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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/5375.txt b/5375.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d9a2cbc --- /dev/null +++ b/5375.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3234 @@ +Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 2, by Winston Churchill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 2 + +Author: Winston Churchill + +Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5375] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 2 *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +A MODERN CHRONICLE + +By Winston Churchill + + +BOOK I. + + +Volume 2. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE OLYMPIAN ORDER + +Lying back in the chair of the Pullman and gazing over the wide Hudson +shining in the afternoon sun, Honora's imagination ran riot until the +seeming possibilities of life became infinite. At every click of the +rails she was drawing nearer to that great world of which she had +dreamed, a world of country houses inhabited by an Olympian order. To be +sure, Susan, who sat reading in the chair behind her, was but a humble +representative of that order--but Providence sometimes makes use of such +instruments. The picture of the tall and brilliant Ethel Wing standing +behind the brass rail of the platform of the car was continually +recurring to Honora as emblematic: of Ethel, in a blue tailor-made gown +trimmed with buff braid, and which fitted her slender figure with +military exactness. Her hair, the colour of the yellowest of gold, in the +manner of its finish seemed somehow to give the impression of that metal; +and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by a small +colonial cocked hat. If the truth be told, Honora had secretly idealized +Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and tendency to +ridicule delightful. Militant--that was indeed Ethel's note--militant +and positive. + +"You're not going home with Susan!" she had exclaimed, making a little +face when Honora had told her. "They say that Silverdale is as slow as a +nunnery--and you're on your knees all the time. You ought to have come to +Newport with me." + +It was characteristic of Miss Wing that she seemed to have taken no +account of the fact that she had neglected to issue this alluring +invitation. Life at Silverdale slow! How could it be slow amidst such +beauty and magnificence? + +The train was stopping at a new little station on which hung the legend, +in gold letters, "Sutton." The sun was well on his journey towards the +western hills. Susan had touched her on the shoulder. + +"Here we are, Honora," she said, and added, with an unusual tremor in her +voice, "at last!" + +On the far side of the platform a yellow, two-seated wagon was waiting, +and away they drove through the village, with its old houses and its +sleepy streets and its orchards, and its ancient tavern dating from +stage-coach days. Just outside of it, on the tree-dotted slope of a long +hill, was a modern brick building, exceedingly practical in appearance, +surrounded by spacious grounds enclosed in a paling fence. That, Susan +said, was the Sutton Home. + +"Your mother's charity?" + +A light came into the girl's eyes. + +"So you have heard of it? Yes, it is the, thing that interests mother +more than anything else in the world." + +"Oh," said Honora, "I hope she will let me go through it." + +"I'm sure she will want to take you there to-morrow," answered Susan, and +she smiled. + +The road wound upwards, by the valley of a brook, through the hills, now +wooded, now spread with pastures that shone golden green in the evening +light, the herds gathering at the gate-bars. Presently they came to a +gothic-looking stone building, with a mediaeval bridge thrown across the +stream in front of it, and massive gates flung open. As they passed, +Honora had a glimpse of a blue driveway under the arch of the forest. An +elderly woman looked out at them through the open half of a leaded +lattice. + +"That's the Chamberlin estate," Susan volunteered. "Mr. Chamberlin has +built a castle on the top of that hill." + +Honora caught her breath. + +"Are many of the places here like that?" she asked. Susan laughed. + +"Some people don't think the place is very--appropriate," she contented +herself with replying. + +A little later, as they climbed higher, other houses could be discerned +dotted about the country-side, nearly all of them varied expressions of +the passion for a new architecture which seemed to possess the rich. Most +of them were in conspicuous positions, and surrounded by wide acres. +Each, to Honora, was an inspiration. + +"I had no idea there were so many people here," she said. + +"I'm afraid Sutton is becoming fashionable," answered Susan. + +"And don't you want it to?" asked Honora. + +"It was very nice before," said Susan, quietly. + +Honora was silent. They turned in between two simple stone pillars that +divided a low wall, overhung from the inside by shrubbery growing under +the forest. Susan seized her friend's hand and pressed it. + +"I'm always so glad to get back here," she whispered. "I hope you'll like +it." + +Honora returned the pressure. + +The grey road forked, and forked again. Suddenly the forest came to an +end in a sort of premeditated tangle of wild garden, and across a wide +lawn the great house loomed against the western sky. Its architecture was +of the '60's and '70's, with a wide porte-cochere that sheltered the high +entrance doors. These were both flung open, a butler and two footmen were +standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within. Honora climbed +the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall with a +black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse of two +huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house spread with +wicker chairs and tables. Out of a group of people at the farther end of +this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and clasped Susan in +her arms. + +"And is this Honora? How do you do, my dear? I had the pleasure of +knowing you when you were much younger." + +Honora, too, was gathered to that ample bosom. Released, she beheld a +lady in a mauve satin gown, at the throat of which a cameo brooch was +fastened. Mrs. Holt's face left no room for conjecture as to the +character of its possessor. Her hair, of a silvering blend, parted in the +middle, fitted tightly to her head. She wore earrings. In short, her +appearance was in every way suggestive of momentum, of a force which the +wise would respect. + +"Where are you, Joshua?" she said. "This is the baby we brought from +Nice. Come and tell me whether you would recognize her." + +Mr. Holt released his--daughter. He had a mild blue eye, white +mutton-chop whiskers, and very thin hands, and his tweed suit was +decidedly the worse for wear. + +"I can't say that I should, Elvira," he replied; "although it is not hard +to believe that such a beautiful baby should, prove to be such a--er +--good-looking young woman." + +"I've always felt very grateful to you for bringing me back," said +Honora. + +"Tut, tut, child," said Mrs. Holt; "there was no one else to do it. And +be careful how you pay young women compliments, Joshua. They grow vain +enough. By the way, my dear, what ever became of your maternal +grandfather, old Mr. Allison--wasn't that his name?" + +"He died when I was very young," replied Honora. + +"He was too fond of the good things of this life," said Mrs. Holt. + +"My dear Elvira!" her husband protested. + +"I can't help it, he was," retorted that lady. "I am a judge of human +nature, and I was relieved, I can tell you, my dear" (to Honora), "when I +saw your uncle and aunt on the wharf that morning. I knew that I had +confided you to good hands." + +"They have done everything for me, Mrs. Holt," said Honora. + +The good lady patted her approvingly on the shoulder. + +"I'm sure of it, my dear," she said. "And I am glad to see you appreciate +it. And now you must renew your acquaintance with the family." + +A sister and a brother, Honora had already learned from Susan, had died +since she had crossed the ocean with them. Robert and Joshua, Junior, +remained. Both were heavyset, with rather stern faces, both had +close-cropped, tan-coloured mustaches and wide jaws, with blue eyes like +Susan's. Both were, with women at least, what the French would call +difficult--Robert less so than Joshua. They greeted Honora reservedly +and--she could not help feeling--a little suspiciously. And their +appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go +with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin. +This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar +revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose +clothes were creased at the knees and across the back. + +As for their wives, Mrs. Joshua was a merry, brown-eyed little lady +already inclining to stoutness, and Honora felt at home with her at once. +Mrs. Robert was tall and thin, with an olive face and dark eyes which +gave the impression of an uncomfortable penetration. She was dressed +simply in a shirtwaist and a dark skirt, but Honora thought her striking +looking. + +The grandchildren, playing on and off the porch, seemed legion, and they +were besieging Susan. In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes +and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who +was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with +desperation. When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them, +she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away in +cribs. + +"I'm sure you love children, don't you?" said Mrs. Joshua. She spoke +impulsively, and yet with a kind of childlike shyness. + +"I adore them," exclaimed Honora. + +A trellised arbour (which some years later would have been called a +pergola) led from the porch up the hill to an old-fashioned summer-house +on the crest. And thither, presently, Susan led Honora for a view of the +distant western hills silhouetted in black against a flaming western sky, +before escorting her to her room. The vastness of the house, the width of +the staircase, and the size of the second-story hall impressed our +heroine. + +"I'll send a maid to you later, dear," Susan said. "If you care to lie +down for half an hour, no one will disturb you. And I hope you will be +comfortable." + +Comfortable! When the door had closed, Honora glanced around her and +sighed, "comfort" seemed such a strangely inadequate word. She was +reminded of the illustrations she had seen of English country houses. The +bed alone would almost have filled her little room at home. On the +farther side, in an alcove, was a huge dressing-table; a fire was laid in +the grate of the marble mantel, the curtains in the bay window were +tightly drawn, and near by was a lounge with a reading-light. A huge +mahogany wardrobe occupied one corner; in another stood a pier glass, and +in another, near the lounge, was a small bookcase filled with books. +Honora looked over them curiously. "Robert Elsmere" and a life of Christ, +"Mr. Isaacs," a book of sermons by an eminent clergyman, "Innocents +Abroad," Hare's "Walks in Rome," "When a Man's Single," by Barrie, a book +of meditations, and "Organized Charities for Women." + +Adjoining the bedroom was a bathroom in proportion, evidently all her +own,--with a huge porcelain tub and a table set with toilet bottles +containing liquids of various colours. + +Dreamily, Honora slipped on the new dressing-gown Aunt Mary had made for +her, and took a book out of the bookcase. It was the volume of sermons. +But she could not read: she was forever looking about the room, and +thinking of the family she had met downstairs. Of course, when one lived +in a house like this, one could afford to dress and act as one liked. She +was aroused from her reflections by the soft but penetrating notes of a +Japanese gong, followed by a gentle knock on the door and the entrance of +an elderly maid, who informed her it was time to dress for dinner. + +"If you'll excuse me, Miss," said that hitherto silent individual when +the operation was completed, "you do look lovely." + +Honora, secretly, was of that opinion too as she surveyed herself in the +long glass. The simple summer silk, of a deep and glowing pink, rivalled +the colour in her cheeks, and contrasted with the dark and shining masses +of her hair; and on her neck glistened a little pendant of her mother's +jewels, which Aunt Mary, with Cousin Eleanor's assistance, had had set in +New York. Honora's figure was that of a woman of five and twenty: her +neck was a slender column, her head well set, and the look of race, which +had been hers since childhood, was at nineteen more accentuated. All this +she saw, and went down the stairs in a kind of exultation. And when on +the threshold of the drawing-room she paused, the conversation suddenly +ceased. Mr. Holt and his sons got up somewhat precipitately, and Mrs. +Holt came forward to meet her. + +"I hope you weren't waiting for me," said Honora, timidly. + +"No indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. Tucking Honora's hand under her +arm, she led the way majestically to the dining-room, a large apartment +with a dimly lighted conservatory at the farther end, presided over by +the decorous butler and his assistants. A huge chandelier with prisms +hung over the flowers at the centre of the table, which sparkled with +glass and silver, while dishes of vermilion and yellow fruits relieved +the whiteness of the cloth. Honora found herself beside Mr. Holt, who +looked more shrivelled than ever in his evening clothes. And she was +about to address him when, with a movement as though to forestall her, he +leaned forward convulsively and began a mumbling grace. + +The dinner itself was more like a ceremony than a meal, and as it +proceeded, Honora found it increasingly difficult to rid herself of a +curious feeling of being on probation. + +Joshua, who sat on her other side and ate prodigiously, scarcely +addressed a word to her; but she gathered from his remarks to his father +and brother that he was interested in cows. And Mr. Holt was almost +exclusively occupied in slowly masticating the special dishes which the +butler impressively laid before him. He asked her a few questions about +Miss Turner's school, but it was not until she had admired the mass of +peonies in the centre of the table that his eyes brightened, and he +smiled. + +"You like flowers?" he asked. + +"I love them," slid Honora. + +"I am the gardener here," he said. "You must see my garden, Miss +Leffingwell. I am in it by half-past six every morning, rain or shine." + +Honora looked up, and surprised Mrs. Robert's eyes fixed on her with the +same strange expression she had noticed on her arrival. And for some +senseless reason, she flushed. + +The conversation was chiefly carried on by kindly little Mrs. Joshua and +by Mrs. Holt, who seemed at once to preside and to dominate. She praised +Honora's gown, but left a lingering impression that she thought her +overdressed, without definitely saying so. And she made innumerable--and +often embarrassing--inquiries about Honora's aunt and uncle, and her life +in St. Louis, and her friends there, and how she had happened to go to +Sutcliffe to school. Sometimes Honora blushed, but she answered them all +good-naturedly. And when at length the meal had marched sedately down to +the fruit, Mrs. Holt rose and drew Honora out of the dining room. + +"It is a little hard on you, my dear," she said, "to give you so much +family on your arrival. But there are some other people coming to-morrow, +when it will be gayer, I hope, for you and Susan." + +"It is so good of you and Susan to want me, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, +"I am enjoying it so much. I have never been in a big country house like +this, and I am glad there is no one else here. I have heard my aunt speak +of you so often, and tell how kind you were to take charge of me, that I +have always hoped to know you sometime or other. And it seems the +strangest of coincidences that I should have roomed with Susan at +Sutcliffe." + +"Susan has grown very fond of you," said Mrs. Holt, graciously. "We are +very glad to have you, my dear, and I must own that I had a curiosity to +see you again. Your aunt struck me as a good and sensible woman, and it +was a positive relief to know that you were to be confided to her care." +Mrs. Holt, however, shook her head and regarded Honora, and her next +remark might have been taken as a clew to her thoughts. "But we are not +very gay at Silverdale, Honora." + +Honora's quick intuition detected the implication of a frivolity which +even her sensible aunt had not been able to eradicate. + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she cried, "I shall be so happy here, just seeing things +and being among you. And I am so interested in the little bit I have seen +already. I caught a glimpse of your girls' home on my way from the +station. I hope you will take me there." + +Mrs. Holt gave her a quick look, but beheld in Honora's clear eyes only +eagerness and ingenuousness. + +The change in the elderly lady's own expression, and incidentally in the +atmosphere which enveloped her, was remarkable. + +"Would you really like to go, my dear?" + +"Oh, yes indeed," cried Honora. "You see, I have heard so much of it, and +I should like to write my aunt about it. She is interested in the work +you are doing, and she has kept a magazine with an article in it, and a +picture of the institution." + +"Dear me!" exclaimed the lady, now visibly pleased. "It is a very modest +little work, my dear. I had no idea that--out in St. Louis--that the +beams of my little candle had carried so far. Indeed you shall see it, +Honora. We will go down the first thing in the morning." + +Mrs. Robert, who had been sitting on the other side of the room, rose +abruptly and came towards them. There was something very like a smile on +her face,--although it wasn't really a smile--as she bent over and kissed +her mother-in-law on the cheek. + +"I am glad to hear you are interested in--charities, Miss Leffingwell," +she said. + +Honora's face grew warm. + +"I have not so far had very much to do with them, I am afraid," she +answered. + +"How should she?" demanded Mrs. Holt. "Gwendolen, you're not going up +already?" + +"I have some letters to write," said Mrs. Robert. + +"Gwen has helped me immeasurably," said Mrs. Holt, looking after the tall +figure of her daughter-in-law, "but she has a curious, reserved +character. You have to know her, my dear. She is not at all like Susan, +for instance." + +Honora awoke the next morning to a melody, and lay for some minutes in a +delicious semi-consciousness, wondering where she was. Presently she +discovered that the notes were those of a bird on a tree immediately +outside of her window--a tree of wonderful perfection, the lower branches +of which swept the ground. Other symmetrical trees, of many varieties, +dotted a velvet lawn, which formed a great natural terrace above the +forested valley of Silver Brook. On the grass, dew-drenched cobwebs +gleamed in the early sun, and the breeze that stirred the curtains was +charged with the damp, fresh odours of the morning. Voices caught her +ear, and two figures appeared in the distance. One she recognized as Mr. +Holt, and the other was evidently a gardener. The gilt clock on the +mantel pointed to a quarter of seven. + +It is far too late in this history to pretend that Honora was, by +preference, an early riser, and therefore it must have been the +excitement caused by her surroundings that made her bathe and dress with +alacrity that morning. A housemaid was dusting the stairs as she +descended into the empty hall. She crossed the lawn, took a path through +the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned +garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the +winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from +his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a +trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity at +dinner the night before, was almost effusive--and a little pathetic. + +"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, "up so early?" He held up +forbiddingly a mould-covered palm. "I can't shake hands with you." + +Honora laughed. + +"I couldn't resist the temptation to see your garden," she said. + +A gentle light gleamed in his blue eyes, and he paused before a trellis +of June roses. With his gardening knife he cut three of them, and held +them gallantly against her white gown. Her sensitive colour responded as +she thanked him, and she pinned them deftly at her waist. + +"You like gardens?" he said. + +"I was brought up with them," she answered; "I mean," she corrected +herself swiftly, "in a very modest way. My uncle is passionately fond of +flowers, and he makes our little yard bloom with them all summer. But of +course," Honora added, "I've never seen anything like this." + +"It has been a life work," answered Mr. Holt, proudly, "and yet I feel as +though I had not yet begun. Come, I will show you the peonies--they are +at their best--before I go in and make myself respectable for breakfast." + +Ten minutes later, as they approached the house in amicable and even +lively conversation, they beheld Susan and Mrs. Robert standing on the +steps under the porte-cochere, watching them. + +"Why, Honora," cried Susan, "how energetic you are! I actually had a +shock when I went to your room and found you'd gone. I'll have to write +Miss Turner." + +"Don't," pleaded Honora; "you see, I had every inducement to get up." + +"She has been well occupied," put in Mr. Holt. "She has been admiring my +garden." + +"Indeed I have," said Honora. + +"Oh, then, you have won father's heart!" cried Susan. Gwendolen Holt +smiled. Her eyes were fixed upon the roses in Honora's belt. + +"Good morning, Miss Leffingwell," she said, simply. + +Mr. Holt having removed the loam from his hands, the whole family, +excepting Joshua, Junior, and including an indefinite number of children, +and Carroll, the dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped +into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table +at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible. +Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a +chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest. Honora +sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that Mrs. +Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible reverently, and +announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the floor and leaned +their elbows on the seats of their chairs. Honora did likewise, wondering +at the facility with which Mr. Holt worded his appeal, and at the number +of things he found to pray for. Her knees had begun to ache before he had +finished. + +At breakfast such a cheerful spirit prevailed that Honora began almost to +feel at home. Even Robert indulged occasionally in raillery. + +"Where in the world is Josh?" asked Mrs. Holt, after they were seated. + +"I forgot to tell you, mother," little Mrs. Joshua chirped up, "that he +got up at an unearthly hour, and went over to Grafton to look at a cow." + +"A cow!" sighed Mrs: Holt. "Oh, dear, I might have known it. You must +understand, Honora, that every member of the Holt family has a hobby. +Joshua's is Jerseys." + +"I'm sure I should adore them if I lived in the country," Honora +declared. + +"If you and Joshua would only take that Sylvester farm, and build a +house, Annie," said Mr. Holt, munching the dried bread which was +specially prepared for him, "I should be completely happy. Then," he +added, turning to Honora, "I should have both my sons settled on the +place. Robert and Gwen are sensible in building." + +"It's cheaper to live with you, granddad," laughed Mrs. Joshua. "Josh +says if we do that, he has more money to buy cows." + +At this moment a footman entered, and presented Mrs. Holt with some mail +on a silver tray. + +"The Vicomte de Toqueville is coming this afternoon, Joshua," she +announced, reading rapidly from a sheet on which was visible a large +crown. "He landed in New York last week, and writes to know if I could +have him." + +"Another of mother's menagerie," remarked Robert. + +"I don't think that's nice of you, Robert," said his mother. "The Vicomte +was very kind to your father and me in Paris, and invited us to his +chateau in Provence." + +Robert was sceptical. + +"Are you sure he had one?" he insisted. + +Even Mr. Holt laughed. + +"Robert," said his mother, "I wish Gwen could induce you to travel more. +Perhaps you would learn that all foreigners aren't fortune-hunters." + +I've had an opportunity to observe the ones who come over here, mother." + +"I won't have a prospective guest discussed," Mrs. Holt declared, with +finality. "Joshua, you remember my telling you last spring that Martha +Spence's son called on me?" she asked. "He is in business with a man +named Dallam, I believe, and making a great deal of money for a young +man. He is just a year younger than you, Robert." + +"Do you mean that fat, tow-headed boy that used to come up here and eat +melons and ride my pony?" inquired Robert. "Howard Spence?" + +Mrs. Holt smiled. + +"He isn't fat any longer, Robert. Indeed, he's quite good-looking. Since +his mother died, I had lost trace of him. But I found a photograph of +hers when I was clearing up my desk some months ago, and sent it to him, +and he came to thank me. I forgot to tell you that I invited him for a +fortnight any time he chose, and he has just written to ask if he may +come now. I regret to say that he's on the Stock Exchange--but I was very +fond of his mother. It doesn't seem to me quite a legitimate business." + +"Why!" exclaimed little Mrs. Joshua, unexpectedly, "I'm given to +understand that the Stock Exchange is quite aristocratic in these days." + +"I'm afraid I am old-fashioned, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, rising. "It has +always seemed to me little better than a gambling place. Honora, if you +still wish to go to the Girls' Home, I have ordered the carriage in a +quarter of an hour." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS + +Honora's interest in the Institution was so lively, and she asked so many +questions and praised so highly the work with which the indiscreet young +women were occupied that Mrs. Holt patted her hand as they drove +homeward. + +"My dear," she said, "I begin to wish I'd adopted you myself. Perhaps, +later on, we can find a husband for you, and you will marry and settle +down near us here at Silverdale, and then you can help me with the work." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she replied, "I should so like to help you, I mean. And +it would be wonderful to live in such a place. And as for marriage, it +seems such a long way off that somehow I never think of it." + +"Naturally," ejaculated Mrs. Holt, with approval, "a young girl of your +age should not. But, my dear, I am afraid you are destined to have many +admirers. If you had not been so well brought up, and were not naturally +so sensible, I should fear for you." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt!" exclaimed Honora, deprecatingly, and blushing very +prettily. + +"Whatever else I am," said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, "I am not a flatterer. +I am telling you something for your own good--which you probably know +already." + +Honora was discreetly silent. She thought of the proud and unsusceptible +George Hanbury, whom she had cast down from the tower of his sophomore +dignity with such apparent ease; and of certain gentlemen at home, young +and middle-aged, who had behaved foolishly during the Christmas holidays. + +At lunch both the Roberts and the Joshuas were away. + +Afterwards, they romped with the children--she and Susan. They were shy +at first, especially the third Joshua, but Honora captivated him by +playing two sets of tennis in the broiling sun, at the end of which +exercise he regarded her with a new-born admiration in his eyes. He was +thirteen. + +"I didn't think you were that kind at all," he said. + +"What kind did you think I was?" asked Honora, passing her arm around his +shoulder as they walked towards the house. + +The boy grew scarlet. + +"Oh, I didn't think you--you could play tennis," he stammered. + +Honora stopped, and seized his chin and tilted his face upward. + +"Now, Joshua," she said, "look at me and say that over again." + +"Well," he replied desperately, "I thought you wouldn't want to get all +mussed up and hot." + +"That's better," said Honora. "You thought I was vain, didn't you?" + +"But I don't think so any more," he avowed passionately. "I think you're +a trump. And we'll play again to-morrow, won't we?" + +"We'll play any day you like," she declared. + +It is unfair to suppose that the arrival of a real vicomte and of a +young, good-looking, and successful member of the New York Stock Exchange +were responsible for Honora's appearance, an hour later, in the +embroidered linen gown which Cousin Eleanor had given her that spring. +Tea was already in progress on the porch, and if a hush in the +conversation and the scraping of chairs is any sign of a sensation, this +happened when our heroine appeared in the doorway. And Mrs. Holt, in the +act of lifting the hot-water kettle; put it down again. Whether or not +there was approval in the lady's delft-blue eye, Honora could not have +said. The Vicomte, with the graceful facility of his race, had +differentiated himself from the group and stood before her. As soon as +the words of introduction were pronounced, he made a bow that was a +tribute in itself, exaggerated in its respect. + +"It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle," he murmured, but his eyes were more +eloquent. + +A description of him in his own language leaped into Honora's mind, so +much did he appear to have walked out of one of the many yellow-backed +novels she had read. He was not tall, but beautifully made, and his coat +was quite absurdly cut in at the waist; his mustache was en-croc, and its +points resembled those of the Spanish bayonets in the conservatory: he +might have been three and thirty, and he was what the novels described as +'un peu fane' which means that he had seen the world: his eyes were +extraordinarily bright, black, and impenetrable. + +A greater contrast to the Vicomte than Mr. Howard Spence would have been +difficult to find. He was Honora's first glimpse of Finance, of the +powers that travelled in private cars and despatched ships across the +ocean. And in our modern mythology, he might have stood for the god of +Prosperity. Prosperity is pink, and so was Mr. Spence, in two places, +--his smooth-shaven cheeks and his shirt. His flesh had a certain +firmness, but he was not stout; he was merely well fed, as Prosperity +should be. His features were comparatively regular, his mustache a light +brown, his eyes hazel. The fact that he came from that mysterious +metropolis, the heart of which is Wall Street, not only excused but +legitimized the pink shirt and the neatly knotted green tie, the +pepper-and-salt check suit that was loose and at the same time +well-fitting, and the jewelled ring on his plump little finger. On the +whole, Mr. Spence was not only prepossessing, but he contrived to give +Honora, as she shook his hand, the impression of being brought a step +nearer to the national source of power. Unlike the Vicomte, he did not +appear to have been instantly and mortally wounded upon her arrival on +the scene, but his greeting was flattering, and he remained by her side +instead of returning to that of Mrs. Robert. + +"When did you come up?" he asked. + +"Only yesterday," answered Honora. + +"New York," said Mr. Spence, producing a gold cigarette case on which his +monogram was largely and somewhat elaborately engraved, "New York is +played out this time of year--isn't it? I dropped in at Sherry's last +night for dinner, and there weren't thirty people there." + +Honora had heard of Sherry's as a restaurant where one dined fabulously, +and she tried to imagine the cosmopolitan and blissful existence which +permitted "dropping in at" such a place. Moreover, Mr. Spence was plainly +under the impression that she too "came up" from New York, and it was +impossible not to be a little pleased. + +"It must be a relief to get into the country," she ventured. + +Mr. Spence glanced around him expressively, and then looked at her with a +slight smile. The action and the smile--to which she could not refrain +from responding--seemed to establish a tacit understanding between them. +It was natural that he should look upon Silverdale as a slow place, and +there was something