Thorpe felt keenly that there were fine things to be said here--but he had confidence in nothing that came to his tongue. "I've been a poor man all my life--till now," was his eventual remark.

"Please don't tell me that you have been very happy in your poverty,"

she adjured him, with the dim flicker of a returning smile. "Very likely there are people who are so const.i.tuted, but they are not my kind. I don't want to hear them tell about it. To me poverty is the horror--the unmentionable horror!"

"There never was a day that I didn't feel THAT!" Thorpe put fervour into his voice. "I was never reconciled to it for a minute. I never ceased swearing to myself that I'd pull myself out of it. And that's what makes me sort of soft-hearted now toward those--toward those who haven't pulled themselves out of it."

"Your niece says you are soft-hearted beyond example," remarked Lady Cressage.

"Who could help being, to such a sweet little girl as she is?" demanded the uncle, fondly.

"She is very nice," said the other. "If one may say such a thing, I fancy these three months with her have had an appreciable effect upon you. I'm sure I note a difference."

"That's just what I've been saying to myself!" he told her. He was visibly delighted with this corroboration. "I've been alone practically all my life. I had no friends to speak of--I had no fit company--I hadn't anything but the determination to climb out of the hole. Well, I've done that--and I've got among the kind of people that I naturally like. But then there came the question of whether they would like me. I tell you frankly, that was what was worrying the heart out of me when I first met you. I like to be confessing it to you now--but you frightened me within an inch of my life. Well now, you see, I'm not scared of you at all. And of course it's because Julia's been putting me through a course of sprouts."

The figure was lost upon Lady Cressage, but the spirit of the remarks seemed not unpleasant to her. "I'm sure you're full of kindness,"

she said. "You must forget that I snapped at you--about papa." "All I remember about that is," he began, his eye lighting up with the thought that this time the opportunity should not pa.s.s unimproved, "that you said he didn't shine much in adversity---any more than you did. Now on that last point I disagree with you, straight. There wouldn't be any place in which you wouldn't shine."

"Is that the way one talks to one's niece?" she asked him, almost listlessly. "Such flattery must surely be bad for the young." Her words were sprightly enough, but her face had clouded over. She had no heart for the banter.

"Ah"--he half-groaned. "I only wish I knew what was the right way to talk to you. The real thing is that I see you're unhappy--and that gets on my nerve--and I should like to ask you if there wasn't something I could do--and ask it in such a way that you'd have to admit there was--and I don't know enough to do it."

He had a wan smile for thanks. "But of course there is nothing," she replied, gently.

"Oh, there must be!" he insisted. He had no longer any clear notions as to where his tongue might not lead him. "There must be! You said I might talk to you as I would to Julia."

"Did I?"

"Well, I'm going to, anyway," he went on stoutly, ignoring the note of definite dissent in her interruption. "You ARE unhappy! You spoke about being a chaperone. Well now, to speak plainly, if it isn't entirely pleasant for you with Miss Madden--why wouldn't you be a chaperone for Julia? I must be going to London very soon--but she can stay here, or go to Egypt, or wherever she likes--and of course you would do everything, and have everything--whatever you liked, too."

"The conversation is getting upon rather impossible grounds, I'm afraid," she said, and then bit her lips together. Halting, she frowned a little in the effort of considering her further words, but there was nothing severe in the glance which she lifted to him as she began to speak. "Let us walk on. I must tell you that you misconceive the situation entirely. n.o.body could possibly be kinder or more considerate than Miss Madden. Of course she is American--or rather Irish-American, and I'm English, and our notions and ways are not always alike. But that has nothing to do with it. And it is not so much that she has many thousands a year, and I only a few hundreds. That in itself would signify nothing--and if I must take help from somebody I would rather take it from Celia Madden than anybody else I know--but this is the point, Mr. Thorpe. I do not eat the bread of dependence gracefully. I pull wry faces over it, and I don't try very much to disguise them. That is my fault. Yes--oh yes, I know it is a fault--but I am as I am. And if Miss Madden doesn't mind--why"--she concluded with a mirthless, uncertain laugh--"why on earth should you?"

