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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Trespasser, by G. Parker, Complete
+#49 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Trespasser, Complete
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6222]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, BY PARKER, ALL ***
+
+
+
+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.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+Volume 1
+I.        ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
+II.       IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
+III.      HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
+IV.       AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST
+V.        WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
+
+Volume 2.
+VI.       WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
+VII.      WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
+VIII.     HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
+IX.       HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
+X.        HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
+XI.       HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
+
+Volume 3.
+XII.      HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
+XIII.     HE JOURNEYS AFAR
+XIV.      IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
+XV.       WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
+XVI.      WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S
+XVII.     THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
+XVIII.    "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+While I was studying the life of French Canada in the winter of 1892,
+in the city of Quebec or in secluded parishes, there was forwarded to me
+from my London home a letter from Mr. Arrowsmith, the publisher, asking
+me to write a novel of fifty thousand or sixty thousand words for what
+was called his Annual.  In this Annual had appeared Hugh Conway's 'Called
+Back' and Anthony Hope's 'Prisoner of Zenda', among other celebrated
+works of fiction.  I cabled my acceptance of the excellent offer made me,
+and the summer of 1893 found me at Audierne, in Brittany, with some
+artist friends--more than one of whom has since come to eminence--living
+what was really an out-door literary life; for the greater part of 'The
+Trespasser' was written in a high-walled garden on a gentle hill, and the
+remainder in a little tower-like structure of the villa where I lodged,
+which was all windows.  The latter I only used when it rained, and the
+garden was my workshop.  There were peaches and figs on the walls,
+pleasant shrubs surrounded me, and the place was ideally quiet and
+serene.  Coffee or tea and toast was served me at 6.30 o'clock A.M., my
+pad was on my knee at 8, and then there was practically uninterrupted
+work till 12, when 'dejeuner a la fourchette', with its fresh sardines,
+its omelettes, and its roast chicken, was welcome.  The afternoon was
+spent on the sea-shore, which is very beautiful at Audierne, and there I
+watched my friends painting sea-scapes.  In the late afternoon came
+letter-writing and reading, and after a little and simple dinner at 6.30
+came bed at 9.45 or thereabouts.  In such conditions for many weeks I
+worked on The Trespasser; and I think the book has an outdoor spirit
+which such a life would inspire.
+
+It was perhaps natural that, having lived in Canada and Australia,
+and having travelled greatly in all the outer portions of the Empire,
+I should be interested in and impelled to write regarding the impingement
+of the outer life of our far dominions, through individual character,
+upon the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England.  That feeling
+found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that in
+neither case the issue of the plot or the plot--if such it may be called
+--nor the main incident, was exaggerated.  Whether the treatment was free
+from exaggeration, it is not my province to say.  I only know what I
+attempted to do.  The sense produced by the contact of the outer life
+with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say
+meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than the touch of
+the representative of "the thousand years" with the wide, loosely
+organised free life of what is still somewhat hesitatingly called the
+Colonies, though the same remark could be applied to all new lands, such
+as the United States.  The representative of the older life makes no
+signs, or makes little collision at any rate, when he touches the new
+social organisms of the outer circle.  He is not emphatic; he is typical,
+but not individual; he seeks seclusion in the mass.  It is not so with
+the more dynamic personality of the over-sea citizen.  For a time at
+least he remains in the old civilisation an entity, an isolated,
+unabsorbed fact which has capacities for explosion.  All this was in my
+mind when The Trespasser was written, and its converse was 'The Pomp of
+the Lavilettes', which showed the invasion of the life of the outer land
+by the representative of the old civilisation.
+
+I do not know whether I had the thought that the treatment of such themes
+was interesting or not.  The idea of The Trespasser was there in my mind,
+and I had to use it.  At the beginning of one's career, if one were to
+calculate too carefully, impulse, momentum, daring, original conception
+would be lost.  To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is no crime in
+youth nor in the young artist.  As a farmer once said to me regarding a
+frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than to have
+spring-halt.
+
+The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in the
+development of my literary life.  I did not stop to think whether it was
+a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements.  These things
+did not concern me.  When it was written I should not have known what was
+a popular theme.  It was written under circumstances conducive to its
+artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as 'The Right of Way' or
+'The Seats of the Mighty' or 'The Weavers' or 'The Judgment House', that
+is not the fault of the public or of the critics.
+
+
+
+
+TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq.,
+
+AND
+
+FRANK A.  HILTON, Esq.