delicious in his taking, for granted that she shared +this opinion. She wondered a little wickedly what he would say when he +knew the truth about her, and this was the birth of a resolution that his +interest should not flag. + +"Oh, I can stand the country when it is properly inhabited," he said, and +their eyes met in laughter. + +"How many inhabitants do you require?" she asked. + +"Well," he said brazenly, "the right kind of inhabitant is worth a +thousand of the wrong kind. It is a good rule in business, when you come +across a gilt-edged security, to make a specialty of it." + +Honora found the compliment somewhat singular. But she was prepared to +forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York, +which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked. But not +knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to +Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question. Then, as though she +were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced to encounter an +appealing glance from the Vicomte, who was searching with the courage of +despair for an English word, which his hostess awaited in stoical +silence. He was trying to give his impressions of Silverdale, in +comparison to country places abroad, while Mrs. Robert regarded him +enigmatically, and Susan sympathetically. Honora had an almost +irresistible desire to laugh. + +"Ah, Madame," he cried, still looking at Honora, "will you have the +kindness to permit me to walk about ever so little?" + +"Certainly, Vicomte, and I will go with you. Get my parasol, Susan. +Perhaps you would like to come, too, Howard," she added to Mr. Spence; +"it has been so long since you were here, and we have made many changes." + +"And you, Mademoiselle," said the Vicomte to Honora, you will come--yes? +You are interested in landscape?" + +"I love the country," said Honora. + +"It is a pleasure to have a guest who is so appreciative," said Mrs. +Holt. "Miss Leffingwell was up at seven this morning, and in the garden +with my husband." + +"At seven!" exclaimed the Vicomte; "you American young ladies are +wonderful. For example--" and he was about to approach her to enlarge on +this congenial theme when Susan arrived with the parasol, which Mrs. Holt +put in his hands. + +"We'll begin, I think, with the view from the summer house," she said. +"And I will show you how our famous American landscape architect, Mr. +Olmstead, has treated the slope." + +There was something humorous, and a little pathetic in the contrasted +figures of the Vicomte and their hostess crossing the lawn in front of +them. Mr. Spence paused a moment to light his cigarette, and he seemed to +derive infinite pleasure from this juxtaposition. + +"Got left,--didn't he?" he said. + +To this observation there was, obviously, no answer. + +"I'm not very strong on foreigners," he declared. "An American is good +enough for me. And there's something about that fellow which would make +me a little slow in trusting him with a woman I cared for." + +"If you are beginning to worry over Mrs. Holt," said Honora, "we'd better +walk a little faster." + +Mr. Spence's delight at this sally was so unrestrained as to cause the +couple ahead to turn. The Vicomte's expression was reproachful. + +"Where's Susan?" asked Mrs. Holt. + +"I think she must have gone in the house," Honora answered. + +"You two seem to be having a very good time." + +"Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well," said Mr. Spence, no doubt for the +benefit of the Vicomte. And he added in a confidential tone, "Aren't we?" + +"Not on the subject of the Vicomte," she replied promptly. "I like him. I +like French people." + +"What!" he exclaimed, halting in his steps, "you don't take that man +seriously?" + +"I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously," said Honora. + +"There's a blindness about women," he declared, "that's incomprehensible. +They'll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are +beautifully engraved. If you were a man, you wouldn't trust that +Frenchman to give you change for five dollars." + +"French people," proclaimed Honora, "have a light touch of which we +Americans are incapable. We do not know how to relax." + +"A light touch!" cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, "that about describes the +Vicomte." + +"I'm sure you do him an injustice," said Honora. + +"We'll see," said Mr. Spence. "Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer +people like that. She's noted for it." He turned to her. How did you +happen to come here?" + +"I came with Susan," she replied, amusedly, "from boarding-school at +Sutcliffe." + +"From boarding-school!" + +She rather enjoyed his surprise. + +"You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?" + +"How old did you think I was?" she asked. + +"Older than Susan," he said surveying her. + +"No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen." + +"But I thought--" he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette. + +Her eyes lighted mischievously. + +"You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good +deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange +you didn't know me. But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one +can't know everybody there." + +"And--where do you come from, if I may ask?" he said. + +"St. Louis. I was brought to this country before I was two years old, +from France. Mrs. Holt brought me. And I have never been out of St. Louis +since, except to go to Sutcliffe. There you have my history. Mrs. Holt +would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't." + +"And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?" + +Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment. + +"And how do you happen to be here?" she demanded. "Are you a member of +--of the menagerie?" + +He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed. This, of +course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity. Five +minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in +saying that the recital of Honora's biography had not made a difference +with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at his +mistake. What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of +conjecture. He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this +unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her +regard. And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she +was nobody. He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or +premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often in +real danger at the moment when they feel most secure. + +It is certain that his manner changed, and during the rest of the walk +she listened demurely when he talked about Wall Street, with casual +references to the powers that be. It was evident that Mr. Howard Spence +was one who had his fingers on the pulse of affairs. Ambition leaped in +him. + +They reached the house in advance of Mrs. Holt and the Vicomte, and +Honora went to her room. + +At dinner, save for a little matter of a casual remark when Mr. Holt had +assumed the curved attitude in which he asked grace, Mr. Spence had a +veritable triumph. Self-confidence was a quality which Honora admired. He +was undaunted by Mrs. Holt, and advised Mrs. Robert, if she had any +pin-money, to buy New York Central; and he predicted an era of prosperity +which would be unexampled in the annals of the country. Among other +powers, he quoted the father of Honora's schoolmate, Mr. James Wing, as +authority for this prophecy. He sat next to Susan, who maintained her +usual maidenly silence, but Honora, from time to time, and as though by +accident, caught his eye. Even Mr. Holt, when not munching his dried +bread, was tempted to make some inquiries about the market. + +"So far as I am concerned," Mrs. Holt announced suddenly, "nothing can +convince me that it is not gambling." + +"My dear Elvira!" protested Mr. Holt. + +"I can't help it," said that lady, stoutly; "I'm old-fashioned, I +suppose. But it seems to me like legalized gambling." + +Mr. Spence took this somewhat severe arraignment of his career in +admirable good nature. And if these be such a thing as an implied wink, +Honora received one as he proceeded to explain what he was pleased to +call the bona-fide nature of the transactions of Dallam and Spence. + +A discussion ensued in which, to her surprise, even the ordinarily +taciturn Joshua took a part, and maintained that the buying and selling +of blooded stock was equally gambling. To this his father laughingly +agreed. The Vicomte, who sat on Mrs. Holt's right, and who apparently was +determined not to suffer a total eclipse without a struggle, gallantly +and unexpectedly came to his hostess' rescue, though she treated him as a +doubtful ally. This was because he declared with engaging frankness that +in France the young men of his monde had a jeunesse: he, who spoke to +them, had gambled; everybody gambled in France, where it was regarded as +an innocent amusement. He had friends on the Bourse, and he could see no +difference in principle between betting on the red at Monte Carlo and the +rise and fall of the shares of la Compagnie des Metaux, for example. +After completing his argument, he glanced triumphantly about the table, +until his restless black eyes encountered Honora's, seemingly seeking a +verdict. She smiled impartially. + +The subject of finance lasted through the dinner, and the Vicomte +proclaimed himself amazed with the evidences of wealth which confronted +him on every side in this marvellous country. And once, when he was at a +loss for a word, Honora astonished and enchanted him by supplying it. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "I was sure when I first beheld you +that you spoke my language! And with such an accent!" + +"I have studied it all my life, Vicomte," she said, modestly, "and I had +the honour to be born in your country. I have always wished to see it +again." + +Monsieur de Toqueville ventured the fervent hope that her wish might soon +be gratified, but not before he returned to France. He expressed himself +in French, and in a few moments she found herself deep in a discussion +with him in that tongue. While she talked, her veins seemed filled with +fire; and she was dimly and automatically aware of the disturbance about +her, as though she were creating a magnetic storm that interfered with +all other communication. Mr. Holt's nightly bezique, which he played with +Susan, did not seem to be going as well as usual, and elsewhere +conversation was a palpable pretence. Mr. Spence, who was attempting to +entertain the two daughters-in-law, was clearly distrait--if his glances +meant anything. Robert and Joshua had not appeared, and Mrs. Holt, at the +far end of the room under the lamp, regarded Honora from time to time +over the edge of the evening newspaper. + +In his capacity as a student of American manners, an unsuspected if +scattered knowledge on Honora's part of that portion of French literature +included between Theophile Gautier and Gyp at once dumfounded and +delighted the Vicomte de Toqueville. And he was curious to know whether, +amongst American young ladies, Miss Leffingwell was the exception or the +rule. Those eyes of his, which had paid to his hostess a tender respect, +snapped when they spoke to our heroine, and presently he boldly abandoned +literature to declare that the fates alone had sent her to Silverdale at +the time of his visit. + +It was at this interesting juncture that Mrs. Holt rattled her newspaper +a little louder than usual, arose majestically, and addressed Mrs. +Joshua. + +"Annie, perhaps you will play for us," she said, as she crossed the room, +and added to Honora: "I had no idea you spoke French so well, my dear. +What have you and Monsieur de Toqueville been talking about?" + +It was the Vicomte who, springing to his feet, replied nimbly: +"Mademoiselle has been teaching me much of the customs of your country." + +"And what," inquired Mrs. Holt, "have you been teaching Mademoiselle?" + +The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders expressively. + +"Ah, Madame, I wish I were qualified to be her teacher. The education of +American young ladies is truly extraordinary." + +"I was about to tell Monsieur de Toqueville," put in Honora, wickedly, +"that he must see your Institution as soon as possible, and the work your +girls are doing." + +"Madame," said the Vicomte, after a scarcely perceptible pause, "I await +my opportunity and your kindness." + +"I will take you to-morrow," said Mrs. Holt. + +At this instant a sound closely resembling a sneeze caused them to turn. +Mr. Spence, with his handkerchief to his mouth, had his back turned to +them, and was studiously regarding the bookcases. + +After Honora had gone upstairs for the night she opened her door in +response to a knock, to find Mrs. Holt on the threshold. + +"My dear," said that lady, "I feel that I must say a word to you. I +suppose you realize that you are attractive to men." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt." + +"You're no fool, my dear, and it goes without saying that you-do realize +it--in the most innocent way, of course. But you have had no experience +in life. Mind you, I don't say that the Vicomte de Toqueville isn't very +much of a gentleman, but the French ideas about the relations of young +men and young women are quite different and, I regret to say, less +innocent than ours. I have no reason to believe that the Vicomte has come +to this country to--to mend his fortunes. I know nothing about his +property. But my sense of responsibility towards you has led me to tell +him that you have no dot, for you somehow manage to give the impression +of a young woman of fortune. Not purposely, my dear--I did not mean +that." Mrs. Holt tapped gently Honora's flaming cheek. "I merely felt it +my duty to drop you a word of warning against Monsieur de Toqueville +--because he is a Frenchman." + +"But, Mrs. Holt, I had no idea of--of falling in love with him," +protested Honora, as soon as she could get her breath. He seemed so kind +--and so interested in everything. + +"I dare say," said Mrs. Holt, dryly. "And I have always been led to +believe that that is the most dangerous sort. I am sure, Honora, after +what I have said, you will give him no encouragement." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora again, "I shouldn't think of such a thing!" + +"I am sure of it, Honora, now that you are forewarned. And your +suggestion to take him to the Institution was not a bad one. I meant to +do so anyway, and I think it will be good for him. Good night, my dear." + +After the good lady bad gone, Honora stood for some moments motionless. +Then she turned out the light. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES + +Mr. Robert Holt, Honora learned at breakfast, had two bobbies. She had +never heard of what is called Forestry, and had always believed the wood +of her country to be inexhaustible. It had never occurred to her to think +of a wild forest as an example of nature's extravagance, and so +flattering was her attention while Robert explained the primary +principles of caring for trees that he actually offered to show her one +of the tracts on the estate which he was treating. He could not,--he +regretted to say, take her that morning. + +His other hobby was golf. He was president of the Sutton Golf Club, and +had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence. This gentleman, it +appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a +leather bag filled with sticks. + +"Won't you come, too, Miss Leffingwell?" he said, as he took a second cup +of coffee. + +Somewhat to the astonishment of the Holt family, Robert seconded the +invitation. + +"I'll bet, Robert," said Mr. Spence, gallantly, "that Miss Leffingwell +can put it over both of us." + +"Indeed, I can't play at all," exclaimed Honora in confusion. "And I +shouldn't think of spoiling your match. And besides, I am going to drive +with Susan." + +"We can go another day, Honora," said Susan. + +But Honora would not hear of it. + +"Come over with me this afternoon, then," suggested Mr. Spence, "and I'll +give you a lesson." + +She thanked him gratefully. + +"But it won't be much fun for you, I'm afraid," she added, as they left +the dining room. + +"Don't worry about me," he answered cheerfully. He was dressed in a +checked golf costume, and wore a pink shirt of a new pattern. And he +stood in front of her in the hall, glowing from his night's sleep, +evidently in a high state of amusement. + +"What's the matter?" she demanded. + +"You did for the Vicomte all right," he said. "I'd give a good deal to +see him going through the Institution." + +"It wouldn't have hurt you, either," she retorted, and started up the +stairs. Once she glanced back and saw him looking after her. + +At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who +had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room. She paused with +her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his +expression as he approached her. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!" he exclaimed. "But I forgive +you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker. It must be that I see +the Home sometime, and if I go now it is over. I forgive you. It is in +the Bible that we must forgive our neighbour--how many times?" + +"Seventy times seven," said Honora. + +"But I make a condition," said the Vicomte, "that my neighbour shall be a +woman, and young and beautiful. Then I care not how many times. +Mademoiselle, if you would but have your portrait painted as you are, +with your hand on the post, by Sargent or Carolus Duran, there would be +some noise in the Salon." + +"Is that you, Vicomte?" came a voice from the foot of the stairs--Mrs. +Holt's voice. + +"I come this instant, Madame," he replied, looking over the banisters, +and added: "malheureux que je suis! Perhaps, when I return, you will show +me a little of the garden." + +The duty of exhibiting to guests the sights of Silverdale and the +neighbourhood had so often devolved upon Susan, who was methodical, that +she had made out a route, or itinerary, for this purpose. There were some +notes to leave and a sick woman and a child to see, which caused her to +vary it a little that morning; and Honora, who sat in the sunlight and +held the horse, wondered how it would feel to play the lady bountiful. "I +am so glad to have you all to myself for a little while, Honora," Susan +said to her. "You are so popular that I begin to fear that I shall have +to be unselfish, and share you." + +"Oh, Susan," she said, "every one has been so kind. And I can't tell you +how much I am enjoying this experience, which I feel I owe to you." + +"I am so happy, dear, that it is giving you pleasure," said Susan. + +"And don't think," exclaimed Honora, "that you won't see lots of me, for +you will." + +Her heart warmed to Susan, yet she could not but feel a secret pity for +her, as one unable to make the most of her opportunities in the wonderful +neighbourhood in which she lived. As they drove through the roads and in +and out of the well-kept places, everybody they met had a bow and a smile +for her friend--a greeting such as people give to those for whom they +have only good-will. Young men and girls waved their racquets at her from +the tennis-courts; and Honora envied them and wished that she, too, were +a part of the gay life she saw, and were playing instead of being driven +decorously about. She admired the trim, new houses in which they lived, +set upon the slopes of the hills. Pleasure houses, they seemed to her, +built expressly for joys which had been denied her. + +"Do you see much of--of these people, Susan?" she asked. + +"Not so much as I'd like," replied Susan, seriously. "I never seem to get +time. We nearly always have guests at Silverdale, and then there are so +many things one has to attend to. Perhaps you have noticed," she added, +smiling a little, "that we are very serious and old-fashioned." + +"Oh, no indeed," protested Honora. "It is such a wonderful experience for +me to be here!" + +"Well," said Susan, "we're having some young people to dinner to-night, +and others next week--that's why I'm leaving these notes. And then we +shall be a little livelier." + +"Really, Susan, you mustn't think that I'm not having a good time. It is +exciting to be in the same house with a real French Vicomte, and I like +Mr. Spence tremendously." + +Her friend was silent. + +"Don't you?" demanded Honora. + +To her surprise, the usually tolerant Susan did not wholly approve of Mr. +Spence. + +"He is a guest, and I ought not to criticise him," she answered. "But +since you ask me, Honora, I have to be honest. It seems to me that his +ambitions are a little sordid--that he is too intent upon growing rich." + +"But I thought all New Yorkers were that way," exclaimed Honora, and +added hastily, "except a few, like your family, Susan." + +Susan laughed. + +"You should marry a diplomat, my dear," she said. "After all, perhaps I +am a little harsh. But there is a spirit of selfishness and--and of +vulgarity in modern, fashionable New York which appears to be catching, +like a disease. The worship of financial success seems to be in every +one's blood." + +"It is power," said Honora. + +Susan glanced at her, but Honora did not remark the expression on her +friend's face, so intent was she on the reflections which Susan's words +had aroused. They had reached the far end of the Silverdale domain, and +were driving along the shore of the lake that lay like a sapphire set +amongst the green hills. It was here that the new house of the Robert +Holts was building. Presently they came to Joshua's dairy farm, and +Joshua himself was standing in the doorway of one of his immaculate barn +Honora put her hand on Susan's arm. + +"Can't we see the cows?" she asked. + +Susan looked surprised. + +"I didn't know you were interested in cows, Honora." + +"I am interested in everything," said Honora: "and I think your brother +is so attractive." + +It was at this moment that Joshua, with his hands in his pockets, +demanded what his sister was doing there. + +"Miss Leffingwell wants to look at the cattle, Josh," called Susan. + +"Won't you show them to me, Mr. Holt," begged Honora. "I'd like so much +to see some really good cattle, and to know a little more about them." + +Joshua appeared incredulous. But, being of the male sex, he did not hide +the fact that he was pleased, "it seems strange to have somebody really +want to see them," he said. "I tried to get Spence to come back this way, +but the idea didn't seem to appeal to him. Here are some of the records." + +"Records?" repeated Honora, looking at a mass of typewritten figures on +the wall. "Do you mean to say you keep such an exact account of all the +milk you get?" + +Joshua laughed, and explained. She walked by his side over the concrete +paving to the first of the varnished stalls. + +"That," he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, "is Lady +Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides +of the water." + +"Isn't she a dear!" exclaimed Honora; "why, she's actually beautiful. I +didn't know cows could be so beautiful." + +"She isn't bad," admitted Joshua. "Of course the good points in a cow +aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here," he +added, pointing to the hips. + +"But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance," Honora +declared. + +"That's absolutely true," replied Joshua,--whereupon he began to talk. +And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall. +"There are some more in the pasture," he said, when they had reached the +end of the second building. + +"Oh, couldn't I see them?" she asked. + +"Surely," replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have +believed him capable. "I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will +walk home across the fields, if you like." + +"I should love to," said Honora. + +It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld +them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon. Mrs. +Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh. + +"My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in +a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought +impregnable. + +Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is +impossible to say. + +"I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt," she replied; "Mr. Holt +has captivated me." + +"We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell," declared Joshua, which was for +him the height of gallantry. + +"I only hope he hasn't bored you," said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua. + +"Oh, dear, no," exclaimed Honora. "I don't see bow any one could be bored +looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute." + +It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly resistless +attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face. Her comment upon this latest conquest, +though unexpressed, was disquieting. And in spite of herself, Honora +blushed again. + +At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a +remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have +remained a secret. + +"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's +got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I +offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon." + +It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she +resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name. + +"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she +said. + +There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a +pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he +attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of +that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the +discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the +little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the +course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the +art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the +stroke. + +"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so." + +Honora would try again. + +"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it +off a little still. Let it swing all the way round." + +"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!" + +"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to +obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!" + +"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale, +emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the +distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows. They sat down on +one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass. Mr. Spence +produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully. + +"A little quiet whiff," he suggested. "There's not much chance over at +the convent," and she gathered that it was thus he was pleased to +designate Silverdale. + +In one instant she was doubtful whether or not to be angry, and in the +next grew ashamed of the provincialism which had caused her to suspect an +insult. She took a cigarette, and he produced a gold match case, lighted +a match, and held it up for her. Honora blew it out. + +"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him. + +"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do." + +She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose, +and made a little grimace. + +"Do you like to see women smoke?" she asked. + +Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom, when +it was well done. + +"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well." + +"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly. + +"You do everything well," he said. + +"Even golf?" she inquired mischievously. + +"Even golf, for a beginner and--and a woman; you've got the swing in an +astonishingly short time. In fact, you've been something of an eye-opener +to me," he declared. "If I had been betting, I should have placed the +odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West." + +This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her +estimation, aroused Honora's pride. + +"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied, +laughing. "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?" + +"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word, +"gentlewomen, yes. But you might have been born anywhere." + +Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to +override this compliment. + +"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and there +could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these +qualities. "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that. I don't +know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's +French and Susan's sound silly. I watched you last night when you were +stringing the Vicomte." + +"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely. + +"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said. + +"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly. "And +besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte. In the West we don't use +anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York." + +"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least +out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the +beach. I have no idea what you were talking about." + +"Literature," she said. "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't +understand it." + +"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it +wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and +bonds." + +"He doesn't talk about them, at any rate," said Honora. + +"I'd respect him more if he did," he announced. "I know those +fellows-they make love to every woman they meet. I saw him eying you at +lunch." + +Honora laughed. + +"I imagine the Vicomte could make love charmingly," she said. + +Mr. Spence suddenly became very solemn. + +"Merely as a fellow-countryman, Miss Leffingwell--" he began, when she +sprang to her feet, her eyes dancing, and finished the sentence. + +"You would advise me to be on my guard against him, because, although I +look twenty-five and experienced, I am only nineteen and inexperienced. +Thank you." + +He paused to light another cigarette before he followed her across the +turf. But she had the incomprehensible feminine satisfaction of knowing, +as they walked homeward, that the usual serenity of his disposition was +slightly ruffled. + +A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that +evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin. The complacency of New +York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used +would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis. Nevertheless, she liked +people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent" about +New York which appealed to her. Peter, when he read that letter, seemed +to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the kind of +cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable tailors. For +Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature. Literature was invented +before phonographs, and will endure after them. Peter could hear Mr. +Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation--a +characteristic part--was faithfully transcribed. And Peter detected a +strain of admiration running even through the ridicule. + +Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle +Tom, who laughed over it. There was also a lifelike portrait of the +Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French; +but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained +obscure. He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the +oldest chateaux in France. (Although she did not say so, Honora had this +on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.) Mrs. Holt--with +her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that +somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom +and the really kind heart it contained--was likewise depicted; and Mr. +Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom +could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination. Joshua and his cows, +Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly +Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert--all were there: and even a +picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young +Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury +at Harvard. The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person +loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of +the Silverdale cottages and sketched. + +Honora was seeing life. She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to +write to her. + +The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the +members of the family during the night. It was Sunday. Honora, when she +left her room, heard a swishing on the stairs--Mrs. Joshua, stiffly +arrayed for the day. Even Mrs. Robert swished, but Mrs. Holt, in a +bronze-coloured silk, swished most of all as she entered the library +after a brief errand to the housekeeper's room. Mr. Holt was already +arranging his book-marks in the Bible, while Joshua and Robert, in black +cutaways that seemed to have the benumbing and paralyzing effect of +strait-jackets, wandered aimlessly about the room, as though its walls +were the limit of their movements. The children had a subdued and +touch-me-not air that reminded Honora of her own youth. + +It was not until prayers were over and the solemn gathering seated at the +breakfast table that Mr. Spence burst upon it like an aurora. His flannel +suit was of the lightest of grays; he wore white tennis shoes and a red +tie, and it was plain, as he cheerfully bade them good morning, that he +was wholly unaware of the enormity of his costume. There was a choking, +breathless moment before Mrs. Holt broke the silence. + +"Surely, Howard," she said, "you're not going to church in those +clothes." + +"I hadn't thought of going to church," replied Mr. Spence, helping +himself to cherries. + +"What do you intend to do?" asked his hostess. + +"Read the stock reports for the week as soon as the newspapers arrive." + +"There is no such thing as a Sunday newspaper in my house," said Mrs. +Holt. + +"No Sunday newspapers!" he exclaimed. And his eyes, as they encountered +Honora's,--who sought to avoid them,--expressed a genuine dismay. + +"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that I was right when I spoke of the +pernicious effect of Wall Street upon young men. Your mother did not +approve of Sunday newspapers." + +During the rest of the meal, although he made a valiant attempt to hold +his own, Mr. Spence was, so to speak, outlawed. Robert and Joshua must +have had a secret sympathy for him. One of them mentioned the Vicomte. + +"The Vicomte is a foreigner," declared Mrs. Holt. "I am in no sense +responsible for him." + +The Vicomte was at that moment propped up in bed, complaining to his +valet about the weakness of the coffee. He made the remark (which he +afterwards repeated to Honora) that weak coffee and the Protestant +religion seemed inseparable; but he did not attempt to discover the +whereabouts, in Sutton, of the Church of his fathers. He was not in the +best of humours that morning, and his toilet had advanced no further +when, an hour or so later, he perceived from behind his lace curtains Mr. +Howard Spence, dressed with comparative soberness, handing Honora into +the omnibus. The incident did not serve to improve the cynical mood in +which the Vicomte found himself. + +Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence's +church-going, was not far from wrong. As may have been suspected, it was +to Honora that credit was due. It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after +breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him +from leaving that afternoon. It was Honora who told him that he ought to +be ashamed of himself. And it was to Honora, after church was over and +they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence +remarked by way of a delicate compliment that "the morning had not been a +total loss, after all!" + +The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the +village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family. +The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window, +and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews. Mrs. +Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young +man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir. The sermon of +the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was +the subject of discussion at luncheon. + +"It is very like a sermon I found in my room," said Honora. + +"I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not +overlook it," said Mrs. Holt, approvingly. "Joshua, I wish you would read +that sermon aloud to us." + +"Oh, do, Mr. Holt!" begged Honora. + +The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed +unmistakable signs of a futile anger. He had asked Honora to walk with +him. + +"Of course," added Mrs. Holt, "no one need listen who doesn't wish to. +Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine +service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied." + +The reading took place in the library. Through the open window Honora +perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all +twisted under him. It worried her to picture his attire when he should +wake up. Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out +again. At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn, +Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte. He was trying to read, +but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze protractedly +at the house, stroking his mustache. The low song of the bees around the +shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt's slow reading. On the whole, the situation +delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from smiling at M. de +Toqueville. When at last she emerged from the library, he rose +precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his hands +towards the pitiless puritan skies. + +"Enfin!" he exclaimed tragically. "Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life +have I passed such a day!" + +"Are you ill, Vicomte?" she asked. + +"Ill! Were it not for you, I would be gone. You alone sustain me--it is +for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer. What kind of a menage is +this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to +listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where +Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a +day in purgatory?" + +"But, Vicomte," Honora laughed, "you must remember that you are in +America, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs." + +"Ah, no," he cried, "ah, no, it cannot all be like this! I will not +believe it. Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon, offered +to show me his collection of Chinese carvings! I, who might be at +Trouville or Cabourg! If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should not +stay here--not one little minute," he said, with a slow intensity. +"Behold what I suffer for your sake!" + +"For my sake?" echoed Honora. + +"For what else?" demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of +martyrdom. "It is not for my health, alas! Between the coffee and this +dimanche I have the vertigo." + +Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her +childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham's curios. + +"You are cruel," said the Vicomte; "you laugh at my tortures." + +"On the contrary, I think I understand them," she replied. "I have often +felt the same way." + +"My instinct was true, then," he cried triumphantly; "the first time my +eyes fell on you, I said to myself, 'ah! there is one who understands.' +And I am seldom mistaken." + +"Your experience with the opposite sex," ventured Honora, "must have made +you infallible." + +He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of +conquests. + +"You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle," he said. "You are not like +these people. You have temperament, and a future--believe me. Why do you +waste your time?" + +"What do you mean, Vicomte?" + +"Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean. It is that you do not +choose to understand--you are far too clever. Why is it, then, that you +bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your +jeunesse? It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not +created for a religieuse. And again, it pleases you to spend hours with +the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua. He is +no companion for you." + +"I am afraid," she said reprovingly, "that you do not understand Mr. +Spence." + +"Par exemple!" cried the Vicomte; "have I not seen hundreds' like him? Do +not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand cocktails +and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day long? and go +to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn? Nom de nom, of what does his +conversation consist? Of the price of railroads;--is it not so? I, who +speak to you, have talked to him. Does he know how to make love?" + +"That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America," Honora +replied. + +"It is because you are a new country," he declared. + +"And you are mad over money. Money has taken the place of love." + +"Is money so despised in France?" she asked. "I have heard--that you +married for it!" + +"Touch!" cried the Vicomte, laughing. "You see, I am frank with you. We +marry for money, yes, but we do not make a god of it. It is our servant. +You make it, and we enjoy it. Yes, and you, Mademoiselle--you, too, were +made to enjoy. You do not belong here," he said, with a disdainful sweep +of the arm. "Ah, I have solved you. You have in you the germ of the +Riviera. You were born there." + +Honora wondered if what he said were true. Was she different? She was +having a great deal of pleasure at Silverdale; even the sermon reading, +which would have bored her at home, had interested and amused her. But +was it not from the novelty of these episodes, rather than from their +special characters, that she received the stimulus? She glanced curiously +towards the Vicomte, and met his eye. + +They had been walking the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one +of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the +woods. And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the +wooded valley. Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing +gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her. His +eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly she tingled with a sense that the +situation was not without an element of danger. + +"I had a feeling about you, last night at dinner," he said; "you reminded +me of a line of Marcel Prevost, 'Cette femme ne sera pas aimee que parmi +des drames.'" + +"Nonsense," said Honora; "last night at dinner you were too much occupied +with Miss Chamberlin to think of me." + +"Ah, Mademoiselle, you have read me strangely if you think that. I talked +to her with my lips, yes--but it was of you I was thinking. I was +thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have +the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages." The Vicomte bent towards +her, and his voice became caressing. "You cannot realize how beautiful +you are," he sighed. + +Suddenly he seized her hand, and before she could withdraw it she had the +satisfaction of knowing the sensation of having it kissed. It was a +strange sensation indeed. And the fact that she did not tingle with anger +alone made her all the more angry. Trembling, her face burning, she +leaped down from the railing and fled into the path. And there, seeing +that he did not follow, she turned and faced him. He stood staring at her +with eyes that had not ceased to sparkle. + +"How cowardly of you!" she cried. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle," he answered fervently, "I would risk your anger a +thousand times to see you like that once more. I cannot help my +feelings--they were dead indeed if they did not respond to such an +inspiration. Let them plead for my pardon." + +Honora felt herself melting a little. After all, there might have been +some excuse for it, and he made love divinely. When he had caught up with +her, his contriteness was such that she was willing to believe he had not +meant to insult her. And then, he was a Frenchman. As a proof of his +versatility, if not of his good faith, he talked of neutral matters on +the way back to the house, with the charming ease and lightness that was +the gift of his race and class. On the borders of the wood they +encountered the Robert Holts, walking with their children. + +"Madame," said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, "your Silverdale is enchanting. +We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley." + +"And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?" she +asked, with a glance at Honora. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON + +If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon +the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both +the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed. +Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore, +described it to Honora as a normal week. During its progress there came +and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had +heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a +youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer +interested in settlement work. + +The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the +Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the +architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where +the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended +the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral, +of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious +young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first +seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous. He had +done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left. And, +since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were going +through New York, that she would let him know. It would be a real +pleasure to show her what he was doing. + +Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her +hostess. + +"I can't tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear," said that +lady. "You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and I +do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart." + +In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have +had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was +slowly unfolding itself. By no fault of Honora's, of course. There may +have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her +--that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama. If +experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an +expert in matters of the sex. Could it be possible, Honora asked herself +more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct +and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect? + +It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the +Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly +not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte's temperament and habits +ecstatically happy. And Honora was filled with a strange and +unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the +English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study +at first hand of Americans. + +The time has come to acknowledge frankly that it was Honora he was +studying--Honora as the type of young American womanhood. What he did not +suspect was that young American womanhood was studying him. Thanks to a +national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of +Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain. And the +fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the +buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime which it had +hitherto lacked. + +The Vicomte's feelings were by no means hidden processes to Honora, and +it was as though she could lift the lid of the furnace at any time and +behold the growth of the flame which she had lighted. Nay, nature had +endowed her with such a gift that she could read the daily temperature as +by a register hung on the outside, without getting scorched. Nor had +there been any design on her part in thus tormenting his soul. He had not +meant to remain more than four days at Silverdale, that she knew; he had +not meant to come to America and fall in love with a penniless +beauty--that she knew also. The climax would be interesting, if perchance +uncomfortable. + +It is wonderful what we can find the time to do, if we only try. Monsieur +de Toqueville lent Honora novels, which she read in bed; but being in the +full bloom of health and of a strong constitution, this practice did not +prevent her from rising at seven to take a walk through the garden with +Mr. Holt--a custom which he had come insensibly to depend upon. And in +the brief conversations which she vouchsafed the Vicomte, they discussed +his novels. In vain he pleaded, in caressing undertones, that she should +ride with him. Honora had never been on a horse, but she did not tell him +so. If she would but drive, or walk-only a little way--he would promise +faithfully not to forget himself. Honora intimated that the period of his +probation had not yet expired. If he waylaid her on the stairs, he got +but little satisfaction. + +"You converse by the hour with the missionaries, and take long promenades +with the architects and charity workers, but to me you will give +nothing," he complained. + +"The persons of whom you speak are not dangerous," answered Honora, +giving him a look. + +The look, and being called dangerous, sent up the temperature several +degrees. Frenchmen are not the only branch of the male sex who are +complimented by being called dangerous. The Vicomte was desolated, so he +said. + +"I stay here only for you, and the coffee is slowly deranging me," he +declared in French, for most of their conversations were in that +language. If there were duplicity in this, Honora did not recognize it. +"I stay here only for you, and how you are cruel! I live for you--how, +the good God only knows. I exist--to see you for ten minutes a day." + +"Oh, Vicomte, you exaggerate. If you were to count it up, I am sure you +would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether. And then, although +I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you +have made by the same arts." + +"I suffer," he cried; "ah, no, you cannot look at me without perceiving +it--you who are so heartless. And when I see you play at golf with that +Mr. Spence--!" + +"Surely," said Honora, "you can't object to my acquiring a new +accomplishment when I have the opportunity, and Mr. Spence is so kind and +good-natured about it." + +"Do you think I have no eyes?" he exclaimed. "Have I not seen him look at +you like the great animal of Joshua when he wants his supper? He is +without esprit, without soul. There is nothing inside of him but +money-making machinery." + +"The most valuable of all machinery," she replied, laughingly. + +"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like +so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow," +he declared. + +"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him. + +If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind, +the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale +that week was apt to be diverting. Mr. Spence held his own. He advised +the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some +day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the +practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the +missionary. Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen. But +he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to repeating +for the English lady certain phrases which she called "picturesque +expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil. + +It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue +Honora's lessons in golf--or rather that she found time, in the midst of +her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them. And in this diversion +she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself. On Saturday morning, the heat +being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the fourth hole +and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which they had +visited once before and had found attractive. Honora, after bathing her +face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder. She was very fresh and +radiant. + +This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr. +Silence's expression. He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled +up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing +at her with approbation. She lowered her eyes. + +"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked. + +Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at +him from under her blue lashes seldom misses. + +"I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly. + +"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her. "If I could take you +on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes +which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence. "I have to go +back to town on Monday." + +If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it. + +"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied. + +"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again--rather awkwardly for +Mr. Spence. But Honora was silent. "I had a letter this morning from my +partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back." + +"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green +scale of moss from the boulder. + +"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of +considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible. +Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young +men." + +"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so +hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to +them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight +until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men. +That would be a career!" + +"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for." + +Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista +of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the +water and took a step nearer her. + +"How long have I known you?" he asked. + +She started. + +"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said. + +"Does it seem longer than that to you?" + +"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been +staying in the same house." + +"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always." + +Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment, that +there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some other +voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the same +tone. + +"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching +you--more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any +place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me how +you've handled all the curiosities up there this week." + +"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a +little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his +own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was +changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too, with +a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a glance +at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He did not, +it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been called a +thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting thrills, +and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how close a bond +of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden announcement of his +going back to New York. In a little while she too would be leaving for +St. Louis. The probability that she would never see him again seemed +graver than she would have believed. + +"Will you miss me a little?" he asked. + +"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how +your--your enterprise succeeds." + +"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know +my own mind. You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without +boasting that I can give you what you desire in life--after a while. I +love you. You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have +waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether +what I know to be the great happiness of my life. Will you marry me?" + +She sat silent upon the rock. She heard him speak, it is true; but, try +as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her. +She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart +was involved to such an extent. He was very near her, but he had not +attempted to touch her. His voice, towards the end of his speech, had +trembled with passion--a true note had been struck. And she had struck +it, by no seeming effort! He wished to marry her! + +He aroused her again. + +"I have frightened you," he said. + +She opened her eyes. What he beheld in them was not fright--it was +nothing he had ever seen before. For the first time in his life, perhaps, +he was awed. And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to him with +a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold. He had not +realized what he was getting. + +"I am not frightened," she said. "Yes, I will marry you." + +He was not sure whether--so brief was the moment!--he had held and kissed +her cheek. His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her poised +on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking back +at him over her shoulder. + +He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out +into the open golf course. He tried to think, but failed. Never in his +orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him. He caught up +with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium. + +"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it." + +She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her +mouth. + +"What are you thinking of?" he asked. + +"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora. +"But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard? We'll have it for our own +secret a little while." + +The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm. + +"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied. + +In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch--much too +rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late. + +"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered +to her on the stairs. + +"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing, +"only more purple, and not so ghostlike." + +"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help +it. It won't come off. I want to blurt out the news to every one in the +dining-room--to that little Frenchman, in particular." + +Honora laughed again. Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau +which such a proceeding would bring forth. The incredulity, the chagrin, +the indignation, even, in some quarters. He conceived the household, with +the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his arms. + +Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior +training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his +entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation. His colour was high, and his +expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that he +felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before and +behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth would +save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game of golf +must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old to learn +it. + +"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared. + +"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retorted +Mrs. Holt. In relaxing moods she indulged in banter. + +Honora stepped into the breach. She would not trust her newly acquired +fiance to extricate himself. + +"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we +were late for lunch once before." + +"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that +colour. I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls, and I +am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good when I +send you back to her." + +"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora. + +In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a +jellied egg. Honora glanced at the Vicomte. He sat very stiff, and his +manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its +claws. It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram, +which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the +meaning of it came to her. + +"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt. + +"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed. "He's in New +York. And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour with +me." + +"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe. He +had such a good face. And you told me about him." + +"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking +at her. "Only he is much older than I. He used to wheel me up and down +when I was a baby. He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom +took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer. A very good one, I +believe." + +"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said +Mrs. Holt. "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask him +to spend the night." + +"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered. + +It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's +arrival at this time. Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences! + +There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room, +Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach +it. She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was +likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua--or indeed Mrs. Holt +herself. Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all. She crossed the +great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of +shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest. With a +really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to +believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense +desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same +conditions, to keep in motion. So she sat down on a bench within the +borders of the wood. + +It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the +word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination +free play. The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did +not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense +of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to +dissipate. Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid +and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the +possession of these attributes. A castle founded on such a rock was not a +castle in Spain! + +It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle +than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of +the Hercules she had chosen to hold it. + +She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon +--one letter to both. Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them, +and of their lonely life' without her. But they would come on to New York +to visit her often, and they would be proud of her. Of one thing she was +sure--she must go home to them at once--on Tuesday. She would tell Mrs. +Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night. And, while pondering over the +probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to her +that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was +coming. + +What would he say? Should she tell him? She was surprised to find that +the idea of doing so was painful to her. But she was aroused from these +reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the +Vicomte. His face wore an expression of triumph. + +"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her. +Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she +remained. + +"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she +remarked. "You have an instinct for the chase." + +"Mon dieu?" he said. "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you. Why +should you so continually run away from me?" + +"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte." + +"And that other one--the stock-broker--you do not avoid him. Diable, I am +not blind, Mademoiselle. It is plain to me at luncheon that you have made +boil the sluggish blood of that one. As for me--" + +"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling. + +"Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her. "It is not for my +health that I stay here, as I have told you. It is for the sight of you, +for the sound of the music of that low voice. It is in the hope that you +will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little better. And +to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see you, I could +sit still no longer. I do not fear that Spence,--no. But this other--what +is he like?" + +"He is the best type of American," replied Honora. "I am sure you will be +interested in him, and like him." + +The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle. You +are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this +country. Such a woman as you is thrown away here. You possess +qualities--you will pardon me--in which your countrywomen are lacking, +--esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you. I have read +you as you have not read yourself. I have seen how you have served +yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept +their friendship." + +"Vicomte!" she exclaimed. + +"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare--they are +sublime. They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights." + +Honora was silent. She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into which +there was creeping a vibrant note of passion. She was a little +frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested. This was all so +different from what she had expected of him. What did he mean? Was she +indeed like that? + +She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a +chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis +XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,--a chateau with +a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had +prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river. It was +there that his childhood had been passed. And as he spoke, she listened +with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place. + +"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not +what you call an adventurer. Many of these, alas! come to your country. +And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange +to Americans. When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially +is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility." + +Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples. + +"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me. I would die rather +than hurt your feelings. Listen, I pray. It was to tell you frankly that +I came to this country for that purpose,--in order that I might live as +my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace a +dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished. I have soixante +quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in +your money, and which goes much farther in France. At the proper time, I +will present these matters to your guardians. I have lived, but I have a +heart, and I love you madly. Rather would I dwell with you in Provence, +where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a palace on the +Champs Elysees with another. We can come to Paris for two months, at +least. For you I can throw my prospects out of the window with a light +heart. Honore--how sweet is your name in my language--I love you to +despair." + +He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently +away. It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with feeling, +and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him would be. +Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless girl! Her +own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her eyes were +filled with compassion. + +"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me--that way. I +thought--I thought you were amusing yourself." + +"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly. "And you--were you amusing +yourself?" + +"I--I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice. + +"I am engaged." + +"Engaged!" He sprang to his feet. "Engaged! Ah, no, I will not believe +it. You were engaged when you came here?" + +She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words. +At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within +her led her on to tell him the truth. + +"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it +announced." + +For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he +seemed to sway a little and to choke. + +"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be! My ears have deceived me. I am not +sane. You are going to marry him--? Ah, you have sold yourself." + +"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself. Mr. Spence is +an honourable man, and I love him." + +The Vicomte appeared to choke again. And then, suddenly, he became +himself, although his voice was by no means natural. His elaborate and +ironic bow she remembered for many years. + +"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu. You will be good enough to +convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence." + +With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly, and +she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had disappeared +behind the trees near the house. When she sat down on the bench again, +she found that she was trembling a little. Was the unexpected to occur to +her from now on? Was it true, as the Vicomte had said, that she was +destined to be loved amidst the play of drama? + +She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the +winds his chances of wealth for her sake--a sufficient measure of the +feelings of one of his nationality and caste. And she permitted, for an +instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had +never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his +unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him? She thought of the +romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies +with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped +in through wicket gates. And to think that she might have been a +Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle! + +A poor Vicomtesse, it is true. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN + +Honora sat still upon the bench. After an indefinite period she saw +through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single +passenger. And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be +Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him. She +arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation. + +She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was +talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an +unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise. So much, in less +than a year, had happened to Honora! And the sight of him, and the sound +of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past. How +long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis! + +Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to +sharpen her sense of certain characteristics. He was lounging in his +chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand in his pocket, and talking +to these men as though he had known them always. There was a quality +about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact +definition. It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him out +of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter Erwin +had a personality. That personality was a mixture of simplicity and +self-respect and--common sense. And as Honora listened to his cheerful +voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself clearly +and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the other +two men were listening with a certain deference. In her sensitive state +she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her between +Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry. + +Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette. Never, it +seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity. An attribute +which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife, +lost something of its value. To look at Peter was to wonder whether there +could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day she +had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean face +summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps it was +this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward and +called his name. He rose precipitately. + +"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand. "How do you +happen to be in the East?" + +"An errand boy," he replied. "Somebody had to come, so they chose me. +Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my +education." + +"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly. + +"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look. "I was on the bench at +the edge of the wood." She turned again to Peter. "How good of you to +come up and see me!" + +"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an +hour." + +"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in +with unusual graciousness. "My mother will be disappointed not to see +you." + +"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply, +gazing off across the lawn. "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West +to-night." + +"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place. Come, +we'll begin with the garden." + +She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had +wished, an hour ago, to avoid. + +"Wouldn't you like a runabout?" suggested Joshua, hospitably. + +Honora thanked him. + +"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied. + +"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home." + +Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no +evidence of jealousy. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder. + +"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and +Spence. We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in +finding us. I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West." + +Peter thanked him. + +For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was +meditatively silent. She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence, until +suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that Peter had +as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for especial +consideration. She could not, however, resist saying, "New Yorkers are +like that." + +"Like what?" he asked. + +She coloured. + +"Like--Mr. Spence. A little--self-assertive, sure of themselves." She +strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was +the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended. She knew +that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but Peter's +silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak. "He has made quite an +unusual success for so young a man." + +Peter looked at her and shook his head. + +"New York--success! What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he +inquired. + +"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried. "I wish I were going with +you." + +"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides and +Forest Park and--and me?" + +He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made +standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat +casting a shadow on her face. And the smile which she had known so well +since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in +his eyes. She was conscious of a slight resentment. Was there, in fact, +no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten +months since she had seen him? And rather than a tolerance in which there +was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from Peter an +open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied were hers. +She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he refused to be +dazzled by it. He insisted upon treating her as the same Honora. + +"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked. + +They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they +did not wish to curtail her visit. They did not expect her next week, he +knew. + +Honora coloured again. + +"I feel--that I ought to go to them," she said. + +He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon +surprised him. + +"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been +very lonesome." + +She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: "And you? +Have you missed me--a little?" + +He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid +a hand upon his arm. + +"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I have +missed you--terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she went on +hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell me how it +happened hat you came on to New York." + +"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said. + +"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this +change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it +one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive +about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted to +the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice." + +"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't +it? I can't get used to it myself." + +"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed +reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt +and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer." + +Peter laughed. + +"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he. + +He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in +Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever +rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond, +--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads, +--through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at +the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of +that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the +episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's +mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his +companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places. +Comparisons seemed inevitable. + +She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a +long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the +valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it was +in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the die +of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. Why +had she never felt it before? She had thought his face homely--now it +seemed to shine with a transfiguring light. She recalled, with a pang, +that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the expression of +the man himself. Incredible is the range of human emotion! She felt a +longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there. + +He turned at length from the view. + +"How wonderful!" he said. + +"I didn't know--you cared for nature so much, Peter." + +He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her, +unresisting, to the bench beside him. + +"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked. + +"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am--very happy." + +"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowing +Mrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home so +soon. I do not know myself why I came. I am a matter-of-fact person, but +I acted on an impulse." + +"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his +eyes. + +"Yes," he said, "an impulse. I can call it by no other name. I should +have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this +morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some +use to you." + +"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized +Peter with such words on his lips. "I am happy--indeed I am. Only--I am +overwrought--seeing you again--and you made me think of home." + +"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared. "And if my coming has +upset you--" + +"Oh, no," she cried. "Please don't think so. It has given me a sense +of--of security. That you were ready to help me if--if I needed you." + +"You should always have known that," he replied. He rose and stood gazing +off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart +beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless +to stave off. And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you +for many years," he said. "You were too young for me to speak of it. I +did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day. For many years I +have hoped that some day you might be my wife. My one fear has been that +I might lose you. Perhaps--perhaps it has been a dream. But I am willing +to wait, should you wish to see more of the world. You are young yet, and +I am offering myself for all time. There is no other woman for me, and +never can be." + +He paused and smiled down at her. But she did not speak. She could not. + +"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious. And with your gifts I do +not blame you. I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with confidence +that I can offer you something better, something surer. I can take care +of you and protect you, and I will devote my life to your happiness. Will +you marry me?" + +Her eyes were sparkling with tears,--tears, he remembered afterwards, +that were like blue diamonds. + +"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could! I have always--wished that I +could. I can't." + +"You can't?" + +She shook her head. + +"I--I have told no one yet--not even Aunt Mary. I am going to marry Mr. +Spence." + +For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the +suffering in his face. + +"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your +happiness. And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember +that I am your friend, to be counted on. And that I shall not change. +Will you remember that?" + +"Yes," she whispered. She looked at him now, and through the veil of her +tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes. The tones of a +distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze. + +Peter glanced at his watch. + +"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house--my +train goes at seven. Can I get down to the village through the valley?" + +Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees +beneath them. + +"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?" + +She nodded. He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone. And presently, in +a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her bravely. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT + +How long she sat gazing with unseeing eyes down the valley Honora did not +know. Distant mutterings of thunder aroused her; the evening sky had +darkened, and angry-looking clouds of purple were gathering over the +hills. She rose and hurried homeward. She had thought to enter by the +billiard-room door, and so gain her own chamber without encountering the +household; but she had reckoned without her hostess. Beyond the billiard +room, in the little entry filled with potted plants, she came face to +face with that lady, who was inciting a footman to further efforts in his +attempt to close a recalcitrant skylight. Honora proved of more interest, +and Mrs. Holt abandoned the skylight. + +"Why, my dear," she said, "where have you been all afternoon?" + +"I--I have been walking with Mr. Erwin, Mrs. Holt. I have been showing +him Silverdale." + +"And where is he? It seems to me I invited him to stay all night, and +Joshua tells me he extended the invitation." + +"We were in the little summer-house, and suddenly he discovered that it +was late and he had to catch the seven o'clock train," faltered Honora, +somewhat disconnectedly. "Otherwise he would have come to you himself and +told you--how much he regretted not staying. He has to go to St. Louis +to-night." + +"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "this is an afternoon of surprises. The Vicomte +has gone off, too, without even waiting to say good-by." + +"The Vicomte!" exclaimed Honora. + +"Didn't you see him, either, before he left?" inquired Mrs. Holt; "I +thought perhaps you might be able to give me some further explanation of +it." + +"I?" exclaimed Honora. She felt ready to sink through the floor, and Mrs. +Holt's delft-blue eyes haunted her afterwards like a nightmare. + +"Didn't you see him, my dear? Didn't he tell you anything?" + +"He--he didn't say he was going away." + +"Did he seem disturbed about anything?" Mrs. Holt insisted. + +"Now I think of it, he did seem a little disturbed." + +"To save my life," said Mrs. Holt, "I can't understand it. He left a note +for me saying that he had received a telegram, and that he had to go at +once. I was at a meeting of my charity board. It seems a very strange +proceeding for such an agreeable and polite man as the Vicomte, although +he had his drawbacks, as all Continentals have. And at times I thought he +was grave and moody,--didn't you?" + +"Oh, yes, he was moody," Honora agreed eagerly. + +"You noticed it, too," said Mrs. Holt. "But he was a charming man, and so +interested in America and in the work we are doing. But I can't +understand about the telegram. I had Carroll inquire of every servant in +the house, and there is no knowledge of a telegram having come up from +the village this afternoon." + +"Perhaps the Vicomte might have met the messenger in the grounds," +hazarded Honora. + +At this point their attention was distracted by a noise that bore a +striking resemblance to a suppressed laugh. The footman on the +step-ladder began to rattle the skylight vigorously. + +"What on earth is the matter with you, Woods?" said Mrs. Holt. + +"It must have been some dust off the skylight, Madam, that got into my +throat," he stammered, the colour of a geranium. + +"Nonsense," said Mrs. Holt, "there is no dust on the skylight." + +"It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam," +he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his +former theory. + +"You are very stupid not to be able to close it," she declared; "in a few +minutes the place will be flooded. Tell Carroll to come and do it." + +Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the +stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows +against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting +against them. She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired. +Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and +gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel, +above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had an +instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand. + +Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite. + +"My dear," she began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and +welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit" +(Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and I +need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your aunt +has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. You have +been very fortunate." + +"Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt," echoed Honora, in bewilderment. + +"And Susan," continued Mrs. Holt, "useful and willing as she is, does not +possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them." + +Honora could think of no reply to this. Her eyes--to which no one could +be indifferent--were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the +good lady to guess that her brain was reeling? + +I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of--well, +of rather difficult company this summer. Next week, for instance, some +prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on +July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the +Charity Conference in New York. The Japanese Minister has promised to pay +me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable tuberculosis +homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his family. Then +there are some foreign artists." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora; "how many interesting people you see!" + +"Exactly, my dear. And I thought that, in addition to the fact that I +have grown very fond of you, you would be very useful to me here, and +that a summer with me might not be without its advantages. As your aunt +will have you until you are married, which, I may say, without denying +your attractions, is likely to be for some time, I intend to write to her +to-night--with your consent--and ask her to allow you to remain with me +all summer." + +Honora sat transfixed, staring painfully at the big pendant ear-rings. + +"It is so kind of you, Mrs. Holt--" she faltered. + +"I can realize, my dear, that you would wish to get back to your aunt. +The feeling does you infinite credit. But, on the other hand, besides the +advantages which would accrue to you, it might, to put the matter +delicately, be of a little benefit to your relations, who will have to +think of your future." + +"Indeed, it is good of you, but I must go back, Mrs. Holt." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, with a touch of dignity--for ere now people +had left Silverdale before she wished them to--"of course, if you do not +care to stay, that is quite another thing." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt, don't say that!" cried Honora, her face burning; "I +cannot thank you enough for the pleasure you have given me. If--if things +were different, I would stay with you gladly, although I should miss my +family. But now,--now I feel that I must be with them. I--I am engaged to +be married." + +Honora still remembers the blank expression which appeared on the +countenance of her hostess when she spoke these words. Mrs. Holt's cheeks +twitched, her ear-rings quivered, and her bosom heaved-once. + +"Engaged to be married!" she gasped. + +"Yes," replied our heroine, humbly, "I was going to tell you--to-morrow." + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Holt, after a silence, "it is to the young man who +was here this afternoon, and whom I did not see. It accounts for his +precipitate departure. But I must say, Honora, since frankness is one of +my faults, that I feel it my duty to write to your aunt and disclaim all +responsibility." + +"It is not to Mr. Erwin," said Honora, meekly; "it is--it is to Mr. +Spence." + +Mrs. Holt seemed to find difficulty in speaking, Her former symptoms, +which Honora had come to recognize as indicative of agitation, returned +with alarming intensity. And when at length her voice made itself heard, +it was scarcely recognizable. + +"You are engaged--to--Howard Spence?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora, "it was as great a surprise to me +--believe me--as it is to you." + +But even the knowledge that they shared a common amazement did not +appear, at once, to assuage Mrs. Holt's emotions. + +"Do you love him?" she demanded abruptly. + +Whereupon Honora burst into tears. + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she sobbed, "how can you ask?" + +From this time on the course of events was not precisely logical. Mrs. +Holt, setting in abeyance any ideas she may have had about the affair, +took Honora in her arms, and against that ample bosom was sobbed out the +pent-up excitement and emotion of an extraordinary day. + +"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, stroking the dark hair, "I +should not have asked you that-forgive me." And the worthy lady, +quivering with sympathy now, remembered the time of her own engagement to +Joshua. And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed +somewhat from those of the present--in regularity, at least, increased +rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness. The +perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were +swept away by a flood of feeling. "There, there, my dear, I did not mean +to be harsh. What you told me was such a shock--such a surprise, and +marriage is such a grave and sacred thing." + +"I know it," sobbed Honora. + +"And you are very young." + +"Yes, Mrs. Holt." + +"And it happened in my house." + +"No," said Honora, "it happened--near the golf course." + +Mrs. Holt smiled, and wiped her eyes. + +"I mean, my dear, that I shall always feel responsible for bringing you +together---for your future happiness. That is a great deal. I could have +wished that you both had taken longer to reflect, but I hope with all my +heart that you will be happy." + +Honora lifted up a tear-stained face. + +"He said it was because I was going away that--that he spoke," she said. +"Oh, Mrs. Holt, I knew that you would be kind about it." + +"Of course I am kind about it, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "As I told you, +I have grown to have an affection for you. I feel a little as though you +belonged to me. And after this--this event, I expect to see a great deal +of you. Howard Spence's mother was a very dear friend of mine. I was one +of the first who knew her when she came to New York, from Troy, a widow, +to educate her son. She was a very fine and a very courageous woman." +Mrs. Holt paused a moment. "She hoped that Howard would be a lawyer." + +"A lawyer!" Honora repeated. + +"I lost sight of him for several years," continued Mrs. Holt, "but before +I invited him here I made some inquiries about him from friends of mine +in the financial world. I find that he is successful for so young a man, +and well thought of. I have no doubt he will make a good husband, my +dear, although I could wish he were not on the Stock Exchange. And I hope +you will make him happy." + +Whereupon the good lady kissed Honora, and dismissed her to dress for +dinner. + +"I shall write to your aunt at once," she said. + + ........................ + +Requited love, unsettled condition that it is supposed to bring, did not +interfere with Howard Spence's appetite at dinner. His spirits, as usual, +were of the best, and from time to time Honora was aware of his glance. +Then she lowered her eyes. She sat as in a dream; and, try as she might, +her thoughts would not range themselves. She seemed to see him but dimly, +to hear what he said faintly; and it conveyed nothing to her mind. + +This man was to be her husband! Over and over she repeated it to herself. +His name was Howard Spence, and he was on the highroad to riches and +success, and she was to live in New York. Ten days before he had not +existed for her. She could not bring herself to believe that he existed +now. Did she love him? How could she love him, when she did not realize +him? One thing she knew, that she had loved him that morning. + +The fetters of her past life were broken, and this she would not realize. +She had opened the door of the cage for what? These were the fragments of +thoughts that drifted through her mind like tattered clouds across an +empty sky after a storm. Peter Erwin appeared to her more than once, and +he was strangely real. But he belonged to the past. Course succeeded +course, and she talked subconsciously to Mr. Holt and Joshua--such is the +result of feminine training. + +After dinner she stood on the porch. The rain had ceased, a cool damp +breeze shook the drops from the leaves, and the stars were shining. +Presently, at the sound of a step behind her, she started. He was +standing at her shoulder. + +"Honora!" he said. + +She did not move. + +"Honora, I haven't seen you--alone--since morning. It seems like a +thousand years. Honora?" + +"Yes." + +"Did you mean it? + +"Did I mean what?" + +"When you said you'd marry me." His voice trembled a little. "I've been +thinking of nothing but you all day. You're not--sorry? You haven't +changed your mind?" + +She shook her head. + +"At dinner when you wouldn't look at me, and this afternoon--" + +"No, I'm not sorry," she said, cutting him short. "I'm not sorry." + +He put his arm about her with an air that was almost apologetic. And, +seeing that she did not resist, he drew her to him and kissed her. +Suddenly, unaccountably to her, she clung to him. + +"You love me!" he exclaimed. + +"Yes," she whispered, "but I am tired. I--I am going upstairs, Howard. I +am tired." + +He kissed her again. + +"I can't believe it!" he said. "I'll make you a queen. And we'll be +married in the autumn, Honora." He nodded boyishly towards the open +windows of the library. "Shall I tell them?" he asked. "I feel like +shouting it. I can't hold on much longer. I wonder what the old lady will +say!" + +Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door. As +she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him. + +"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said. + +And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 2, by Winston Churchill + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 5375.txt or 5375.