"Ah, why should I?" he echoed, reflectively. "I should like desperately to tell you why. Sometime I will tell you."

They walked on in silence for a brief s.p.a.ce. Then she put out her hand for her wrap, and as she paused, he spread it over her shoulders.

"I am amazed to think what we have been saying to each other," she said, b.u.t.toning the fur as they moved on again. "I am vexed with myself."

"And more still with me," he suggested.

"No-o--but I ought to be. You've made me talk the most shocking rubbish."

"There we disagree again, you know. Everything you've said's been perfect. What you're thinking of now is that I'm not an old enough friend to have been allowed to hear it. But if I'm not as old a friend as some, I wish I could make you feel that I'm as solid a friend as any--as solid and as staunch and as true. I wish I could hear you say you believed that."

"But you talk of 'friends,'" she said, in a tone not at all responsive--"what is meant by 'friends'? We've chanced to meet twice--and once we barely exchanged civilities, and this time we've been hotel acquaintances--hardly more, is it?--and you and your young people have been very polite to me--and I in a silly moment have talked to you more about my affairs than I should--I suppose it was because you mentioned my father. But 'friends' is rather a big word for that, isn't it?"

Thorpe pouted for a dubious moment. "I can think of a bigger word still," he said, daringly. "It's been on the tip of my tongue more than once."

She quickened her pace. The air had grown perceptibly colder. The distant mountains, visible ever and again through the bare branches, were of a dark and cheerless blue, and sharply defined against the sky.

It was not yet the sunset hour, and there were no mists, but the light of day seemed to be going out of the heavens. He hurried on beside her in depressed silence.

Their companions were hidden from view in a convolution of the winding road, but they were so near that their voices could be heard as they talked. Frequently the sound of laughter came backward from them.

"They're jolly enough down there," he commented at last, moodily.

"That's a good reason for our joining them, isn't it?" Her tone was at once casual and pointed.

"But I don't want to join them!" he protested. "Why don't you stay with me--and talk?" "But you bully me so," she offered in explanation.

The phrase caught his attention. Could it be that it expressed her real feeling? She had said, he recalled, that he had made her talk. Her complaint was like an admission that he could overpower her will. If that were true--then he had resources of masterfulness still in reserve sufficient to win any victory.

"No--not bully you," he said slowly, as if objecting to the word rather than the idea. "That wouldn't be possible to me. But you don't know me well enough to understand me. I am the kind of man who gets the things he wants. Let me tell you something: When I was at Hadlow, I had never shot a pheasant in my life. I used to do tolerably well with a rifle, but I hardly knew anything about a shot-gun, and I don't suppose I'd ever killed more than two or three birds on the wing--and that was ages ago. But I took the notion that I would shoot better than anybody else there. I made up my mind to it--and I simply did it, that's all. I don't know if you remember--but I killed a good deal more than both the others put together. I give you that as an example. I wanted you to think that I was a crack shot--and so I made myself be a crack shot."

"That is very interesting," she murmured. They did not seem to be walking quite so fast.

"Don't think I want to brag about myself," he went on. "I don't fancy myself--in that way. I'm not specially proud of doing things--it's the things themselves that I care for. If some men had made a great fortune, they would be conceited about it. Well, I'm not. What I'm keen about is the way to use that fortune so that I will get the most out of it--the most happiness, I mean. The thing to do is to make up your mind carefully what it is that you want, and to put all your power and resolution into getting it--and the rest is easy enough. I don't think there's anything beyond a strong man's reach, if he only believes enough in himself."

"But aren't you confusing two things?" she queried. The subject apparently interested her. "To win one's objects by sheer personal force is one thing. To merely secure them because one's purse is longer than other people's--that's quite another matter."

He smiled grimly at her. "Well, I'll combine the two," he said.

"Then I suppose you will be altogether irresistible," she said, lightly.

"There will be no pheasants left for other people at all."