+
+My dear Douglas and Frank:
+
+I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it
+does me.  It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days in
+your company here and there in the world.  I take pleasure in linking
+your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a
+little house that I have built.
+
+You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things familiar
+to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we camped by an
+idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and told tales worth
+more than this, for they were of the future, and it is of the past.
+
+                    Always sincerely yours,
+                              GILBERT PARKER.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
+
+Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques
+Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in
+the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court.  There was
+a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough of
+railways.  He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques's broncho
+also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston
+Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly
+goods bestowed by staring porters, to go on by rail.
+
+In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide
+left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards
+the Court, cottagers stood gaping.  For, outside the town there was no
+fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the people abroad.
+
+"What is it makes 'em stare, Jacques?!" asked Belward, with a humorous
+sidelong glance.
+
+Jacques looked seriously at the bright pommel of his master's saddle and
+the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his
+broncho, and replied:
+
+"Too much silver all at once."
+
+He tossed his curling black hair, showing up the gold rings in his ears,
+and flicked the red-and-gold tassels of his boots.
+
+"You think that's it, eh?!" rejoined Belward, as he tossed a shilling to
+a beggar.
+
+"Maybe, too, your great Saracen to this tot of a broncho, and the grand
+homme to little Jacques Brillon."  Jacques was tired and testy.
+
+The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed's shoulder.
+
+"See, my peacock: none of that.  You're a spanking good servant, but
+you're in a country where it's knuckle down man to master; and what they
+do here you've got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and caribou.
+That's as true as God's in heaven, little Brillon.  We're not on the
+buffalo trail now.  You understand?"
+
+Jacques nodded.
+
+"Hadn't you better say it?"
+
+The warning voice drew up the half-breed's face swiftly, and he replied:
+
+"I am to do what you please."
+
+"Exactly.  You've been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear Eye's
+moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you'd never leave me.  Did
+it on a string of holy beads, didn't you, Frenchman?"
+
+"I do it again."
+
+He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward's outstretched hand, said:
+
+"By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!"  There was a kind of
+wondering triumph in Belward's eyes, though he had at first shrunk from
+Jacques's action, and a puzzling smile came.
+
+"Wherever I go, or whatever I do?"
+
+"Whatever you do, or wherever you go."
+
+He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.
+
+His master looked at him curiously, intently.  Here was a vain, naturally
+indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
+independence, giving his neck willingly to a man's heel, serving
+with blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.
+
+"Well, it's like this, Jacques," Belward said presently; "I want you, and
+I'm not going to say that you'll have a better time than you did in the
+North, or on the Slope; but if you'd rather be with me than not, you'll
+find that I'll interest you.  There's a bond between us, anyway.  You're
+half French, and I'm one-fourth French, and more.  You're half Indian,
+and I'm one-fourth Indian--no more.  That's enough.  So far, I haven't
+much advantage.  But I'm one-half English--King's English, for there's
+been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there's the
+royal difference.  That's where I get my brains--and manners."
+
+"Where did you get the other?!" asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.
+
+"Money?"
+
+"Not money--the other."
+
+Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously.  A laugh came back
+on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
+of awe.  They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
+rode for miles without a word.  At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
+before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--"The Whisk o' Barley,"--and
+drew rein.  He regarded the place curiously for a minute.  The landlord
+came out.  Belward had some beer brought.
+
+A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away.  He touched his horse
+with a heel.  Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
+Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
+the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
+cross-examination.  Presently he dismounted.
+
+As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people,
+a coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past.  He lifted
+his eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings
+away from Northumberland Avenue of a morning.  He was not idle, however;
+but he had not come to England to show surprise at anything.  As the
+coach passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse,
+keen, dark, strange.  A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the
+uncommon horses and their trappings, caught Belward's eyes.  Not he
+alone, but Belward started then.  Some vague intelligence moved the minds
+of both, and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner
+and was gone.
+
+The landlord was at Belward's elbow.
+
+"The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court.  That's Maister Ian
+Belward, sir."
+
+Gaston Belward's eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
+face a handsome malice.  He wound his fingers in his horse's mane, and
+put a foot in the stirrup.
+
+"Who is 'Maister Ian'?"
+
+"Maister Ian be Sir William's eldest, sir.  On'y one that's left, sir.
+On'y three to start wi': and one be killed i' battle, and one had trouble
+wi' his faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was heard on
+again, sir.  That's the end on him."
+
+"Oh, that's the end on him, eh, landlord?  And how long ago was that?"
