it."

As he spoke, Lord Shotover turned towards the door, meditating escape in the direction of that brilliant vista of crowded rooms. But Honoria St. Quentin, her enthusiasm once aroused, became inexorable. With her long swinging stride she outdistanced his hesitating steps, and stood, in the doorway, her arms extended--as to stop a runaway horse--her clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale, delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that comfortably conventional, worldly paradise to which he, just now, so warmly desired to regain admittance.

"No, no," she said, with a certain vibration in her quiet voice, "you are not to go! You are not to desert her. It would be unworthy, Lord Shotover. You brought Mr. Decies here and so you are mainly responsible for the present situation. And think, just think what it means. All the course of her life will be affected by that which takes place in the next half-hour. You would never cease to reproach yourself if things went wrong."

"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.

"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria a.s.serted. "Having it in your power to help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't desert me and I intend to stay."

"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling his father's.

Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.

"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no particular faith in or admiration for marriage----"

"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised, slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.

"No, I don't believe very much in marriage--modern, upper-cla.s.s marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a--a--loveless marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with the whole thing."

"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.--The infinite variety of the feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their relentless application of logic--as they apprehended it--which staggered him.

Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on his arm.

"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come--you must know what is happening. You must comfort her."

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of good-humoured and despairing resignation.

"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin, you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."

"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said.

"Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you.

And then you might cut and run, don't you know."

CHAPTER VII

RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL MOUSE IN A CORNER

As Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle, altogether forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty correctness of demeanour, uttered an inarticulate cry--a cry, indeed, hardly human in its abandon and unreasoning anguish, resembling rather the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and roses, and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face downwards, across the coping of the bal.u.s.trade, her bare arms outstretched, her hands clasped above her head. Mr. Decies, blue-eyed, black-haired, smooth of skin, looking noticeably long and lithe in his close-fitting, dress clothes, made a rapid movement as though to lay hold on her and bear her bodily away. Then, recognising the futility of any such attempt, he turned upon the intruders, his high-spirited Celtic face drawn with emotion, his att.i.tude rather dangerously warlike.

"What do you want?" he demanded hotly.

"My dear good fellow," Lord Shotover began, with the most a.s.suaging air of apology. "I a.s.sure you the very last thing I--we--I mean I--want is to be a nuisance. Only Miss St. Quentin thought--in fact, Decies, don't you see--dash it all, you know, there seemed to be some sort of worry going on out here and so----"

But Honoria did not wait for the conclusion of elaborate explanations, for that cry and the unrestraint of the girl's att.i.tude not only roused, but shocked her. It was not fitting that any man, however kindly or even devoted, should behold this well-bred, modest and gentle, young maiden in her present extremity. So she swept past Mr.

Decies and bent over Lady Constance Quayle, raised her, strove to soothe her agitation, speaking in tones of somewhat indignant tenderness.

But, though deriving a measure of comfort from the steady arm about her waist, from the strong, protective presence, from the rather stern beauty of the face looking down into hers, Lady Constance could not master her agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and the result was confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of mind. She suffered that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a part of the misery of all apparently irretrievable disaster, whether moral or physical, and places the victim of it, in imagination at all events, rather terribly beyond the pale.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "you ought not to be so kind to me. I am very wicked.

I never supposed I could be so wicked. What shall I do? I am so frightened at myself and at everything. I did not recognise you. I didn't see it was only Shotover."

"Well, but now you do see, my dear Con, it's only me," that gentleman remarked, with a cheerful disregard of grammar. "And so you mustn't upset yourself any more. It's awfully bad for you, and uncomfortable for everybody else, don't you know. You must try to pull yourself together a bit and we'll help you--of course, I'll help you. We'll all help you, of course we will, and pull you through somehow."

But the girl only lamented herself the more piteously.