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/7/5375/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 2. + +Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill) + +Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5375] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V2, BY CHURCHILL *** + + + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + + +A MODERN CHRONICLE + +By Winston Churchill + + + +BOOK I. + +Volume 2. + + +VII. THE OLYMPIAN ORDER +VIII. A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS +IX. IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES +X. IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON +XI. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN +XII. WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE OLYMPIAN ORDER + +Lying back in the chair of the Pullman and gazing over the wide Hudson +shining in the afternoon sun, Honora's imagination ran riot until the +seeming possibilities of life became infinite. At every click of the +rails she was drawing nearer to that great world of which she had +dreamed, a world of country houses inhabited by an Olympian order. To be +sure, Susan, who sat reading in the chair behind her, was but a humble +representative of that order--but Providence sometimes makes use of such +instruments. The picture of the tall and brilliant Ethel Wing standing +behind the brass rail of the platform of the car was continually +recurring to Honora as emblematic: of Ethel, in a blue tailor-made gown +trimmed with buff braid, and which fitted her slender figure with +military exactness. Her hair, the colour of the yellowest of gold, in +the manner of its finish seemed somehow to give the impression of that +metal; and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by a +small colonial cocked hat. If the truth be told, Honora had secretly +idealized Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and +tendency to ridicule delightful. Militant--that was indeed Ethel's note +--militant and positive. + +"You're not going home with Susan!" she had exclaimed, making a little +face when Honora had told her. "They say that Silverdale is as slow as +a nunnery--and you're on your knees all the time. You ought to have come +to Newport with me." + +It was characteristic of Miss Wing that she seemed to have taken no +account of the fact that she had neglected to issue this alluring +invitation. Life at Silverdale slow! How could it be slow amidst such +beauty and magnificence? + +The train was stopping at a new little station on which hung the legend, +in gold letters, "Sutton." The sun was well on his journey towards the +western hills. Susan had touched her on the shoulder. + +"Here we are, Honora," she said, and added, with an unusual tremor in her +voice, "at last!" + +On the far side of the platform a yellow, two-seated wagon was waiting, +and away they drove through the village, with its old houses and its +sleepy streets and its orchards, and its ancient tavern dating from +stage-coach days. Just outside of it, on the tree-dotted slope of a long +hill, was a modern brick building, exceedingly practical in appearance, +surrounded by spacious grounds enclosed in a paling fence. That, Susan +said, was the Sutton Home. + +"Your mother's charity?" + +A light came into the girl's eyes. + +"So you have heard of it? Yes, it is the, thing that interests mother +more than anything else in the world." + +"Oh," said Honora, "I hope she will let me go through it." + +"I'm sure she will want to take you there to-morrow," answered Susan, and +she smiled. + +The road wound upwards, by the valley of a brook, through the hills, now +wooded, now spread with pastures that shone golden green in the evening +light, the herds gathering at the gate-bars. Presently they came to a +gothic-looking stone building, with a mediaeval bridge thrown across the +stream in front of it, and massive gates flung open. As they passed, +Honora had a glimpse of a blue driveway under the arch of the forest. An +elderly woman looked out at them through the open half of a leaded +lattice. + +"That's the Chamberlin estate," Susan volunteered. "Mr. Chamberlin has +built a castle on the top of that hill." + +Honora caught her breath. + +"Are many of the places here like that?" she asked. Susan laughed. + +"Some people don't think the place is very--appropriate," she contented +herself with replying. + +A little later, as they climbed higher, other houses could be discerned +dotted about the country-side, nearly all of them varied expressions of +the passion for a new architecture which seemed to possess the rich. +Most of them were in conspicuous positions, and surrounded by wide acres. +Each, to Honora, was an inspiration. + +"I had no idea there were so many people here," she said. + +"I'm afraid Sutton is becoming fashionable," answered Susan. + +"And don't you want it to?" asked Honora. + +"It was very nice before," said Susan, quietly. + +Honora was silent. They turned in between two simple stone pillars that +divided a low wall, overhung from the inside by shrubbery growing under +the forest. Susan seized her friend's hand and pressed it. + +"I'm always so glad to get back here," she whispered. "I hope you'll +like it." + +Honora returned the pressure. + +The grey road forked, and forked again. Suddenly the forest came to an +end in a sort of premeditated tangle of wild garden, and across a wide +lawn the great house loomed against the western sky. Its architecture +was of the '60's and '70's, with a wide porte-cochere that sheltered the +high entrance doors. These were both flung open, a butler and two +footmen were standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within. +Honora climbed the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall +with a black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse of +two huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house spread +with wicker chairs and tables. Out of a group of people at the farther +end of this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and clasped +Susan in her arms. + +"And is this Honora? How do you do, my dear? I had the pleasure of +knowing you when you were much younger." + +Honora, too, was gathered to that ample bosom. Released, she beheld a +lady in a mauve satin gown, at the throat of which a cameo brooch was +fastened. Mrs. Holt's face left no room for conjecture as to the +character of its possessor. Her hair, of a silvering blend, parted in +the middle, fitted tightly to her head. She wore earrings. In short, +her appearance was in every way suggestive of momentum, of a force which +the wise would respect. + +"Where are you, Joshua?" she said. "This is the baby we brought from +Nice. Come and tell me whether you would recognize her." + +Mr. Holt released his--daughter. He had a mild blue eye, white mutton- +chop whiskers, and very thin hands, and his tweed suit was decidedly the +worse for wear. + +"I can't say that I should, Elvira," he replied; "although it is not hard +to believe that such a beautiful baby should, prove to be such a--er-- +good-looking young woman." + +"I've always felt very grateful to you for bringing me back," said +Honora. + +"Tut, tut, child," said Mrs. Holt; "there was no one else to do it. And +be careful how you pay young women compliments, Joshua. They grow vain +enough. By the way, my dear, what ever became of your maternal +grandfather, old Mr. Allison--wasn't that his name?" + +"He died when I was very young," replied Honora. + +"He was too fond of the good things of this life," said Mrs. Holt. + +"My dear Elvira!" her husband protested. + +"I can't help it, he was," retorted that lady. "I am a judge of human +nature, and I was relieved, I can tell you, my dear" (to Honora), "when +I saw your uncle and aunt on the wharf that morning. I knew that I had +confided you to good hands." + +"They have done everything for me, Mrs. Holt," said Honora. + +The good lady patted her approvingly on the shoulder. + +"I'm sure of it, my dear," she said. "And I am glad to see you +appreciate it. And now you must renew your acquaintance with the +family." + +A sister and a brother, Honora had already learned from Susan, had died +since she had crossed the ocean with them. Robert and Joshua, Junior, +remained. Both were heavyset, with rather stern faces, both had close- +cropped, tan-coloured mustaches and wide jaws, with blue eyes like +Susan's. Both were, with women at least, what the French would call +difficult--Robert less so than Joshua. They greeted Honora reservedly +and--she could not help feeling--a little suspiciously. And their +appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go +with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin. +This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar +revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose +clothes were creased at the knees and across the back. + +As for their wives, Mrs. Joshua was a merry, brown-eyed little lady +already inclining to stoutness, and Honora felt at home with her at once. +Mrs. Robert was tall and thin, with an olive face and dark eyes which +gave the impression of an uncomfortable penetration. She was dressed +simply in a shirtwaist and a dark skirt, but Honora thought her striking +looking. + +The grandchildren, playing on and off the porch, seemed legion, and they +were besieging Susan. In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes +and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who +was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with +desperation. When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them, +she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away in +cribs. + +"I'm sure you love children, don't you?" said Mrs. Joshua. She spoke +impulsively, and yet with a kind of childlike shyness. + +"I adore them," exclaimed Honora. + +A trellised arbour (which some years later would have been called a +pergola) led from the porch up the hill to an old-fashioned summer-house +on the crest. And thither, presently, Susan led Honora for a view of the +distant western hills silhouetted in black against a flaming western sky, +before escorting her to her room. The vastness of the house, the width +of the staircase, and the size of the second-story hall impressed our +heroine. + +"I'll send a maid to you later, dear," Susan said. "If you care to lie +down for half an hour, no one will disturb you. And I hope you will be +comfortable." + +Comfortable! When the door had closed, Honora glanced around her and +sighed, "comfort" seemed such a strangely inadequate word. She was +reminded of the illustrations she had seen of English country houses. +The bed alone would almost have filled her little room at home. On the +farther side, in an alcove, was a huge dressing-table; a fire was laid in +the grate of the marble mantel, the curtains in the bay window were +tightly drawn, and near by was a lounge with a reading-light. A huge +mahogany wardrobe occupied one corner; in another stood a pier glass, and +in another, near the lounge, was a small bookcase filled with books. +Honora looked over them curiously. "Robert Elsmere" and a life of +Christ, "Mr. Isaacs," a book of sermons by an eminent clergyman, +"Innocents Abroad," Hare's "Walks in Rome," "When a Man's Single," by +Barrie, a book of meditations, and "Organized Charities for Women." + +Adjoining the bedroom was a bathroom in proportion, evidently all her +own,--with a huge porcelain tub and a table set with toilet bottles +containing liquids of various colours. + +Dreamily, Honora slipped on the new dressing-gown Aunt Mary had made for +her, and took a book out of the bookcase. It was the volume of sermons. +But she could not read: she was forever looking about the room, and +thinking of the family she had met downstairs. Of course, when one lived +in a house like this, one could afford to dress and act as one liked. +She was aroused from her reflections by the soft but penetrating notes of +a Japanese gong, followed by a gentle knock on the door and the entrance +of an elderly maid, who informed her it was time to dress for dinner. + +"If you'll excuse me, Miss," said that hitherto silent individual when +the operation was completed, "you do look lovely." + +Honora, secretly, was of that opinion too as she surveyed herself in the +long glass. The simple summer silk, of a deep and glowing pink, rivalled +the colour in her cheeks, and contrasted with the dark and shining masses +of her hair; and on her neck glistened a little pendant of her mother's +jewels, which Aunt Mary, with Cousin Eleanor's assistance, had had set in +New York. Honora's figure was that of a woman of five and twenty: her +neck was a slender column, her head well set, and the look of race, which +had been hers since childhood, was at nineteen more accentuated. All +this she saw, and went down the stairs in a kind of exultation. And when +on the threshold of the drawing-room she paused, the conversation +suddenly ceased. Mr. Holt and his sons got up somewhat precipitately, +and Mrs. Holt came forward to meet her. + +"I hope you weren't waiting for me," said Honora, timidly. + +"No indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. Tucking Honora's hand under her +arm, she led the way majestically to the dining-room, a large apartment +with a dimly lighted conservatory at the farther end, presided over by +the decorous butler and his assistants. A huge chandelier with prisms +hung over the flowers at the centre of the table, which sparkled with +glass and silver, while dishes of vermilion and yellow fruits relieved +the whiteness of the cloth. Honora found herself beside Mr. Holt, who +looked more shrivelled than ever in his evening clothes. And she was +about to address him when, with a movement as though to forestall her, +he leaned forward convulsively and began a mumbling grace. + +The dinner itself was more like a ceremony than a meal, and as it +proceeded, Honora found it increasingly difficult to rid herself of a +curious feeling of being on probation. + +Joshua, who sat on her other side and ate prodigiously, scarcely +addressed a word to her; but she gathered from his remarks to his father +and brother that he was interested in cows. And Mr. Holt was almost +exclusively occupied in slowly masticating the special dishes which the +butler impressively laid before him. He asked her a few questions about +Miss Turner's school, but it was not until she had admired the mass of +peonies in the centre of the table that his eyes brightened, and he +smiled. + +"You like flowers?" he asked. + +"I love them," slid Honora. + +"I am the gardener here," he said. "You must see my garden, Miss +Leffingwell. I am in it by half-past six every morning, rain or shine." + +Honora looked up, and surprised Mrs. Robert's eyes fixed on her with the +same strange expression she had noticed on her arrival. And for some +senseless reason, she flushed. + +The conversation was chiefly carried on by kindly little Mrs. Joshua and +by Mrs. Holt, who seemed at once to preside and to dominate. She praised +Honora's gown, but left a lingering impression that she thought her +overdressed, without definitely saying so. And she made innumerable--and +often embarrassing--inquiries about Honora's aunt and uncle, and her life +in St. Louis, and her friends there, and how she had happened to go to +Sutcliffe to school. Sometimes Honora blushed, but she answered them all +good-naturedly. And when at length the meal had marched sedately down to +the fruit, Mrs. Holt rose and drew Honora out of the dining room. + +"It is a little hard on you, my dear," she said, "to give you so much +family on your arrival. But there are some other people coming to- +morrow, when it will be gayer, I hope, for you and Susan." + +"It is so good of you and Susan to want me, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, +"I am enjoying it so much. I have never been in a big country house like +this, and I am glad there is no one else here. I have heard my aunt +speak of you so often, and tell how kind you were to take charge of me, +that I have always hoped to know you sometime or other. And it seems the +strangest of coincidences that I should have roomed with Susan at +Sutcliffe." + +"Susan has grown very fond of you," said Mrs. Holt, graciously. "We are +very glad to have you, my dear, and I must own that I had a curiosity to +see you again. Your aunt struck me as a good and sensible woman, and it +was a positive relief to know that you were to be confided to her care." +Mrs. Holt, however, shook her head and regarded Honora, and her next +remark might have been taken as a clew to her thoughts. "But we are not +very gay at Silverdale, Honora." + +Honora's quick intuition detected the implication of a frivolity which +even her sensible aunt had not been able to eradicate. + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she cried, "I shall be so happy here, just seeing things +and being among you. And I am so interested in the little bit I have +seen already. I caught a glimpse of your girls' home on my way from the +station. I hope you will take me there." + +Mrs. Holt gave her a quick look, but beheld in Honora's clear eyes only +eagerness and ingenuousness. + +The change in the elderly lady's own expression, and incidentally in the +atmosphere which enveloped her, was remarkable. + +"Would you really like to go, my dear?" + +"Oh, yes indeed," cried Honora. "You see, I have heard so much of it, +and I should like to write my aunt about it. She is interested in the +work you are doing, and she has kept a magazine with an article in it, +and a picture of the institution." + +"Dear me!" exclaimed the lady, now visibly pleased. "It is a very modest +little work, my dear. I had no idea that--out in St. Louis--that the +beams of my little candle had carried so far. Indeed you shall see it, +Honora. We will go down the first thing in the morning." + +Mrs. Robert, who had been sitting on the other side of the room, rose +abruptly and came towards them. There was something very like a smile on +her face,--although it wasn't really a smile--as she bent over and kissed +her mother-in-law on the cheek. + +"I am glad to hear you are interested in--charities, Miss Leffingwell," +she said. + +Honora's face grew warm. + +"I have not so far had very much to do with them, I am afraid," she +answered. + +"How should she?" demanded Mrs. Holt. "Gwendolen, you're not going up +already?" + +"I have some letters to write," said Mrs. Robert. + +"Gwen has helped me immeasurably," said Mrs. Holt, looking after the tall +figure of her daughter-in-law, "but she has a curious, reserved +character. You have to know her, my dear. She is not at all like Susan, +for instance." + +Honora awoke the next morning to a melody, and lay for some minutes in +a delicious semi-consciousness, wondering where she was. Presently she +discovered that the notes were those of a bird on a tree immediately +outside of her window--a tree of wonderful perfection, the lower branches +of which swept the ground. Other symmetrical trees, of many varieties, +dotted a velvet lawn, which formed a great natural terrace above the +forested valley of Silver Brook. On the grass, dew-drenched cobwebs +gleamed in the early sun, and the breeze that stirred the curtains was +charged with the damp, fresh odours of the morning. Voices caught her +ear, and two figures appeared in the distance. One she recognized as Mr. +Holt, and the other was evidently a gardener. The gilt clock on the +mantel pointed to a quarter of seven. + +It is far too late in this history to pretend that Honora was, +by preference, an early riser, and therefore it must have been the +excitement caused by her surroundings that made her bathe and dress +with alacrity that morning. A housemaid was dusting the stairs as she +descended into the empty hall. She crossed the lawn, took a path through +the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned +garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the +winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from +his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a +trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity +at dinner the night before, was almost effusive--and a little pathetic. + +"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, "up so early? "He held up +forbiddingly a mould-covered palm. "I can't shake hands with you." + +Honora laughed. + +"I couldn't resist the temptation to see your garden," she said. + +A gentle light gleamed in his blue eyes, and he paused before a trellis +of June roses. With his gardening knife he cut three of them, and held +them gallantly against her white gown. Her sensitive colour responded as +she thanked him, and she pinned them deftly at her waist. + +"You like gardens?" he said. + +"I was brought up with them," she answered; "I mean," she corrected +herself swiftly, "in a very modest way. My uncle is passionately fond of +flowers, and he makes our little yard bloom with them all summer. But of +course," Honora added, "I've never seen anything like this." + +"It has been a life work," answered Mr. Holt, proudly, "and yet I feel as +though I had not yet begun. Come, I will show you the peonies--they are +at their best--before I go in and make myself respectable for breakfast." + +Ten minutes later, as they approached the house in amicable and even +lively conversation, they beheld Susan and Mrs. Robert standing on the +steps under the porte-cochere, watching them. + +"Why, Honora," cried Susan, "how energetic you are! I actually had a +shock when I went to your room and found you'd gone. I'll have to write +Miss Turner." + +"Don't," pleaded Honora; "you see, I had every inducement to get up." + +"She has been well occupied," put in Mr. Holt. "She has been admiring my +garden." + +"Indeed I have," said Honora. + +"Oh, then, you have won father's heart!" cried Susan. Gwendolen Holt +smiled. Her eyes were fixed upon the roses in Honora's belt. + +"Good morning, Miss Leffingwell," she said, simply. + +Mr. Holt having removed the loam from his hands, the whole family, +excepting Joshua, Junior, and including an indefinite number of children, +and Carroll, the dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped +into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table +at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible. +Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a +chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest. +Honora sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that +Mrs. Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible +reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the +floor and leaned their elbows on the seats of their chairs. Honora did +likewise, wondering at the facility with which Mr. Holt worded his +appeal, and at the number of things he found to pray for. Her knees had +begun to ache before he had finished. + +At breakfast such a cheerful spirit prevailed that Honora began almost +to feel at home. Even Robert indulged occasionally in raillery. + +"Where in the world is Josh?" asked Mrs. Holt, after they were seated. + +"I forgot to tell you, mother," little Mrs. Joshua chirped up, "that he +got up at an unearthly hour, and went over to Grafton to look at a cow." + +"A cow!" sighed Mrs: Holt. "Oh, dear, I might have known it. You must +understand, Honora, that every member of the Holt family has a hobby. +Joshua's is Jerseys." + +"I'm sure I should adore them if I lived in the country," Honora +declared. + +"If you and Joshua would only take that Sylvester farm, and build a +house, Annie," said Mr. Holt, munching the dried bread which was +specially prepared for him, "I should be completely happy. Then," +he added, turning to Honora, "I should have both my sons settled on +the place. Robert and Gwen are sensible in building." + +"It's cheaper to live with you, granddad," laughed Mrs. Joshua. "Josh +says if we do that, he has more money to buy cows." + +At this moment a footman entered, and presented Mrs. Holt with some mail +on a silver tray. + +"The Vicomte de Toqueville is coming this afternoon, Joshua," she +announced, reading rapidly from a sheet on which was visible a large +crown. "He landed in New York last week, and writes to know if I could +have him." + +"Another of mother's menagerie," remarked Robert. + +"I don't think that's nice of you, Robert," said his mother. "The +Vicomte was very kind to your father and me in Paris, and invited us to +his chateau in Provence." + +Robert was sceptical. + +"Are you sure he had one?" he insisted. + +Even Mr. Holt laughed. + +"Robert," said his mother, "I wish Gwen could induce you to travel more. +Perhaps you would learn that all foreigners aren't fortune-hunters." + +I've had an opportunity to observe the ones who come over here, mother." + +"I won't have a prospective guest discussed," Mrs. Holt declared, with +finality. "Joshua, you remember my telling you last spring that Martha +Spence's son called on me?" she asked. "He is in business with a man +named Dallam, I believe, and making a great deal of money for a young +man. He is just a year younger than you, Robert." + +"Do you mean that fat, tow-headed boy that used to come up here and eat +melons and ride my pony?" inquired Robert. "Howard Spence?" + +Mrs. Holt smiled. + +"He isn't fat any longer, Robert. Indeed, he's quite good-looking. +Since his mother died, I had lost trace of him. But I found a photograph +of hers when I was clearing up my desk some months ago, and sent it to +him, and he came to thank me. I forgot to tell you that I invited him +for a fortnight any time he chose, and he has just written to ask if he +may come now. I regret to say that he's on the Stock Exchange--but I was +very fond of his mother. It doesn't seem to me quite a legitimate +business." + +"Why!" exclaimed little Mrs. Joshua, unexpectedly, "I'm given to +understand that the Stock Exchange is quite aristocratic in these days." + +"I'm afraid I am old-fashioned, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, rising. "It +has always seemed to me little better than a gambling place. Honora, if +you still wish to go to the Girls' Home, I have ordered the carriage in a +quarter of an hour." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS + +Honora's interest in the Institution was so lively, and she asked so many +questions and praised so highly the work with which the indiscreet young +women were occupied that Mrs. Holt patted her hand as they drove +homeward. + +"My dear," she said, "I begin to wish I'd adopted you myself. Perhaps, +later on, we can find a husband for you, and you will marry and settle +down near us here at Silverdale, and then you can help me with the work." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she replied, "I should so like to help you, I mean. And +it would be wonderful to live in such a place. And as for marriage, it +seems such a long way off that somehow I never think of it." + +"Naturally," ejaculated Mrs. Holt, with approval, "a young girl of your +age should not. But, my dear, I am afraid you are destined to have many +admirers. If you had not been so well brought up, and were not naturally +so sensible, I should fear for you." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt!" exclaimed Honora, deprecatingly, and blushing very +prettily. + +"Whatever else I am," said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, "I am not a flatterer. +I am telling you something for your own good--which you probably know +already." + +Honora was discreetly silent. She thought of the proud and unsusceptible +George Hanbury, whom she had cast down from the tower of his sophomore +dignity with such apparent ease; and of certain gentlemen at home, young +and middle-aged, who had behaved foolishly during the Christmas holidays. + +At lunch both the Roberts and the Joshuas were away. + +Afterwards, they romped with the children--she and Susan. They were shy +at first, especially the third Joshua, but Honora captivated him by +playing two sets of tennis in the broiling sun, at the end of which +exercise he regarded her with a new-born admiration in his eyes. He was +thirteen. + +"I didn't think you were that kind at all," he said. + +"What kind did you think I was?" asked Honora, passing her arm around +his shoulder as they walked towards the house. + +The boy grew scarlet. + +"Oh, I didn't think you--you could play tennis," he stammered. + +Honora stopped, and seized his chin and tilted his face upward. + +"Now, Joshua," she said, "look at me and say that over again." + +"Well," he replied desperately, "I thought you wouldn't want to get all +mussed up and hot." + +"That's better," said Honora. "You thought I was vain, didn't you?" + +"But I don't think so any more," he avowed passionately. "I think you're +a trump. And we'll play again to-morrow, won't we?" + +"We'll play any day you like," she declared. + +It is unfair to suppose that the arrival of a real vicomte and of a +young, good-looking, and successful member of the New York Stock Exchange +were responsible for Honora's appearance, an hour later, in the +embroidered linen gown which Cousin Eleanor had given her that spring. +Tea was already in progress on the porch, and if a hush in the +conversation and the scraping of chairs is any sign of a sensation, this +happened when our heroine appeared in the doorway. And Mrs. Holt, in the +act of lifting the hot-water kettle; put it down again. Whether or not +there was approval in the lady's delft-blue eye, Honora could not have +said. The Vicomte, with the graceful facility of his race, had +differentiated himself from the group and stood before her. As soon +as the words of introduction were pronounced, he made a bow that was +a tribute in itself, exaggerated in its respect. + +"It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle," he murmured, but his eyes were more +eloquent. + +A description of him in his own language leaped into Honora's mind, so +much did he appear to have walked out of one of the many yellow-backed +novels she had read. He was not tall, but beautifully made, and his coat +was quite absurdly cut in at the waist; his mustache was en-croc, and its +points resembled those of the Spanish bayonets in the conservatory: he +might have been three and thirty, and he was what the novels described as +'un peu fane' which means that he had seen the world: his eyes were +extraordinarily bright, black, and impenetrable. + +A greater contrast to the Vicomte than Mr. Howard Spence would have been +difficult to find. He was Honora's first glimpse of Finance, of the +powers that travelled in private cars and despatched ships across the +ocean. And in our modern mythology, he might have stood for the god of +Prosperity. Prosperity is pink, and so was Mr. Spence, in two places,-- +his smooth-shaven cheeks and his shirt. His flesh had a certain +firmness, but he was not stout; he was merely well fed, as Prosperity +should be. His features were comparatively regular, his mustache a light +brown, his eyes hazel. The fact that he came from that mysterious +metropolis, the heart of which is Wall Street, not only excused but +legitimized the pink shirt and the neatly knotted green tie, the pepper- +and-salt check suit that was loose and at the same time well-fitting, and +the jewelled ring on his plump little finger. On the whole, Mr. Spence +was not only prepossessing, but he contrived to give Honora, as she shook +his hand, the impression of being brought a step nearer to the national +source of power. Unlike the Vicomte, he did not appear to have been +instantly and mortally wounded upon her arrival on the scene, but his +greeting was flattering, and he remained by her side instead of returning +to that of Mrs. Robert. + +"When did you come up?" he asked. Only yesterday," answered Honora. + +"New York," said Mr. Spence, producing a gold cigarette case on which his +monogram was largely and somewhat elaborately engraved, "New York is +played out this time of year--isn't it? I dropped in at Sherry's last +night for dinner, and there weren't thirty people there." + +Honora had heard of Sherry's as a restaurant where one dined fabulously, +and she tried to imagine the cosmopolitan and blissful existence which +permitted "dropping in at" such a place. Moreover, Mr. Spence was +plainly under the impression that she too "came up" from New York, and it +was impossible not to be a little pleased. + +"It must be a relief to get into the country," she ventured. + +Mr. Spence glanced around him expressively, and then looked at her with a +slight smile. The action and the smile--to which she could not refrain +from responding--seemed to establish a tacit understanding between them. +It was natural that he should look upon Silverdale as a slow place, and +there was something delicious in his taking, for granted that she shared +this opinion. She wondered a little wickedly what he would say when he +knew the truth about her, and this was the birth of a resolution that his +interest should not flag. + +"Oh, I can stand the