+
+"Becky, lass," called the landlord within the door, "wheniver was it
+Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago?  Eh, a
+fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!"
+
+Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and a knife.  She
+blinked at her husband, and then at the strangers.
+
+"What be askin' o' the Court?!" she said.  Her husband repeated the
+question.
+
+She gathered her apron to her eyes with an unctuous sob:
+
+"Doan't a' know when Maister Robert went!  He comes, i' the house 'ere
+and says, 'Becky, gie us a taste o' the red-top-and where's Jock?' He was
+always thinkin' a deal o' my son Jock.  'Jock be gone,' I says, 'and I
+knows nowt o' his comin' back'--meanin', I was, that day.  'Good for
+Jock!' says he, 'and I'm goin' too, Becky, and I knows nowt o' my comin'
+back.'  'Where be goin', Maister Robert?' I says.  'To hell, Becky,' says
+he, and he laughs.  'From hell to hell.  I'm sick to my teeth o' one,
+I'll try t'other'--a way like that speaks he."
+
+Belward was impatient, and to hurry the story he made as if to start on.
+Becky, seeing, hastened.  "Dear a' dear!  The red-top were afore him, and
+I tryin' to make what become to him.  He throws arm 'round me, smacks me
+on the cheek, and says he: 'Tell Jock to keep the mare, Becky.'  Then he
+flings away, and never more comes back to the Court.  And that day one
+year my Jock smacks me on the cheek, and gets on the mare; and when I
+ask: 'Where be goin'?' he says: 'For a hunt i' hell wi' Maister Robert,
+mother.'  And from that day come back he never did, nor any word.  There
+was trouble wi' the lad-wi' him and Maister Robert at the Court; but I
+never knowed nowt o' the truth.  And it's seven-and-twenty years since
+Maister Robert went."
+
+Gaston leaned over his horse's neck, and thrust a piece of silver into
+the woman's hands.
+
+"Take that, Becky Lawson, and mop your eyes no more."
+
+She gaped.
+
+"How dost know my name is Becky Lawson?  I havena been ca'd so these
+three-and-twenty years--not since a' married good man here, and put
+Jock's faither in 's grave yander."
+
+"The devil told me," he answered, with a strange laugh, and, spurring,
+they were quickly out of sight.  They rode for a couple of miles without
+speaking.  Jacques knew his master, and did not break the silence.
+Presently they came over a hill, and down upon a little bridge.  Belward
+drew rein, and looked up the valley.  About two miles beyond the roofs
+and turrets of the Court showed above the trees.  A whimsical smile came
+to his lips.
+
+"Brillon," he said, "I'm in sight of home."
+
+The half-breed cocked his head.  It was the first time that Belward had
+called him "Brillon"--he had ever been "Jacques."  This was to be a part
+of the new life.  They were not now hunting elk, riding to "wipe out" a
+camp of Indians or navvies, dining the owner of a rancho or a deputation
+from a prairie constituency in search of a member, nor yet with a senator
+at Washington, who served tea with canvas-back duck and tooth-picks with
+dessert.  Once before had Jacques seen this new manner--when Belward
+visited Parliament House at Ottawa, and was presented to some notable
+English people, visitors to Canada.  It had come to these notable folk
+that Mr. Gaston Belward had relations at Ridley Court, and that of itself
+was enough to command courtesy.  But presently, they who would be
+gracious for the family's sake, were gracious for the man's.  He had that
+which compelled interest--a suggestive, personal, distinguished air.
+Jacques knew his master better than any one else knew him; and yet he
+knew little, for Belward was of those who seem to give much confidence,
+and yet give little--never more than he wished.
+
+"Yes, monsieur, in sight of home," Jacques replied, with a dry cadence.
+
+"Say 'sir,' not 'monsieur,' Brillon; and from the time we enter the Court
+yonder, look every day and every hour as you did when the judge asked you
+who killed Tom Daly."
+
+Jacques winced, but nodded his head.  Belward continued:
+
+"What you hear me tell is what you can speak of; otherwise you are blind
+and dumb.  You understand?"  Jacques's face was sombre, but he said
+quickly: "Yes--sir."
+
+He straightened himself on his horse, as if to put himself into
+discipline at once--as lead to the back of a racer.
+
+Belward read the look.  He drew his horse close up.  Then he ran an arm
+over the other's shoulder.
+
+"See here, Jacques.  This is a game that's got to be played up to the
+hilt.  A cat has nine lives, and most men have two.  We have.  Now
+listen.  You never knew me mess things, did you?  Well, I play for keeps
+in this; no monkeying.  I've had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for
+Babylon.  I've lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory.