"I don't mind being chaffed," he told her, with gravity. "So long as you're good-natured, you can make game of me all you like. But I'm in earnest, all the same. I'm not going to play the fool with my money and my power. I have great projects. Sometime I'll tell you about them. They will all be put through--every one of them. And you wouldn't object to talking them over with me--would you?"

"My opinion on 'projects' is of no earthly value--to myself or anyone else."

"But still you'd give me your advice if I asked it?" he persisted.

"Especially if it was a project in which you were concerned?"

After a moment's constrained silence she said to him, "You must have no projects, Mr. Thorpe, in which I am concerned. This talk is all very wide of the mark. You are not ent.i.tled to speak as if I were mixed up with your affairs. There is nothing whatever to warrant it."

"But how can you help being in my projects if I put you there, and keep you there?" he asked her, with gleeful boldness. "And just ask yourself whether you do really want to help it. Why should you? You've seen enough of me to know that I can be a good friend. And I'm the kind of friend who amounts to something--who can and will do things for those he likes. What obligation are you under to turn away that kind of a friend, when he offers himself to you? Put that question plainly to yourself."

"But you are not in a position to nominate the questions that I am to put to myself," she said. The effort to import decision into her tone and manner was apparent. "That is what I desire you to understand. We must not talk any more about me. I am not the topic of conversation."

"But first let me finish what I wanted to say," he insisted. "My talk won't break any bones. You'd be wrong not to listen to it--because it's meant to help you--to be of use to you. This is the thing, Lady Cressage: You're in a particularly hard and unpleasant position. Like my friend Plowden"--he watched her face narrowly but in vain, in the dull light, for any change at mention of the name--"like my friend Plowden you have a position and t.i.tle to keep up, and next to nothing to keep it up on. But he can go down into the City and make money--or try to. He can accept Directorships and tips about the market and so on, from men who are disposed to be good to him, and who see how he can be of use to them--and in that way he can do something for himself. But there is the difference: you can't do these things, or you think you can't, which is the same thing. You're all fenced in; you're surrounded by notice-boards, telling you that you mustn't walk this way or look that way; that you mustn't say this thing or do the other. Now your friend down ahead there--Miss Madden--she doesn't take much stock in notice-boards. In fact, she feeds the gulls, simply because she's forbidden to do it. But you--you don't feed any gulls, and yet you're annoyed with yourself that you don't. Isn't that the case? Haven't I read you right?"

She seemed to have submitted to his choice of a topic. There was no touch of expostulation in the voice with which she answered him. "I see what you think you mean," she said.

"Think!" he responded, with self-confident emphasis. "I'm not 'thinking.' I'm reading an open book. As I say, you're not contented--you're not happy; you don't try to pretend that you are.

But all the same, though you hate it, you accept it. You think that you really must obey your notice-boards. Now what I tell you you ought to do is to take a different view. Why should you put up all this barbed wire between yourself and your friends? It doesn't do anybody else any good--and it does you harm. Why, for example, should Plowden be free to take things from me, and you not?"

She glanced at him, with a cold half-smile in her eye. "Unfortunately I was not asked to join your Board."

He pressed his lips tightly together, and regarded her meditatively as he turned these words over in his mind. "What I'm doing for Plowden,"

he said with slow vagueness meanwhile, "it isn't so much because he's on the Board. He's of no special use to me there. But he was nice to me at a time when that meant everything in the world to me--and I don't forget things of that sort. Besides, I like him--and it pleases me to let him in for a share of my good fortune. See? It's my way of enjoying myself.

Well now, I like you too, and why shouldn't I be allowed to let you in also for a share of that good fortune? You think there's a difference, but I tell you it's imaginary--pure moonshine. Why, the very people whose opinion you're afraid of--what did they do themselves when the South African craze was on? I'm told that the sc.u.m of the earth had only to own some Chartered shares, and pretend to be 'in the know' about them--and they could dine with as many d.u.c.h.esses as they liked. I knew one or two of the men who were in that deal--I wouldn't have them in my house--but it seems there wasn't any other house they couldn't go to in London."