country when it is properly inhabited," he said, and +their eyes met in laughter. + +"How many inhabitants do you require?" she asked. + +"Well," he said brazenly, "the right kind of inhabitant is worth a +thousand of the wrong kind. It is a good rule in business, when you come +across a gilt-edged security, to make a specialty of it." + +Honora found the compliment somewhat singular. But she was prepared to +forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York, +which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked. But not +knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to +Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question. Then, as though +she were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced to encounter an +appealing glance from the Vicomte, who was searching with the courage of +despair for an English word, which his hostess awaited in stoical +silence. He was trying to give his impressions of Silverdale, in +comparison to country places abroad, while Mrs. Robert regarded him +enigmatically, and Susan sympathetically. Honora had an almost +irresistible desire to laugh. + +"Ah, Madame," he cried, still looking at Honora, "will you have the +kindness to permit me to walk about ever so little?" + +"Certainly, Vicomte, and I will go with you. Get my parasol, Susan. +Perhaps you would like to come, too, Howard," she added to Mr. Spence; +"it has been so long since you were here, and we have made many changes." + +"And you, Mademoiselle," said the Vicomte to Honora, you will come--yes? +You are interested in landscape?" + +"I love the country," said Honora. + +"It is a pleasure to have a guest who is so appreciative," said Mrs. +Holt. "Miss Leffingwell was up at seven this morning, and in the garden +with my husband." + +"At seven!" exclaimed the Vicomte; "you American young ladies are +wonderful. For example--" and he was about to approach her to enlarge on +this congenial theme when Susan arrived with the parasol, which Mrs. Holt +put in his hands. + +"We'll begin, I think, with the view from the summer house," she said. +"And I will show you how our famous American landscape architect, Mr. +Olmstead, has treated the slope." + +There was something humorous, and a little pathetic in the contrasted +figures of the Vicomte and their hostess crossing the lawn in front of +them. Mr. Spence paused a moment to light his cigarette, and he seemed +to derive infinite pleasure from this juxtaposition. + +"Got left,--didn't he?" he said. + +To this observation there was, obviously, no answer. + +"I'm not very strong on foreigners," he declared. "An American is good +enough for me. And there's something about that fellow which would make +me a little slow in trusting him with a woman I cared for." + +"If you are beginning to worry over Mrs. Holt," said Honora, "we'd better +walk a little faster." + +Mr. Spence's delight at this sally was so unrestrained as to cause the +couple ahead to turn. The Vicomte's expression was reproachful. + +"Where's Susan?" asked Mrs. Holt. + +"I think she must have gone in the house," Honora answered. + +"You two seem to be having a very good time." + +"Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well," said Mr. Spence, no doubt for +the benefit of the Vicomte. And he added in a confidential tone, +"Aren't we?" + +"Not on the subject of the Vicomte," she replied promptly. "I like him. +I like French people." + +"What!" he exclaimed, halting in his steps, "you don't take that man +seriously?" + +"I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously," said Honora. + +"There's a blindness about women," he declared, "that's incomprehensible. +They'll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are +beautifully engraved. If you were a man, you wouldn't trust that +Frenchman to give you change for five dollars." + +"French people," proclaimed Honora, "have a light touch of which we +Americans are incapable. We do not know how to relax." + +"A light touch!" cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, "that about describes the +Vicomte." + +"I'm sure you do him an injustice," said Honora. + +"We'll see," said Mr. Spence. "Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer +people like that. She's noted for it." He turned to her. How did you +happen to come here?" + +"I came with Susan," she replied, amusedly, "from boarding-school at +Sutcliffe." + +"From boarding-school!" + +She rather enjoyed his surprise. + +"You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?" + +"How old did you think I was?" she asked. + +"Older than Susan," he said surveying her. + +"No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen." + +"But I thought--" he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette. + +Her eyes lighted mischievously. + +"You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good +deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange +you didn't know me. But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one +can't know everybody there." + +"And--where do you come from, if I may ask?" he said. + +"St. Louis. I was brought to this country before I was two years old, +from France. Mrs. Holt brought me. And I have never been out of St. +Louis since, except to go to Sutcliffe. There you have my history. Mrs. +Holt would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't." + +"And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?" + +Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment. + +"And how do you happen to be here?" she demanded. "Are you a member of-- +of the menagerie?" + +He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed. This, of +course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity. Five +minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in +saying that the recital of Honora's biography had not made a difference +with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at his +mistake. What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of +conjecture. He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this +unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her +regard. And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she +was nobody. He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or +premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often in +real danger at the moment when they feel most secure. + +It is certain that his manner changed, and during the rest of the walk +she listened demurely when he talked about Wall Street, with casual +references to the powers that be. It was evident that Mr. Howard Spence +was one who had his fingers on the pulse of affairs. Ambition leaped in +him. + +They reached the house in advance of Mrs. Holt and the Vicomte, and +Honora went to her room. + +At dinner, save for a little matter of a casual remark when Mr. Holt had +assumed the curved attitude in which he asked grace, Mr. Spence had a +veritable triumph. Self-confidence was a quality which Honora admired. +He was undaunted by Mrs. Holt, and advised Mrs. Robert, if she had any +pin-money, to buy New York Central; and he predicted an era of prosperity +which would be unexampled in the annals of the country. Among other +powers, he quoted the father of Honora's schoolmate, Mr. James Wing, as +authority for this prophecy. He sat next to Susan, who maintained her +usual maidenly silence, but Honora, from time to time, and as though by +accident, caught his eye. Even Mr. Holt, when not munching his dried +bread, was tempted to make some inquiries about the market. + +"So far as I am concerned," Mrs. Holt announced suddenly, "nothing can +convince me that it is not gambling." + +"My dear Elvira!" protested Mr. Holt. + +"I can't help it," said that lady, stoutly; "I'm old-fashioned, I +suppose. But it seems to me like legalized gambling." + +Mr. Spence took this somewhat severe arraignment of his career in +admirable good nature. And if these be such a thing as an implied wink, +Honora received one as he proceeded to explain what he was pleased to +call the bona-fide nature of the transactions of Dallam and Spence. + +A discussion ensued in which, to her surprise, even the ordinarily +taciturn Joshua took a part, and maintained that the buying and selling +of blooded stock was equally gambling. To this his father laughingly +agreed. The Vicomte, who sat on Mrs. Holt's right, and who apparently +was determined not to suffer a total eclipse without a struggle, +gallantly and unexpectedly came to his hostess' rescue, though she +treated him as a doubtful ally. This was because he declared with +engaging frankness that in France the young men of his monde had a +jeunesse: he, who spoke to them, had gambled; everybody gambled in +France, where it was regarded as an innocent amusement. He had friends +on the Bourse, and he could see no difference in principle between +betting on the red at Monte Carlo and the rise and fall of the shares of +la Compagnie des Metaux, for example. After completing his argument, +he glanced triumphantly about the table, until his restless black eyes +encountered Honora's, seemingly seeking a verdict. She smiled +impartially. + +The subject of finance lasted through the dinner, and the Vicomte +proclaimed himself amazed with the evidences of wealth which confronted +him on every side in this marvellous country. And once, when he was at +a loss for a word, Honora astonished and enchanted him by supplying it. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "I was sure when I first beheld you +that you spoke my language! And with such an accent!" + +"I have studied it all my life, Vicomte," she said, modestly, "and I had +the honour to be born in your country. I have always wished to see it +again." + +Monsieur de Toqueville ventured the fervent hope that her wish might soon +be gratified, but not before he returned to France. He expressed himself +in French, and in a few moments she found herself deep in a discussion +with him in that tongue. While she talked, her veins seemed filled with +fire; and she was dimly and automatically aware of the disturbance about +her, as though she were creating a magnetic storm that interfered with +all other communication. Mr. Holt's nightly bezique, which he played +with Susan, did not seem to be going as well as usual, and elsewhere +conversation was a palpable pretence. Mr. Spence, who was attempting to +entertain the two daughters-in-law, was clearly distrait--if his glances +meant anything. Robert and Joshua had not appeared, and Mrs. Holt, at +the far end of the room under the lamp, regarded Honora from time to time +over the edge of the evening newspaper. + +In his capacity as a student of American manners, an unsuspected if +scattered knowledge on Honora's part of that portion of French literature +included between Theophile Gautier and Gyp at once dumfounded and +delighted the Vicomte de Toqueville. And he was curious to know whether, +amongst American young ladies, Miss Leffingwell was the exception or the +rule. Those eyes of his, which had paid to his hostess a tender respect, +snapped when they spoke to our heroine, and presently he boldly abandoned +literature to declare that the fates alone had sent her to Silverdale at +the time of his visit. + +It was at this interesting juncture that Mrs. Holt rattled her newspaper +a little louder than usual, arose majestically, and addressed Mrs. +Joshua. + +"Annie, perhaps you will play for us," she said, as she crossed the room, +and added to Honora: "I had no idea you spoke French so well, my dear. +What have you and Monsieur de Toqueville been talking about?" + +It was the Vicomte who, springing to his feet, replied nimbly: +"Mademoiselle has been teaching me much of the customs of your country." + +"And what," inquired Mrs. Holt, "have you been teaching Mademoiselle?" + +The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders expressively. + +"Ah, Madame, I wish I were qualified to be her teacher. The education of +American young ladies is truly extraordinary." + +"I was about to tell Monsieur de Toqueville," put in Honora, wickedly, +"that he must see your Institution as soon as possible, and the work your +girls are doing." + +"Madame," said the Vicomte, after a scarcely perceptible pause, "I await +my opportunity and your kindness." + +"I will take you to-morrow," said Mrs. Holt. + +At this instant a sound closely resembling a sneeze caused them to turn. +Mr. Spence, with his handkerchief to his mouth, had his back turned to +them, and was studiously regarding the bookcases. + +After Honora had gone upstairs for the night she opened her door in +response to a knock, to find Mrs. Holt on the threshold. + +"My dear," said that lady, "I feel that I must say a word to you. I +suppose you realize that you are attractive to men." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt." + +"You're no fool, my dear, and it goes without saying that you-do realize +it--in the most innocent way, of course. But you have had no experience +in life. Mind you, I don't say that the Vicomte de Toqueville isn't very +much of a gentleman, but the French ideas about the relations of young +men and young women are quite different and, I regret to say, less +innocent than ours. I have no reason to believe that the Vicomte has +come to this country to--to mend his fortunes. I know nothing about his +property. But my sense of responsibility towards you has led me to tell +him that you have no dot, for you somehow manage to give the impression +of a young woman of fortune. Not purposely, my dear--I did not mean +that." Mrs. Holt tapped gently Honora's flaming cheek. "I merely felt +it my duty to drop you a word of warning against Monsieur de Toqueville-- +because he is a Frenchman." + +"But, Mrs. Holt, I had no idea of--of falling in love with him," +protested Honora, as soon as she could get her breath. He seemed so kind +--and so interested in everything. + +"I dare say," said Mrs. Holt, dryly. "And I have always been led to +believe that that is the most dangerous sort. I am sure, Honora, after +what I have said, you will give him no encouragement." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora again, "I shouldn't think of such a thing!" + +"I am sure of it, Honora, now that you are forewarned. And your +suggestion to take him to the Institution was not a bad one. I meant to +do so anyway, and I think it will be good for him. Good night, my dear." + +After the good lady bad gone, Honora stood for some moments motionless. +Then she turned out the light. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES + +Mr. Robert Holt, Honora learned at breakfast, had two bobbies. She had +never heard of what is called Forestry, and had always believed the wood +of her country to be inexhaustible. It had never occurred to her to +think of a wild forest as an example of nature's extravagance, and so +flattering was her attention while Robert explained the primary +principles of caring for trees that he actually offered to show her +one of the tracts on the estate which he was treating. He could not, +--he regretted to say, take her that morning. + +His other hobby was golf. He was president of the Sutton Golf Club, and +had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence. This gentleman, it +appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a +leather bag filled with sticks. + +"Won't you come, too, Miss Leffingwell?" he said, as he took a second cup +of coffee. + +Somewhat to the astonishment of the Holt family, Robert seconded the +invitation. + +"I'll bet, Robert," said Mr. Spence, gallantly, "that Miss Leffingwell +can put it over both of us." + +"Indeed, I can't play at all," exclaimed Honora in confusion. "And I +shouldn't think of spoiling your match. And besides, I am going to drive +with Susan." + +"We can go another day, Honora," said Susan. + +But Honora would not hear of it. + +"Come over with me this afternoon, then," suggested Mr. Spence, "and I'll +give you a lesson." + +She thanked him gratefully. + +"But it won't be much fun for you, I'm afraid," she added, as they left +the dining room. + +"Don't worry about me," he answered cheerfully. He was dressed in a +checked golf costume, and wore a pink shirt of a new pattern. And he +stood in front of her in the hall, glowing from his night's sleep, +evidently in a high state of amusement. + +"What's the matter?" she demanded. + +"You did for the Vicomte all right," he said. "I'd give a good deal to +see him going through the Institution." + +"It wouldn't have hurt you, either," she retorted, and started up the +stairs. Once she glanced back and saw him looking after her. + +At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who +had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room. She paused with +her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his +expression as he approached her. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!" he exclaimed. "But I forgive +you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker. It must be that +I see the Home sometime, and if I go now it is over. I forgive you. +It is in the Bible that we must forgive our neighbour--how many times?" + +"Seventy times seven," said Honora. + +"But I make a condition," said the Vicomte, "that my neighbour shall be a +woman, and young and beautiful. Then I care not how many times. +Mademoiselle, if you would but have your portrait painted as you are, +with your hand on the post, by Sargent or Carolus Duran, there would be +some noise in the Salon." + +"Is that you, Vicomte?" came a voice from the foot of the stairs--Mrs. +Holt's voice. + +"I come this instant, Madame," he replied, looking over the banisters, +and added: "malheureux que je suis! Perhaps, when I return, you will +show me a little of the garden." + +The duty of exhibiting to guests the sights of Silverdale and the +neighbourhood had so often devolved upon Susan, who was methodical, that +she had made out a route, or itinerary, for this purpose. There were +some notes to leave and a sick woman and a child to see, which caused her +to vary it a little that morning; and Honora, who sat in the sunlight and +held the horse, wondered how it would feel to play the lady bountiful. +"I am so glad to have you all to myself for a little while, Honora," +Susan said to her. "You are so popular that I begin to fear that I shall +have to be unselfish, and share you." + +"Oh, Susan," she said, "every one has been so kind. And I can't tell +you how much I am enjoying this experience, which I feel I owe to you." + +"I am so happy, dear, that it is giving you pleasure," said Susan. + +"And don't think," exclaimed Honora, "that you won't see lots of me, +for you will." + +Her heart warmed to Susan, yet she could not but feel a secret pity for +her, as one unable to make the most of her opportunities in the wonderful +neighbourhood in which she lived. As they drove through the roads and in +and out of the well-kept places, everybody they met had a bow and a smile +for her friend--a greeting such as people give to those for whom they +have only good-will. Young men and girls waved their racquets at her +from the tennis-courts; and Honora envied them and wished that she, too, +were a part of the gay life she saw, and were playing instead of being +driven decorously about. She admired the trim, new houses in which they +lived, set upon the slopes of the hills. Pleasure houses, they seemed to +her, built expressly for joys which had been denied her. + +"Do you see much of--of these people, Susan?" she asked. + +"Not so much as I'd like," replied Susan, seriously. "I never seem to +get time. We nearly always have guests at Silverdale, and then there are +so many things one has to attend to. Perhaps you have noticed," she +added, smiling a little, "that we are very serious and old-fashioned." + +"Oh, no indeed," protested Honora. "It is such a wonderful experience +for me to be here!" + +"Well," said Susan, "we're having some young people to dinner to-night, +and others next week--that's why I'm leaving these notes. And then we +shall be a little livelier." + +"Really, Susan, you mustn't think that I'm not having a good time. It is +exciting to be in the same house with a real French Vicomte, and I like +Mr. Spence tremendously." + +Her friend was silent. + +"Don't you?" demanded Honora. + +To her surprise, the usually tolerant Susan did not wholly approve of Mr. +Spence. + +"He is a guest, and I ought not to criticise him," she answered. "But +since you ask me, Honora, I have to be honest. It seems to me that his +ambitions are a little sordid--that he is too intent upon growing rich." + +"But I thought all New Yorkers were that way," exclaimed Honora, and +added hastily, "except a few, like your family, Susan." + +Susan laughed. + +"You should marry a diplomat, my dear," she said. "After all, perhaps +I am a little harsh. But there is a spirit of selfishness and--and of +vulgarity in modern, fashionable New York which appears to be catching, +like a disease. The worship of financial success seems to be in every +one's blood." + +"It is power," said Honora. + +Susan glanced at her, but Honora did not remark the expression on her +friend's face, so intent was she on the reflections which Susan's words +had aroused. They had reached the far end of the Silverdale domain, and +were driving along the shore of the lake that lay like a sapphire set +amongst the green hills. It was here that the new house of the Robert +Holts was building. Presently they came to Joshua's dairy farm, and +Joshua himself was standing in the doorway of one of his immaculate barn +Honora put her hand on Susan's arm. + +"Can't we see the cows?" she asked. + +Susan looked surprised. + +"I didn't know you were interested in cows, Honora." + +"I am interested in everything," said Honora: "and I think your brother +is so attractive." + +It was at this moment that Joshua, with his hands in his pockets, +demanded what his sister was doing there. + +"Miss Leffingwell wants to look at the cattle, Josh," called Susan. + +"Won't you show them to me, Mr. Holt," begged Honora. "I'd like so much +to see some really good cattle, and to know a little more about them." + +Joshua appeared incredulous. But, being of the male sex, he did not hide +the fact that he was pleased, "it seems strange to have somebody really +want to see them," he said. "I tried to get Spence to come back this +way, but the idea didn't seem to appeal to him. Here are some of the +records." + +"Records?" repeated Honora, looking at a mass of typewritten figures on +the wall. "Do you mean to say you keep such an exact account of all the +milk you get?" + +Joshua laughed, and explained. She walked by his side over the concrete +paving to the first of the varnished stalls. + +"That," he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, "is Lady +Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides +of the water." + +"Isn't she a dear!" exclaimed Honora; "why, she's actually beautiful. +I didn't know cows could be so beautiful." + +"She isn't bad," admitted Joshua. "Of course the good points in a cow +aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here," +he added, pointing to the hips. + +"But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance," Honora +declared. + +"That's absolutely true," replied Joshua,--whereupon he began to talk. +And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall. +"There are some more in the pasture," he said, when they had reached the +end of the second building. + +"Oh, couldn't I see them?" she asked. + +"Surely," replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have +believed him capable. "I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will +walk home across the fields, if you like." + +"I should love to," said Honora. + +It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld +them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon. Mrs. +Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh. + +"My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in +a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought +impregnable. + +Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is +impossible to say. + +"I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt," she replied; "Mr. Holt +has captivated me." + +"We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell," declared Joshua, which was for +him the height of gallantry. + +"I only hope he hasn't bored you," said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua. + +"Oh, dear, no," exclaimed Honora. "I don't see bow any one could be +bored looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute." + +It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly resistless +attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face. Her comment upon this latest +conquest, though unexpressed, was disquieting. And in spite of herself, +Honora blushed again. + +At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a +remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have +remained a secret. + +"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's +got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I +offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon." + +It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she +resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name. + +"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she +said. + +There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching +a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he +attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of +that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the +discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the +little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the +course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the +art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the +stroke. + +"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so." + +Honora would try again. + +"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it +off a little still. Let it swing all the way round." + +"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!" + +"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to +obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!" + +"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale, +emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the +distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows. They sat down on +one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass. Mr. Spence +produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully. + +"A little quiet whiff," he suggested. "There's not much chance over at +the convent," and she gathered that it was thus he was pleased to +designate Silverdale. + +In one instant she was doubtful whether or not to be angry, and in the +next grew ashamed of the provincialism which had caused her to suspect an +insult. She took a cigarette, and he produced a gold match case, lighted +a match, and held it up for her. Honora blew it out. + +"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him. + +"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do." + +She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose, +and made a little grimace. + +"Do you like to see women smoke?" she asked. + +Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom, when +it was well done. + +"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well." + +"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly. + +"You do everything well," he said. + +"Even golf?" she inquired mischievously. + +"Even golf, for a beginner and--and a woman; you've got the swing in an +astonishingly short time. In fact, you've been something of an eye- +opener to me," he declared. "If I had been betting, I should have placed +the odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West." + +This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her +estimation, aroused Honora's pride. + +"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied, +laughing. "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?" + +"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word, +"gentlewomen, yes. But you might have been born anywhere." + +Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to +override this compliment. + +"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and there +could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these +qualities. "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that. I don't +know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's +French and Susan's sound silly. I watched you last night when you were +stringing the Vicomte." + +"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely. + +"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said. + +"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly. +"And besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte. In the West we don't +use anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York." + +"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least +out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the +beach. I have no idea what you were talking about." + +"Literature," she said. "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't +understand it." + +"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it +wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and +bonds." + +"He doesn't talk about them, at any rate," said Honora. + +"I'd respect him more if he did," he announced. "I know those fellows- +they make love to every woman they meet. I saw him eying you at lunch." + +Honora laughed. + +"I imagine the Vicomte could make love charmingly," she said. + +Mr. Spence suddenly became very solemn. + +"Merely as a fellow-countryman, Miss Leffingwell--" he began, when she +sprang to her feet, her eyes dancing, and finished the sentence. + +"You would advise me to be on my guard against him, because, although I +look twenty-five and experienced, I am only nineteen and inexperienced. +Thank you." + +He paused to light another cigarette before he followed her across the +turf. But she had the incomprehensible feminine satisfaction of knowing, +as they walked homeward, that the usual serenity of his disposition was +slightly ruffled. + +A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that +evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin. The complacency of New +York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used +would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis. Nevertheless, she liked +people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent" +about New York which appealed to her. Peter, when he read that letter, +seemed to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the +kind of cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable +tailors. For Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature. Literature +was invented before phonographs, and will endure after them. Peter could +hear Mr. Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation-- +a characteristic part--was faithfully transcribed. And Peter detected a +strain of admiration running even through the ridicule. + +Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle +Tom, who laughed over it. There was also a lifelike portrait of the +Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French; +but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained +obscure. He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the +oldest chateaux in France. (Although she did not say so, Honora had this +on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.) Mrs. Holt--with +her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that +somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom +and the really kind heart it contained--was likewise depicted; and Mr. +Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom +could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination. Joshua and his cows, +Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly +Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert--all were there: and even a +picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young +Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury +at Harvard. The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person +loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of +the Silverdale cottages and sketched. + +Honora was seeing life. She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to +write to her. + +The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the +members of the family during the night. It was Sunday. Honora, when she +left her room, heard a swishing on the stairs--Mrs. Joshua, stiffly +arrayed for the day. Even Mrs. Robert swished, but Mrs. Holt, in a +bronze-coloured silk, swished most of all as she entered the library +after a brief errand to the housekeeper's room. Mr. Holt was already +arranging his book-marks in the Bible, while Joshua and Robert, in black +cutaways that seemed to have the benumbing and paralyzing effect of +strait-jackets, wandered aimlessly about the room, as though its walls +were the limit of their movements. The children had a subdued and touch- +me-not air that reminded Honora of her own youth. + +It was not until prayers were over and the solemn gathering seated at +the breakfast table that Mr. Spence burst upon it like an aurora. His +flannel suit was of the lightest of grays; he wore white tennis shoes and +a red tie, and it was plain, as he cheerfully bade them good morning, +that he was wholly unaware of the enormity of his costume. There was a +choking, breathless moment before Mrs. Holt broke the silence. + +"Surely, Howard," she said, "you're not going to church in those +clothes." + +"I hadn't thought of going to church," replied Mr. Spence, helping +himself to cherries. + +"What do you intend to do?" asked his hostess. + +"Read the stock reports for the week as soon as the newspapers arrive." + +"There is no such thing as a Sunday newspaper in my house," said Mrs. +Holt. + +"No Sunday newspapers!" he exclaimed. And his eyes, as they encountered +Honora's,--who sought to avoid them,--expressed a genuine dismay. + +"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that I was right when I spoke of the +pernicious effect of Wall Street upon young men. Your mother did not +approve of Sunday newspapers." + +During the rest of the meal, although he made a valiant attempt to hold +his own, Mr. Spence was, so to speak, outlawed. Robert and Joshua must +have had a secret sympathy for him. One of them mentioned the Vicomte. + +"The Vicomte is a foreigner," declared Mrs. Holt. "I am in no sense +responsible for him." + +The Vicomte was at that moment propped up in bed, complaining to his +valet about the weakness of the coffee. He made the remark (which he +afterwards repeated to Honora) that weak coffee and the Protestant +religion seemed inseparable; but he did not attempt to discover the +whereabouts, in Sutton, of the Church of his fathers. He was not in the +best of humours that morning, and his toilet had advanced no further +when, an hour or so later, he perceived from behind his lace curtains Mr. +Howard Spence, dressed with comparative soberness, handing Honora into +the omnibus. The incident did not serve to improve the cynical mood in +which the Vicomte found himself. + +Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence's church- +going, was not far from wrong. As may have been suspected, it was to +Honora that credit was due. It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after +breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him +from leaving that afternoon. It was Honora who told him that he ought to +be ashamed of himself. And it was to Honora, after church was over and +they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence +remarked by way of a delicate compliment that "the morning had not been a +total loss, after all!" + +The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the +village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family. +The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window, +and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews. Mrs. +Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young +man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir. The sermon +of the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was +the subject of discussion at luncheon. + +"It is very like a sermon I found in my room," said Honora. + +"I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not +overlook it," said Mrs. Holt, approvingly. "Joshua, I wish you would +read that sermon aloud to us." + +"Oh, do, Mr. Holt!" begged Honora. + +The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed +unmistakable signs of a futile anger. He had asked Honora to walk with +him. + +"Of course," added Mrs. Holt, "no one need listen who doesn't wish to. +Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine +service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied." + +The reading took place in the library. Through the open window Honora +perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all +twisted under him. It worried her to picture his attire when he should +wake up. Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out +again. At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn, +Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte. He was trying to +read, but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze +protractedly at the house, stroking his mustache. The low song of the +bees around the shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt's slow reading. On the +whole, the situation delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from +smiling at M. de Toqueville. When at last she emerged from the library, +he rose precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his +hands towards the pitiless puritan skies. + +"Enfin!" he exclaimed tragically. "Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life +have I passed such a day!" + +"Are you ill, Vicomte?" she asked. + +"Ill! Were it not for you, I would be gone. You alone sustain me--it is +for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer. What kind of a menage is +this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to +listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where +Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a +day in purgatory?" + +"But, Vicomte," Honora laughed, "you must remember that you are in +America, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs." + +"Ah, no," he cried, "ah, no, it cannot all be like this! I will not +believe it. Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon, +offered to show me his collection of Chinese carvings! I, who might be +at Trouville or Cabourg! If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should +not stay here--not one little minute," he said, with a slow intensity. +"Behold what I suffer for your sake!" + +"For my sake?" echoed Honora. + +"For what else?" demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of +martyrdom. "It is not for my health, alas! Between the coffee and this +dimanche I have the vertigo." + +Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her +childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham's curios. + +"You are cruel," said the Vicomte; "you laugh at my tortures." + +"On the contrary, I think I understand them," she replied. "I have often +felt the same way." + +"My instinct was true, then," he cried triumphantly; "the first time my +eyes fell on you, I said to myself, 'ah! there is one who understands.' +And I am seldom mistaken." + +"Your experience with the opposite sex," ventured Honora, "must have made +you infallible." + +He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of +conquests. + +"You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle," he said. "You are not +like these people. You have temperament, and a future--believe me. +Why do you waste your time?" + +"What do you mean, Vicomte?" + +"Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean. It is that you do not +choose to understand--you are far too clever. Why is it, then, that you +bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your +jeunesse? It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not +created for a religieuse. And again, it pleases you to spend hours with +the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua. He +is no companion for you." + +"I am afraid," she said reprovingly, "that you do not understand Mr. +Spence." + +"Par exemple!" cried the Vicomte; "have I not seen hundreds' like him? +Do not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand +cocktails and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day +long? and go to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn? Nom de nom, of what does +his conversation consist? Of the price of railroads;--is it not so? +I, who speak to you, have talked to him. Does he know how to make love?" + +"That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America," Honora +replied. + +"It is because you are a new country," he declared. + +"And you are mad over money. Money has taken the place of love." + +"Is money so despised in France?" she asked. "I have heard--that you +married for it!" + +"Touch!" cried the Vicomte, laughing. "You see, I am frank with you. We +marry for money, yes, but we do not make a god of it. It is our servant. +You make it, and we enjoy it. Yes, and you, Mademoiselle--you, too, were +made to enjoy. You do not belong here," he said, with a disdainful sweep +of the arm. "Ah, I have solved you. You have in you the germ of the +Riviera. You were born there." + +Honora wondered if what he said were true. Was she different? She was +having a great deal of pleasure at Silverdale; even the sermon reading, +which would have bored her at home, had interested and amused her. But +was it not from the novelty of these episodes, rather than from their +special characters, that she received the stimulus? She glanced +curiously towards the Vicomte, and met his eye. + +They had been walking the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one +of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the +woods. And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the +wooded valley. Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing +gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her. His +eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly she tingled with a sense that the +situation was not without an element of danger. + +"I had a feeling about you, last night at dinner," he said; "you reminded +me of a line of Marcel Prevost, 'Cette femme ne sera pas aimee que parmi +des drames.'" + +"Nonsense," said Honora; "last night at dinner you were too much occupied +with Miss Chamberlin to think of me." + +"Ah, Mademoiselle, you have read me strangely if you think that. I +talked to her with my lips, yes--but it was of you I was thinking. I was +thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have +the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages." The Vicomte bent towards +her, and his voice became caressing. "You cannot realize how beautiful +you are," he sighed. + +Suddenly he seized her hand, and before she could withdraw it she had the +satisfaction of knowing the sensation of having it kissed. It was a +strange sensation indeed. And the fact that she did not tingle with +anger alone made her all the more angry. Trembling, her face burning, +she leaped down from the railing and fled into the path. And there, +seeing that he did not follow, she turned and faced him. He stood +staring at her with eyes that had not ceased to sparkle. + +"How cowardly of you!" she cried. + +"Ah, Mademoiselle," he answered fervently, "I would risk your anger a +thousand times to see you like that once more. I cannot help my +feelings--they were dead indeed if they did not respond to such an +inspiration. Let them plead for my pardon." + +Honora felt herself melting a little. After all, there might have been +some excuse for it, and be made love divinely. When he had caught up +with her, his contriteness was such that she was willing to believe he +had not meant to insult her. And then, he was a Frenchman. As a proof +of his versatility, if not of his good faith, he talked of neutral +matters on the way back to the house, with the charming ease and +lightness that was the gift of his race and class. On the borders of the +wood they encountered the Robert Holts, walking with their children. + +"Madame," said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, "your Silverdale is enchanting. +We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley." + +"And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?" she +asked, with a glance at Honora. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON + +If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon +the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both +the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed. +Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore, +described it to Honora as a normal week. During its progress there came +and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had +heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a +youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer +interested in settlement work. + +The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the +Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the +architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where +the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended +the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral, +of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious +young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first +seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous. He +had done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left. +And, since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were +going through New York, that she would let him know. It would be a real +pleasure to show her what he was doing. + +Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her +hostess. + +"I can't tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear," said that +lady. "You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and +I do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart." + +In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have +had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was +slowly unfolding itself. By no fault of Honora's, of course. There may +have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her-- +that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama. If +experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an +expert in matters of the sex. Could it be possible, Honora asked herself +more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct +and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect? + +It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the +Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly +not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte's temperament and +habits ecstatically happy. And Honora was filled with a strange and +unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the +English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study +at first hand of Americans. + +The time has come to acknowledge frankly that it was Honora he was +studying--Honora as the type of young American womanhood. What he did +not suspect was that young American womanhood was studying him. Thanks +to a national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of +Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain. And the +fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the +buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime which it had +hitherto lacked. + +The Vicomte's feelings were by no means hidden processes to Honora, and +it was as though she could lift the lid of the furnace at any time and +behold the growth of the flame which she had lighted. Nay, nature had +endowed her with such a gift that she could read the daily temperature +as by a register hung on the outside, without getting scorched. Nor had +there been any design on her part in thus tormenting his soul. He had +not meant to remain more than four days at Silverdale, that she knew; +he had not meant to come to America and fall in love with a penniless +beauty--that she knew also. The climax would be interesting, if +perchance uncomfortable. + +It is wonderful what we can find the time to do, if we only try. +Monsieur de Toqueville lent Honora novels, which she read in bed; but +being in the full bloom of health and of a strong constitution, this +practice did not prevent her from rising at seven to take a walk through +the garden with Mr. Holt--a custom which he had come insensibly to depend +upon. And in the brief conversations which she vouchsafed the Vicomte, +they discussed his novels. In vain he pleaded, in caressing undertones, +that she should ride with him. Honora had never been on a horse, but she +did not tell him so. If she would but drive, or walk-only a little way-- +he would promise faithfully not to forget himself. Honora intimated that +the period of his probation had not yet expired. If he waylaid her on +the stairs, he got but little satisfaction. + +"You converse by the hour with the missionaries, and take long promenades +with the architects and charity workers, but to me you will give +nothing," he complained. + +"The persons of whom you speak are not dangerous," answered Honora, +giving him a look. + +The look, and being called dangerous, sent up the temperature several +degrees. Frenchmen are not the only branch of the male sex who are +complimented by being called dangerous. The Vicomte was desolated, +so he said. + +"I stay here only for you, and the coffee is slowly deranging me," he +declared in French, for most of their conversations were in that +language. If there were duplicity in this, Honora did not recognize it. +"I stay here only for you, and how you are cruel! I live for you--how, +the good God only knows. I exist--to see you for ten minutes a day." + +"Oh, Vicomte, you exaggerate. If you were to count it up, I am sure you +would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether. And then, although +I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you +have made by the same arts." + +"I suffer," he cried; "ah, no, you cannot look at me without perceiving +it--you who are so heartless. And when I see you play at golf with that +Mr. Spence--!" + +"Surely," said Honora, "you can't object to my acquiring a new +accomplishment when I have the opportunity, and Mr. Spence is so kind +and good-natured about it." + +"Do you think I have no eyes?" he exclaimed. "Have I not seen him look +at you like the great animal of Joshua when he wants his supper? He is +without esprit, without soul. There is nothing inside of him but money- +making machinery." + +"The most valuable of all machinery," she replied, laughingly. + +"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like +so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow," +he declared. + +"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him. + +If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind, +the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale +that week was apt to be diverting. Mr. Spence held his own. He advised +the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some +day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the +practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the +missionary. Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen. +But he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to +repeating for the English lady certain phrases which she called +"picturesque expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil. + +It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue +Honora's lessons in golf--or rather that she found time, in the midst of +her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them. And in this +diversion she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself. On Saturday morning, +the heat being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the +fourth hole and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which +they had visited once before and had found attractive. Honora, after +bathing her face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder. She was very +fresh and radiant. + +This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr. +Silence's expression. He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled +up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing +at her with approbation. She lowered her eyes. + +"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked. + +Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at +him from under her blue lashes seldom misses. + +I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly. + +"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her. "If I could take you +on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes +which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence. "I have to go +back to town on Monday." + +If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it. + +"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied. + +"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again--rather awkwardly for +Mr. Spence. But Honora was silent. "I had a letter this morning from my +partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back." + +"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green +scale of moss from the boulder. + +"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of +considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible. +Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young +men." + +"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so +hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to +them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight +until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men. +That would be a career!" + +"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for." + +Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista +of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the +water and took a step nearer her. + +"How long have I known you?" he asked. + +She started. + +"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said. + +"Does it seem longer than that to you?" + +"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been +staying in the same house." + +"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always." + +Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment, +that there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some +other voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the +same tone. + +"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching +you--more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any +place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me +how you've handled all the curiosities up there this week." + +"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a +little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his +own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was +changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too, +with a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a +glance at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He +did not, it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been +called a thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting +thrills, and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how +close a bond of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden +announcement of his going back to New York. In a little while she too +would be leaving for St. Louis. The probability that she would never +see him again seemed graver than she would have believed. + +"Will you miss me a little?" he asked. + +"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how +your--your enterprise succeeds." + +"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know +my own mind. You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without +boasting that I can give you what you desire in life--after a while. I +love you. You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have +waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether +what I know to be the great happiness of my life. Will you marry me?" + +She sat silent upon the rock. She heard him speak, it is true; but, try +as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her. +She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart +was involved to such an extent. He was very near her, but he had not +attempted to touch her. His voice, towards the end of his speech, had +trembled with passion--a true note had been struck. And she had struck +it, by no seeming effort! He wished to marry her! + +He aroused her again. + +"I have frightened you," he said. + +She opened her eyes. What he beheld in them was not fright--it was +nothing he had ever seen before. For the first time in his life, +perhaps, he was awed. And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to +him with a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold. He +had not realized what he was getting. + +"I am not frightened," she said. "Yes, I will marry you." + +He was not sure whether--so brief was the moment!--he had held and kissed +her cheek. His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her +poised on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking +back at him over her shoulder. + +He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out +into the open golf course. He tried to think, but failed. Never in his +orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him. He caught up +with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium. + +"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it." + +She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her +mouth. + +"What are you thinking of?" he asked. + +"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora. +"But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard? We'll have it for our own +secret a little while." + +The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm. + +"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied. + +In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch--much too +rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late. + +"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered +to her on the stairs. + +"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing, +"only more purple, and not so ghostlike." + +"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help +it. It won't come off. I want to blurt out the news to every one in the +dining-room--to that little Frenchman, in particular." + +Honora laughed again. Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau +which such a proceeding would bring forth. The incredulity, the chagrin, +the indignation, even, in some quarters. He conceived the household, +with the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his +arms. + +Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior +training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his +entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation. His colour was high, and +his expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that +he felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before +and behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth +would save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game +of golf must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old +to learn it. + +"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared. + +"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retorted +Mrs. Holt. In relaxing moods she indulged in banter. + +Honora stepped into the breach. She would not trust her newly acquired +fiance to extricate himself. + +"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we +were late for lunch once before." + +"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that +colour. I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls, +and I am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good +when I send you back to her." + +"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora. + +In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a +jellied egg. Honora glanced at the Vicomte. He sat very stiff, and his +manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its +claws. It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram, +which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the +meaning of it came to her. + +"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt. + +"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed. "He's in New +York. And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour +with me." + +"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe. +He had such a good face. And you told me about him." + +"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking +at her. "Only he is much older than I. He used to wheel me up and down +when I was a baby. He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom +took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer. A very good one, I +believe." + +"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said +Mrs. Holt. "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask +him to spend the night." + +"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered. + +It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's +arrival at this time. Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences! + +There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room, +Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach +it. She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was +likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua--or indeed Mrs. Holt +herself. Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all. She crossed the +great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of +shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest. With a +really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to +believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense +desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same +conditions, to keep in motion. So she sat down on a bench within the +borders of the wood. + +It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the +word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination +free play. The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did +not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense +of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to +dissipate. Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid +and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the +possession of these attributes. A castle founded on such a rock was not +a castle in Spain! + +It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle +than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of +the Hercules she had chosen to hold it. + +She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon-- +one letter to both. Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them, +and of their lonely life' without her. But they would come on to New +York to visit her often, and they would be proud of her. Of one thing +she was sure--she must go home to them at once--on Tuesday. She would +tell Mrs. Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night. And, while pondering over +the probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to +her that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was +coming. + +What would he say? Should she tell him? She was surprised to find that +the idea of doing so was painful to her. But she was aroused from these +reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the +Vicomte. His face wore an expression of triumph. + +"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her. +Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she +remained. + +"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she +remarked. "You have an instinct for the chase." + +"Mon dieu?" he said. "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you. +Why should you so continually run away from me?" + +"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte." + +"And that other one--the stock-broker--you do not avoid him. Diable, I +am not blind, Mademoiselle. It is plain to me at luncheon that you have +made boil the sluggish blood of that one. As for me--" + +"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling. + +Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her. "It is not for +my health that I stay here, as I have told you. It is for the sight of +you, for the sound of the music of that low voice. It is in the hope +that you will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little +better. And to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see +you, I could sit still no longer. I do not fear that Spence,--no. But +this other--what is he like?" + +"He is the best type of American," replied Honora. "I am sure you will +be interested in him, and like him." + +The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. + +"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle. +You are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this +country. Such a woman as you is thrown away here. You possess +qualities--you will pardon me--in which your countrywomen are lacking,-- +esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you. I have read +you as you have not read yourself. I have seen how you have served +yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept +their friendship." + +"Vicomte!" she exclaimed. + +"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare--they are +sublime. They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights." + +Honora was silent. She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into +which there was creeping a vibrant note of passion. She was a little +frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested. This was all so +different from what she had expected of him. What did he mean? Was she +indeed like that? + +She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a +chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis +XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,--a chateau with +a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had +prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river. It was +there that his childhood had been passed. And as he spoke, she listened +with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place. + +"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not +what you call an adventurer. Many of these, alas! come to your country. +And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange +to Americans. When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially +is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility." + +Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples. + +"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me. I would die rather +than hurt your feelings. Listen, I pray. It was to tell you frankly +that I came to this country for that purpose,--in order that I might live +as my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace +a dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished. I have soixante +quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in +your money, and which goes much farther in France. At the proper time, +I will present these matters to your guardians. I have lived, but I have +a heart, and I love you madly. Rather would I dwell with you in +Provence, where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a +palace on the Champs Elysees with another. We can come to Paris for two +months, at least. For you I can throw my prospects out of the window +with a light heart. Honore--how sweet is your name in my language--I +love you to despair." + +He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently +away. It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with +feeling, and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him +would be. Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless +girl! Her own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her +eyes were filled with compassion. + +"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me--that way. +I thought--I thought you were amusing yourself." + +"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly. "And you--were you amusing +yourself?" + +"I--I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice. + +"I am engaged." + +"Engaged!" He sprang to his feet. "Engaged! Ah, no, I will not believe +it. You were engaged when you came here?" + +She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words. +At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within +her led her on to tell him the truth. + +"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it +announced." + +For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he +seemed to sway a little and to choke. + +"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be! My ears have deceived me. I am not +sane. You are going to marry him--? Ah, you have sold yourself." + +"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself. Mr. Spence is +an honourable man, and I love him." + +The Vicomte appeared to choke again. And then, suddenly, he became +himself, although his voice was by no means natural. His elaborate and +ironic bow she remembered for many years. + +"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu. You will be good enough to +convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence." + +With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly, +and she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had +disappeared behind the trees near the house. When she sat down on +the bench again, she found that she was trembling a little. Was the +unexpected to occur to her from now on? Was it true, as the Vicomte had +said, that she was destined to be loved amidst the play of drama? + +She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the +winds his chances of wealth for her sake--a sufficient measure of the +feelings of one of his nationality and caste. And she permitted, for an +instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had +never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his +unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him? She thought of the +romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies +with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped +in through wicket gates. And to think that she might have been a +Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle! + +A poor Vicomtesse, it is true. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN + +Honora sat still upon the bench. After an indefinite period she saw +through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single +passenger. And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be +Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him. She +arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation. + +She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was +talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an +unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise. So much, in less +than a year, had happened to Honora! And the sight of him, and the sound +of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past. +How long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis! + +Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to +sharpen her sense of certain characteristics. He was lounging in his +chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand m his pocket, and talking +to these men as though he had known them always. There was a quality +about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact +definition. It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him +out of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter +Erwin had a personality. That personality was a mixture of simplicity +and self-respect and--common sense. And as Honora listened to his +cheerful voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself +clearly and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the +other two men were listening with a certain deference. In her sensitive +state she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her +between Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry. + +Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette. Never, it +seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity. An attribute +which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife, +lost something of its value. To look at Peter was to wonder whether +there could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day +she had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean +face summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps +it was this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward +and called his name. He rose precipitately. + +"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand. "How do you +happen to be in the East?" + +"An errand boy," he replied. "Somebody had to come, so they chose me. +Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my +education." + +"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly. + +"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look. "I was on the bench at +the edge of the wood." She turned again to Peter. "How good of you to +come up and see me!" + +"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an +hour." + +"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in +with unusual graciousness. "My mother will be disappointed not to see +you." + +"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply, +gazing off across the lawn. "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West +to-night." + +"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place. Come, +we'll begin with the garden." + +She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had +wished, an hour ago, to avoid. + +"Wouldn't you like a runabout?" suggested Joshua, hospitably. + +Honora thanked him. + +"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied. + +"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home." + +Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no +evidence of jealousy. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder. + +"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and +Spence. We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in +finding us. I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West." + +Peter thanked him. + +For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was +meditatively silent. She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence, +until suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that +Peter had as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for +especial consideration. She could not, however, resist saying, +"New Yorkers are like that." + +"Like what?" he asked. + +She coloured. + +"Like--Mr. Spence. A little--self-assertive, sure of themselves." She +strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was +the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended. She +knew that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but +Peter's silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak. "He has made quite +an unusual success for so young a man." + +Peter looked at her and shook his head. + +"New York--success! What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he +inquired. + +"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried. "I wish I were going with +you." + +"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides and +Forest Park and--and me?" + +He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made +standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat +casting a shadow on her face. And the smile which she had known so well +since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in +his eyes. She was conscious of a slight resentment. Was there, in fact, +no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten +months since she had seen him? And rather than a tolerance in which +there was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from +Peter an open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied +were hers. She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he +refused to be dazzled by it. He insisted upon treating her as the same +Honora. + +"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked. + +They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they +did not wish to curtail her visit. They did not expect her next week, he +knew. + +Honora coloured again. + +"I feel--that I ought to go to them," she said. + +He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon +surprised him. + +"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been +very lonesome." + +She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: +"And you? Have you missed me--a little?" + +He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid +a hand upon his arm. + +"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I +have missed you--terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she +went on hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell +me how it happened hat you came on to New York." + +"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said. + +"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this +change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it +one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive +about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted +to the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice." + +"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't +it? I can't get used to it myself." + +"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed +reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua +Holt and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer." + +Peter laughed. + +"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he. + +He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in +Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever +rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond, +--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads,-- +through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at the +little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of that +first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the +episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's +mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his +companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant +places. Comparisons seemed inevitable. + +She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a +long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the +valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it +was in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the +die of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. +Why had she never felt it before? She had thought his face homely--now +it seemed to shine with a transfiguring light. She recalled, with a +pang, that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the +expression of the man himself. Incredible is the range of human emotion! +She felt a longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there. + +He turned at length from the view. + +"How wonderful!" he said. + +"I didn't know--you cared for nature so much, Peter." + +He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her, +unresisting, to the bench beside him. + +"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked. + +"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am--very happy." + +"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowing +Mrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home so +soon. I do not know myself why I came. I am a matter-of-fact person, +but I acted on an impulse." + +"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his +eyes. + +"Yes," he said, "an impulse. I can call it by no other name. I should +have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this +morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some +use to you." + +"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized +Peter with such words on his lips. "I am happy--indeed I am. Only--I am +overwrought--seeing you again--and you made me think of home." + +"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared. "And if my coming has +upset you--" + +"Oh, no," she cried. "Please don't think so. It has given me a sense +of--of security. That you were ready to help me if--if I needed you." + +"You should always have known that," he replied. He rose and stood +gazing off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart +beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless +to stave off. And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you +for many years," he said. "You were too young for me to speak of it. +I did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day. For many years +I have hoped that some day you might be my wife. My one fear has been +that I might lose you. Perhaps--perhaps it has been a dream. But I am +willing to wait, should you wish to see more of the world. You are young +yet, and I am offering myself for all time. There is no other woman for +me, and never can be." + +He paused and smiled down at her. But she did not speak. She could not. + +"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious. And with your gifts +I do not blame you. I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with +confidence that I can offer you something better, something surer. +I can take care of you and protect you, and I will devote my life +to your happiness. Will you marry me?" + +Her eyes were sparkling with tears,--tears, he remembered afterwards, +that were like blue diamonds. + +"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could! I have always--wished that I +could. I can't." + +"You can't?" + +She shook her head. + +"I--I have told no one yet--not even Aunt Mary. I am going to marry Mr. +Spence." + +For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the +suffering in his face. + +"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your +happiness. And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember +that I am your friend, to be counted on. And that I shall not change. +Will you remember that?" + +"Yes," she whispered. She looked at him now, and through the veil of her +tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes. The tones of a +distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze. + +Peter glanced at his watch. + +"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house--my +train goes at seven. Can I get down to the village through the valley?" + +Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees +beneath them. + +"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?" + +She nodded. He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone. And presently, +in a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her +bravely. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT + +How long she sat gazing with unseeing eyes down the valley Honora did not +know. Distant mutterings of thunder aroused her; the evening sky had +darkened, and angry-looking clouds of purple were gathering over the +hills. She rose and hurried homeward. She had thought to enter by the +billiard-room door, and so gain her own chamber without encountering the +household; but she had reckoned without her hostess. Beyond the billiard +room, in the little entry filled with potted plants, she came face to +face with that lady, who was inciting a footman to further efforts in his +attempt to close a recalcitrant skylight. Honora proved of more +interest, and Mrs. Holt abandoned the skylight. + +"Why, my dear," she said, "where have you been all afternoon?" + +"I--I have been walking with Mr. Erwin, Mrs. Holt. I have been showing +him Silverdale." + +"And where is he? It seems to me I invited him to stay all night, and +Joshua tells me he extended the invitation." + +"We were in the little summer-house, and suddenly he discovered that it +was late and he had to catch the seven o'clock train," faltered Honora, +somewhat disconnectedly. "Otherwise he would have come to you himself +and told you--how much he regretted not staying. He has to go to St. +Louis to-night." + +"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "this is an afternoon of surprises. The Vicomte +has gone off, too, without even waiting to say good-by." + +"The Vicomte!" exclaimed Honora. + +"Didn't you see him, either, before he left?" inquired Mrs. Holt; +"I thought perhaps you might be able to give me some further explanation +of it." + +"I?" exclaimed Honora. She felt ready to sink through the floor, and +Mrs. Holt's delft-blue eyes haunted her afterwards like a nightmare. + +"Didn't you see him, my dear? Didn't he tell you anything?" + +"He--he didn't say he was going away." + +"Did he seem disturbed about anything?" Mrs. Holt insisted. + +"Now I think of it, he did seem a little disturbed." + +"To save my life," said Mrs. Holt, "I can't understand it. He left a +note for me saying that he had received a telegram, and that he had to go +at once. I was at a meeting of my charity board. It seems a very +strange proceeding for such an agreeable and polite man as the Vicomte, +although he had his drawbacks, as all Continentals have. And at times +I thought he was grave and moody,--didn't you?" + +"Oh, yes, he was moody," Honora agreed eagerly. + +"You noticed it, too," said Mrs. Holt. "But he was a charming man, and +so interested in America and in the work we are doing. But I can't +understand about the telegram. I had Carroll inquire of every servant +in the house, and there is no knowledge of a telegram having come up from +the village this afternoon." + +"Perhaps the Vicomte might have met the messenger in the grounds," +hazarded Honora. + +At this point their attention was distracted by a noise that bore a +striking resemblance to a suppressed laugh. The footman on the step- +ladder began to rattle the skylight vigorously. + +"What on earth is the matter with you, Woods?" said Mrs. Holt. + +"It must have been some dust off the skylight, Madam, that got into my +throat," he stammered, the colour of a geranium. + +"Nonsense," said Mrs. Holt, "there is no dust on the skylight." + +"It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam," +he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his +former theory. + +"You are very stupid not to be able to close it," she declared; "in a few +minutes the place will be flooded. Tell Carroll to come and do it." + +Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the +stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows +against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting +against them. She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired. +Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and +gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel, +above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had +an instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand. + +Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite. + +"My dear," she began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and +welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit" +(Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and +I need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your +aunt has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. +You have been very fortunate." + +"Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt," echoed Honora, in bewilderment. + +"And Susan," continued Mrs. Holt, "useful and willing as she is, does not +possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them." + +Honora could think of no reply to this. Her eyes--to which no one could +be indifferent--were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the +good lady to guess that her brain was reeling? + +I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of--well, +of rather difficult company this summer. Next week, for instance, some +prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on +July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the +Charity Conference in New York. The Japanese Minister has promised to +pay me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable +tuberculosis homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his +family. Then there are some foreign artists." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora; "how many interesting people you see!" + +"Exactly, my dear. And I thought that, in addition to the fact that I +have grown very fond of you, you would be very useful to me here, and +that a summer with me might not be without its advantages. As your aunt +will have you until you are married, which, I may say, without denying +your attractions, is likely to be for some time, I intend to write to her +to-night--with your consent--and ask her to allow you to remain with me +all summer." + +Honora sat transfixed, staring painfully at the big pendant ear-rings. + +"It is so kind of you, Mrs. Holt--"she faltered. + +"I can realize, my dear, that you would wish to get back to your aunt. +The feeling does you infinite credit. But, on the other hand, besides +the advantages which would accrue to you, it might, to put the matter +delicately, be of a little benefit to your relations, who will have to +think of your future." + +"Indeed, it is good of you, but I must go back, Mrs. Holt." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, with a touch of dignity--for ere now people +had left Silverdale before she wished them to--"of course, if you do not +care to stay, that is quite another thing." + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt, don't say that!" cried Honora, her face burning; +"I cannot thank you enough for the pleasure you have given me. If--if +things were different, I would stay with you gladly, although I should +miss my family. But now,--now I feel that I must be with them. I--I am +engaged to be married." + +Honora still remembers the blank expression which appeared on the +countenance of her hostess when she spoke these words. Mrs. Holt's +cheeks twitched, her ear-rings quivered, and her bosom heaved-once. + +"Engaged to be married!" she gasped. + +"Yes," replied our heroine, humbly, "I was going to tell you--to-morrow." + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Holt, after a silence, "it is to the young man who +was here this afternoon, and whom I did not see. It accounts for his +precipitate departure. But I must say, Honora, since frankness is one of +my faults, that I feel it my duty to write to your aunt and disclaim all +responsibility." + +"It is not to Mr. Erwin," said Honora, meekly; "it is--it is to Mr. +Spence." + +Mrs. Holt seemed to find difficulty in speaking, Her former symptoms, +which Honora had come to recognize as indicative of agitation, returned +with alarming intensity. And when at length her voice made itself heard, +it was scarcely recognizable. + +"You are engaged--to--Howard Spence?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora, "it was as great a surprise to me-- +believe me--as it is to you." + +But even the knowledge that they shared a common amazement did not +appear, at once, to assuage Mrs. Holt's emotions. + +"Do you love him?" she demanded abruptly. + +Whereupon Honora burst into tears. + +"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she sobbed, "how can you ask?" + +From this time on the course of events was not precisely logical. Mrs. +Holt, setting in abeyance any ideas she may have had about the affair, +took Honora in her arms, and against that ample bosom was sobbed out the +pent-up excitement and emotion of an extraordinary day. + +"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, stroking the dark hair, +"I should not have asked you that-forgive me." And the worthy lady, +quivering with sympathy now, remembered the time of her own engagement +to Joshua. And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed +somewhat from those of the present--in regularity, at least, increased +rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness. The +perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were +swept away by a flood of feeling. "There, there, my dear, I did not mean +to be harsh. What you told me was such a shock--such a surprise, and +marriage is such a grave and sacred thing." + +"I know it," sobbed Honora. + +"And you are very young." + +"Yes, Mrs. Holt." + +"And it happened in my house." + +"No," said Honora, "it happened--near the golf course." + +Mrs. Holt smiled, and wiped her eyes. + +"I mean, my dear, that I shall always feel responsible for bringing you +together---for your future happiness. That is a great deal. I could +have wished that you both had taken longer to reflect, but I hope with +all my heart that you will be happy." + +Honora lifted up a tear-stained face. + +"He said it was because I was going away that--that he spoke," she said. +"Oh, Mrs. Holt, I knew that you would be kind about it." + +"Of course I am kind about it, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "As I told you, +I have grown to have an affection for you. I feel a little as though you +belonged to me. And after this--this event, I expect to see a great deal +of you. Howard Spence's mother was a very dear friend of mine. I was +one of the first who knew her when she came to New York, from Troy, a +widow, to educate her son. She was a very fine and a very courageous +woman." Mrs. Holt paused a moment. "She hoped that Howard would be a +lawyer." + +"A lawyer!" Honora repeated. + +"I lost sight of him for several years," continued Mrs. Holt, "but before +I invited him here I made some inquiries about him from friends of mine +in the financial world. I find that he is successful for so young a man, +and well thought of. I have no doubt he will make a good husband, my +dear, although I could wish he were not on the Stock Exchange. And I +hope you will make him happy." + +Whereupon the good lady kissed Honora, and dismissed her to dress for +dinner. + +"I shall write to your aunt at once," she said. + + ........................ + +Requited love, unsettled condition that it is supposed to bring, did not +interfere with Howard Spence's appetite at dinner. His spirits, as +usual, were of the best, and from time to time Honora was aware of his +glance. Then she lowered her eyes. She sat as in a dream; and, try as +she might, her thoughts would not range themselves. She seemed to see +him but dimly, to hear what he said faintly; and it conveyed nothing to +her mind. + +This man was to be her husband! Over and over she repeated it to +herself. His name was Howard Spence, and he was on the highroad to +riches and success, and she was to live in New York. Ten days before he +had not existed for her. She could not bring herself to believe that he +existed now. Did she love him? How could she love him, when she did not +realize him? One thing she knew, that she had loved him that morning. + +The fetters of her past life were broken, and this she would not realize. +She had opened the door of the cage for what? These were the fragments +of thoughts that drifted through her mind like tattered clouds across an +empty sky after a storm. Peter Erwin appeared to her more than once, and +he was strangely real. But he belonged to the past. Course succeeded +course, and she talked subconsciously to Mr. Holt and Joshua--such is the +result of feminine training. + +After dinner she stood on the porch. The rain had ceased, a cool damp +breeze shook the drops from the leaves, and the stars were shining. +Presently, at the sound of a step behind her, she started. He was +standing at her shoulder. + +"Honora!" he said. + +She did not move. + +"Honora, I haven't seen you--alone--since morning. It seems like a +thousand years. Honora?" + +"Yes." + +"Did you mean it? + +"Did I mean what?" + +"When you said you'd marry me." His voice trembled a little. "I've been +thinking of nothing but you all day. You're not--sorry? You haven't +changed your mind?" + +She shook her head. + +"At dinner when you wouldn't look at me, and this afternoon--" + +"No, I'm not sorry," she said, cutting him short. "I'm not sorry." + +He put his arm about her with an air that was almost apologetic. And, +seeing that she did not resist, he drew her to him and kissed her. +Suddenly, unaccountably to her, she clung to him. + +"You love me!" he exclaimed. + +"Yes," she whispered, "but I am tired. I--I am going upstairs, Howard. +I am tired." + +He kissed her again. + +"I can't believe it!" he said. "I'll make you a queen. And we'll be +married in the autumn, Honora." He nodded boyishly towards the open +windows of the library. "Shall I tell them?" he asked. "I feel like +shouting it. I can't hold on much longer. I wonder what the old lady +will say!" + +Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door. As +she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him. + +"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said. + +And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Little better than a gambling place (Stock Exchange) +Often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure +Weak coffee and the Protestant religion seemed inseparable + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V2, BY CHURCHILL *** + +*********** This file should be named wc38w10.txt or wc38w10.zip ************ + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, wc38w11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, wc38w10a.txt + +This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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