+I've had my day with my mother's people; voila!  for my father's.  You
+heard what Becky Lawson said.  My father was sick of it at twenty-five,
+and got out.  We'll see what my father's son will do.  .  .  .  I'm going
+to say my say to you, and have done with it.  As like as not there isn't
+another man that I'd have brought with me.  You're all right.  But I'm
+not going to rub noses.  I stick when I do stick, but I know what's got
+to be done here; and I've told you.  You'll not have the fun out of it
+that I will, but you won't have the worry.  Now, we start fresh.  I'm to
+be obeyed; I'm Napoleon.  I've got a devil, yet it needn't hurt you, and
+it won't.  But if I make enemies here--and I'm sure to--let them look
+out.  Give me your hand, Jacques; and don't you forget that there are two
+Gaston Belwards, and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one
+you want to remember when you get raw with the new one.  For you'll hear
+no more slang like this from me, and you'll have to get used to lots of
+things."
+
+Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused on
+the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques.  It was now dusk, and the
+landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm.
+
+"It's all of a piece," Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim
+hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to
+Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening and
+shutting.  There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to think
+of his own appearance among the guests.
+
+"It's a pity I haven't clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going
+there."
+
+He had dropped again into the new form of master and man.  His voice was
+cadenced, gentlemanly.  Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag.
+
+"No, no, they are not the things needed.  I want the evening-dress which
+cost that cool hundred dollars in New York."
+
+Still Jacques was silent.  He did not know whether, in his new position,
+he was expected to suggest.  Belward understood, and it pleased him.
+
+"If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of
+furs, you'd find a way, Brillon."
+
+"Voila," said Jacques; "then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the red-
+silk sash, and the boots like these?"--tapping his own leathers.  "You
+look a grand seigneur so."
+
+"But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor a
+company's trader on a break.  Never mind, the thing will wait till we
+stand in my ancestral halls," he added, with a dry laugh.
+
+They neared the Court.  The village church was close by the Court-wall.
+It drew Belward's attention.  One by one lights were springing up in it.
+It was a Friday evening, and the choir were come to practise.  They saw
+buxom village girls stroll in, followed by the organist, one or two young
+men and a handful of boys.  Presently the horsemen were seen, and a
+staring group gathered at the church door.  An idea came to Belward.
+
+"Kings used to make pilgrimages before they took their crowns, why
+shouldn't I?!" he said half-jestingly.  Most men placed similarly would
+have been so engaged with the main event that they had never thought of
+this other.  But Belward was not excited.  He was moving deliberately,
+prepared for every situation.  He had a great game in hand, and he had no
+fear of his ability to play it.  He suddenly stopped his horse, and threw
+the bridle to Jacques, saying:
+
+"I'll be back directly, Brillon."
+
+He entered the churchyard, and passed to the door.  As he came the group
+under the crumbling arch fell back, and at the call of the organist went
+to the chancel.  Belward came slowly up the aisle, and paused about the
+middle.  Something in the scene gave him a new sensation.  The church was
+old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English
+arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper and
+paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with
+hands folded so foolishly,--yet impressively too, brought him up with a
+quick throb of the heart.  It was his first real contact with England;
+for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west
+district.  But here he was in touch with his heritage.  He rested his
+hand upon a tomb beside him, and looked around slowly.
+
+The choir began the psalm for the following Sunday.  At first he did not
+listen; but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir
+afterwards sang:
+
+    "Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech:
+     And to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar."
+
+Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with
+inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets
+telling of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in
+Belward's brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he
+did not doubt that he would live it.  He would not think of himself as
+inacceptable to old Sir William Belward.  He glanced to the tomb under
+his hand.  There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the
+marble.  Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head.  He
+stooped and read:
+
+                         SACRED TO THE MEMORY
+                                   OF
+                   SIR GASTON ROBERT BELWARD, BART.,
+            OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF GASTONBURY,
+                                 WHO,
+                  AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY YEARS,
+          AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS KING
+                             AND COUNTRY,
+          AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS
+                 WHICH BECAME A GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND;
+            MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE OF ARTS AND LETTERS;
+              SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS;
+             GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES AND INTELLECTS;
+                                  AND
+                DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS OF PEACE
+                    AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR:
+             WAS SLAIN BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,
+              THE BELOVED AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT,
+                       AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,
+                    IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV.
+
+                 "A Sojourner as all my Fathers were."
+
+"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
+
+He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters.
+
+His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty.  Now, however,
+he leaned over and examined it.  It lay, hands folded, in the dress of
+Prince Rupert's cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside
+the heels.
+
+"'Gaston Robert Belward'!"
+
+As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead
+ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince
+Rupert?  Was he not looking at himself in stone?  Was he not here to show
+England how a knight of Charles's time would look upon the life of the
+Victorian age?  Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at Ridley
+Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a broncho?
+Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as much a stranger in
+his England as himself?
+
+For a moment the idea possessed him.  He was Sir Gaston Robert Belward,
+Baronet.  He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert's side, he had sped on
+after Ireton's horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed, on and on,
+mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long in pursuit
+while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the word came to wheel
+back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle; then another, and
+another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell from his horse.  He
+remembered how he raised himself on his arm and shouted "God save the
+King!"  How he loosed his scarf and stanched the blood at his neck, then
+fell back into a whirring silence, from which he was roused by feeling
+himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say: "Courage, Gaston."  Then
+came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs, and he fell asleep; and
+memory was done.
+
+He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird
+fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the
+sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group in
+the choir.  Presently he became conscious of the words sung:
+
+                   "A thousand ages in Thy sight
+                    Are like an evening gone;
+                    Short as the watch that ends the night
+                    Before the rising sun.
+
+                   "Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
+                    Bears all its sons away;
+                    They fly, forgotten, as a dream
+                    Dies at the opening day."
+
+He was himself again in an instant.  He had been in a kind of dream.  It
+seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few
+moments.  He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his heel
+with a musing smile.  His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle; and,
+involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip.  The singing
+ceased.  His spurs made the only sound.  The rustics at the door fell
+back before him.  He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold.  As
+he stood on the top one he paused and turned round.
+
+So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by.
+Here his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the time
+of Edward III--idled time away in the dust; here Gaston Belward had been
+sleeping in effigy since Naseby Field.  A romantic light came into his
+face.  Again, why not?  Even in the Hudson's Bay country and in the Rocky
+Mountains, he had been called, "Tivi, The Man of the Other."  He had been
+counted the greatest of Medicine Men--one of the Race: the people of the
+Pole, who lived in a pleasant land, gifted as none others of the race of
+men.  Not an hour before Jacques had asked him where he got "the other."
+No man can live in the North for any time without getting the strain
+of its mystery and romance in him.  Gaston waved his hand to the tomb,
+and said half-believingly:
+
+"Gaston Robert Belward, come again to your kingdom."
+
+He turned to go out, and faced the rector of the parish,--a bent, benign-
+looking man,--who gazed at him astonished.  He had heard the strange
+speech.  His grave eyes rested on the stalwart stranger with courteous
+inquiry.  Gaston knew who it was.  Over his left brow there was a scar.
+He had heard of that scar before.  When the venerable Archdeacon Varcoe
+was tutor to Ian and Robert Belward, Ian, in a fit of anger, had thrown a
+stick at his brother.  It had struck the clergyman, leaving a scar.
+
+Gaston now raised his hat.  As he passed, the rector looked after him,
+puzzled; the words he had heard addressed to the effigy returning.  His
+eyes followed the young man to the gate, and presently, with a quick
+lifting of the shoulders, he said:
+
+"Robert Belward!"  Then added: "Impossible!  But he is a Belward."
+
+He saw Gaston mount, then entered and went slowly up the aisle.  He
+paused beside the tomb of that other Belward.  His wrinkled hand rested
+on it.
+
+"That is it," he said at last.  "He is like the picture of this Sir
+Gaston.  Strange."
+
+He sighed, and unconsciously touched the scar on his brow.  His dealings
+with the Belwards had not been all joy.  Begun with youthful pride and
+affectionate interest, they had gone on into vexation, sorrow, failure,
+and shame.  While Gaston was riding into his kingdom, Lionel Henry Varcoe
+was thinking how poor his life had been where he had meant it to be
+useful.  As he stood musing and listening to the music of the choir,
+a girl came softly up the aisle, and touched him on the arm.
+
+"Grandfather, dear," she said, "aren't you going to the Court?  You have
+a standing invitation for this night in the week.  You have not been
+there for so long."
+
+He fondled the hand on his arm.
+
+"My dearest, they have not asked me for a long time."
+
+"But why not to-night?  I have laid out everything nicely for you--your
+new gaiters, and your D. C. L.  coat with the pretty buttons and cord."
+
+"How can I leave you, my dear?  And they do not ask you!"
+
+The voice tried for playfulness, but the eyes had a disturbed look.
+
+"Me?  Oh! they never ask me to dinner-you know that.  Tea and formal
+visits are enough for Lady Belward, and almost too much for me.  There is
+yet time to dress.  Do say you will go.  I want you to be friendly with
+them."
+
+The old man shook his head.
+
+"I do not care to leave you, my dearest."
+
+"Foolish old fatherkins!  Who would carry me off?--'Nobody, no, not I,
+nobody cares for me.'"  Suddenly a new look shot up in her face.
+
+"Did you see that singular handsome man who came from the church--like
+some one out of an old painting?  Not that his dress was so strange; but
+there was something in his face--something that you would expect to find
+in--in a Garibaldi.  Silly, am I not?  Did you see him?"
+
+He looked at her gravely.
+
+"My dear," he said at last, "I think I will go after all, though I shall
+be a little late."
+
+"A sensible grandfather.  Come quickly, dear."  He paused again.
+
+"But I fear I sent a note to say I could not dine."
+
+"No, you did not.  It has been lying on your table for two days."
+
+"Dear me--dear me!  I am getting very old."
+
+They passed out of the church.  Presently, as they hurried to the rectory
+near by, the girl said:
+
+"But you haven't answered.  Did you see the stranger?  Do you know who he
+is?"
+
+The rector turned, and pointed to the gate of Ridley Court.  Gaston and
+Brillon were just entering.  "Alice," he said, in a vague, half-troubled
+way, "the man is a Belward, I think."
+
+"Why, of course!" the girl replied with a flash of excitement.  "But
+he's so dark, and foreign-looking!  What Belward is he?"
+
+"I do not know yet, my dear."
+
+"I shall be up when you come back.  But mind, don't leave just after
+dinner.  Stay and talk; you must tell me everything that's said and done
+--and about the stranger."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
+
+Meanwhile, without a word, Gaston had mounted, ridden to the castle,
+and passed through the open gates into the court-yard.  Inside he paused.
+In the main building many lights were burning.  There came a rattle of
+wheels behind him, and he shifted to let a carriage pass.  Through the
+window of the brougham he could see the shimmer of satin, lace, and soft
+white fur, and he had an instant's glance of a pretty face.
+
+The carriage drew up to the steps, and presently three ladies and a
+brusque gentleman passed into the hall-way, admitted by powdered footmen.
+The incident had a manner, an air, which struck Gaston, he knew not why.
+Perhaps it was the easy finesse of ceremonial.  He looked at Brillon.  He
+had seen him sit arms folded like that, looking from the top of a bluff
+down on an Indian village or a herd of buffaloes.  There was wonder, but
+no shyness or agitation, on his face; rather the naive, naked look of a
+child.  Belward laughed.
+
+"Come, Brillon; we are at home."
+
+He rode up to the steps, Jacques following.  A foot man appeared and
+stared.  Gaston looked down on him neutrally, and dismounted.  Jacques
+did the same.  The footman still stared.  Another appeared behind.
+Gaston eyed the puzzled servant calmly.
+
+"Why don't you call a groom?!" he presently said.  There was a cold gleam
+in his eye.
+
+The footman shrank.
+
+"Yessir, yessir," he said confusedly, and signalled.  The other footman
+came down, and made as if to take the bridle.  Gaston waved him back.
+None too soon, for the horse lunged at him.
+
+"A rub down, a pint of beer, and water and feed in an hour, and I'll come
+to see him myself late to-night."  Jacques had loosened the saddle-bags
+and taken them off.  Gaston spoke to the horse, patted his neck, and gave
+him to the groom.  Then he went up the steps, followed by Jacques.  He
+turned at the door to see the groom leading both horses off, and eyeing
+Saracen suspiciously.  He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"Saracen 'll teach him things," he said.  "I might warn him, but it's
+best for the horses to make their own impressions."
+
+"What name, sir?!" asked a footman.
+
+"You are--?"
+
+"Falby, Sir."
+
+"Falby, look after my man Brillon here, and take me to Sir William."
+
+"What name, sir?"
+
+Gaston, as if with sudden thought, stepped into the light of the candles,
+and said in a low voice: "Falby, don't you know me?"
+
+The footman turned a little pale, as his eyes, in spite of themselves,
+clung to Gaston's.  A kind of fright came, and then they steadied.
+
+"Oh yes, sir," he said mechanically.
+
+"Where have you seen me?"
+
+"In the picture on the wall, sir."
+
+"Whose picture, Falby?"
+
+"Sir Gaston Belward, Sir."
+
+A smile lurked at the corners of Gaston's mouth.
+
+"Gaston Belward.  Very well, then you know what to say to Sir William.
+Show me into the library."
+
+"Or the justices' room, sir?"
+
+"The justices' room will do."
+
+Gaston wondered what the justices' room was.  A moment after he stood in
+it, and the dazed Falby had gone, trying vainly to reconcile the picture
+on the wall, which, now that he could think, he knew was very old, with
+this strange man who had sent a curious cold shiver through him.  But,
+anyhow, he was a Belward, that was certain: voice, face, manner showed
+it.  But with something like no Belward he had ever seen.  Left to
+himself, Gaston looked round on a large, severe room.  Its use dawned on
+him.  This was part of the life: Sir William was a Justice of the Peace.
+But why had he been brought here?  Why not to the library as himself had
+suggested?  There would be some awkward hours for Falby in the future.
+Gaston had as winning a smile, as sweet a manner, as any one in the
+world, so long as a straight game was on; but to cross his will with the
+other--he had been too long a power in that wild country where his father
+had also been a power!  He did not quite know how long he waited, for he
+was busy with plans as to his career at Ridley Court.  He was roused at
+last by Falby's entrance.  A keen, cold look shot from under his straight
+brows.
+
+"Well?!" he asked.
+
+"Will you step into the library, sir?  Sir William will see you there."
+
+Falby tried to avoid his look, but his eyes were compelled, and Gaston
+said:
+
+"Falby, you will always hate to enter this room."  Falby was agitated.
+
+"I hope not, sir."
+
+"But you will, Falby, unless--"
+
+"Yessir?"
+
+"Unless you are both the serpent and the dove, Falby."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+As they entered the hall, Brillon with the saddle-bags was being taken in
+charge, and Gaston saw what a strange figure he looked beside the other
+servants and in these fine surroundings.  He could not think that himself
+was so bizarre.  Nor was he.  But he looked unusual; as one of high
+civilisation might, through long absence in primitive countries, return
+in uncommon clothing, and with a manner of distinguished strangeness: the
+barbaric to protect the refined, as one has seen a bush of firs set to
+shelter a wheat-field from a seawind, or a wind-mill water cunningly-
+begotten flowers.
+
+As he went through the hall other visitors were entering.  They passed
+him, making for the staircase.  Ladies with the grand air looked at him
+curiously, and two girls glanced shyly from the jingling spurs and
+tasselled boots to his rare face.
+
+One of the ladies suddenly gave a little gasping cry, and catching the
+arm of her companion, said:
+
+"Reine, how like Robert Belward!  Who--who is he?"
+
+The other coolly put up her pince-nez.  She caught Gaston's profile and
+the turn of his shoulder.
+
+"Yes, like, Sophie; but Robert never had such a back, nor anything like
+the face."
+
+She spoke with no attempt to modulate her voice, and it carried
+distinctly to Gaston.  He turned and glanced at them.
+
+"He's a Belward, certainly, but like what one I don't know; and he's
+terribly eccentric, my dear!  Did you see the boots and the sash?  Why,
+bless me, if you are not shaking!  Don't be silly--shivering at the
+thought of Robert Belward after all these years."
+
+So saying, Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne tapped Lady Dargan on the arm, and then
+turned sharply to see if her daughters had been listening.  She saw that
+they had; and though herself and not her sister was to blame, she said:
+
+"Sophie, you are very indiscreet!  If you had daughters of your own, you
+would probably be more careful--though Heaven only knows, for you were
+always difficult!"
+
+With this they vanished up the staircase, Mrs. Gasgoyne's daughters,
+Delia and Agatha, smiling at each other and whispering about Gaston.
+
+Meanwhile the seeker after a kingdom was shown into Sir William Belward's
+study.  No one was there.  He walked to the mantelpiece, and, leaning his
+arm on it, looked round.  Directly in front of him on the wall was the
+picture of a lady in middle-life, sitting in an arbour.  A crutch lay
+against one arm of her chair, and her left hand leaned on an ebony
+silver-topped cane.  There was something painful, haunting, in the face
+--a weirdness in the whole picture.  The face was looking into the
+sunlight, but the effect was rather of moonlight--distant, mournful.  He
+was fascinated; why, he could not tell.  Art to him was an unknown book,
+but he had the instinct, and he was quick to feel.  This picture struck
+him as being out of harmony with everything else in the room.  Yet it
+had, a strange compelling charm.
+
+Presently he started forward with an exclamation.  Now he understood the
+vague, eerie influence.  Looking out from behind the foliage was a face,
+so dim that one moment it seemed not to be there, and then suddenly to
+flash in--as a picture from beyond sails, lightning-like, across the
+filmy eyes of the dying.  It was the face of a youth, elf-like, unreal,
+yet he saw his father's features in it.
+
+He rubbed his eyes and looked again.  It seemed very dim.  Indeed, so
+delicately, vaguely, had the work been done that only eyes like Gaston's,
+trained to observe, with the sight of a hawk and a sense of the
+mysterious, could have seen so quickly or so distinctly.  He drew slowly
+back to the mantel again, and mused.  What did it mean?  He was sure that
+the woman was his grandmother.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and an alert, white-haired man stepped in
+quickly, and stopped in the centre of the room, looking at his visitor.
+His deep, keen eyes gazed out with an intensity that might almost be
+fierceness, and the fingers of his fine hands opened and shut nervously.
+Though of no great stature, he had singular dignity.  He was in evening-
+dress, and as he raised a hand to his chin quickly, as if in surprise or
+perplexity, Gaston noticed that he wore a large seal-ring.  It is
+singular that while he was engaged with his great event, he was also
+thinking what an air of authority the ring gave.
+
+For a moment the two men stood at gaze without speaking, though Gaston
+stepped forward respectfully.  A bewildered, almost shrinking look came
+into Sir William's eyes, as the other stood full in the light of the
+candles.
+
+Presently the old man spoke.  In spite of conventional smoothness, his
+voice had the ring of distance, which comes from having lived through and
+above painful things.
+
+"My servant announced you as Sir Gaston Belward.  There is some mistake?"
+
+"There is a mistake," was the slow reply.  "I did not give my name as Sir
+Gaston Belward.  That was Falby's conclusion, sir.  But I am Gaston
+Robert Belward, just the same."
+
+Sir William was dazed, puzzled.  He presently made a quick gesture, as if
+driving away some foolish thought, and, motioning to a chair, said:
+
+"Will you be seated?"
+
+They both sat, Sir William by his writing-table.  His look was now steady
+and penetrating, but he met one just as firm.
+
+"You are--Gaston Robert Belward?  May I ask for further information?"
+
+There was furtive humour playing at Gaston's mouth.  The old man's manner
+had been so unlike anything he had ever met, save, to an extent, in his
+father, that it interested him.  He replied, with keen distinctness:
+"You mean, why I have come--home?"
+
+Sir William's fingers trembled on a paper-knife.  "Are you-at home?"
+
+"I have come home to ask for my heritage--with interest compounded, sir."
+
+Sir William was now very pale.  He got to his feet, came to the young
+man, peered into his face, then drew back to the table and steadied
+himself against it.  Gaston rose also: his instinct of courtesy was
+acute--absurdly civilised--that is, primitive.  He waited.  "You are
+Robert's son?"
+
+"Robert Belward was my father."
+
+"Your father is dead?"
+
+"Twelve years ago."
+
+Sir William sank back in his chair.  His thin fingers ran back and forth
+along his lips.  Presently he took out his handkerchief and coughed into
+it nervously.  His lips trembled.  With a preoccupied air he arranged a
+handful of papers on the table.
+
+"Why did you not come before?!" he asked at last, in a low, mechanical
+voice.
+
+"It was better for a man than a boy to come."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"A boy doesn't always see a situation--gives up too soon--throws away his
+rights.  My father was a boy."
+
+"He was twenty-five when he went away."
+
+"I am fifty!"
+
+Sir William looked up sharply, perplexed.  "Fifty?"
+
+"He only knew this life: I know the world."
+
+"What world?"
+
+"The great North, the South, the seas at four corners of the earth."
+
+Sir William glanced at the top-boots, the peeping sash, the strong,
+bronzed face.
+
+"Who was your mother?!" he asked abruptly.
+
+"A woman of France."
+
+The baronet made a gesture of impatience, and looked searchingly at the
+young man.
+
+All at once Gaston shot his bolt, to have it over.  "She had Indian blood
+also."
+
+He stretched himself to his full height, easily, broadly, with a touch of
+defiance, and leaned an arm against the mantel, awaiting Sir William's
+reply.
+
+The old man shrank, then said coldly: "Have you the marriage-
+certificate?"
+
+Gaston drew some papers from his pockets.
+
+"Here, sir, with a letter from my father, and one from the Hudson's Bay
+Company."
+
+His grandfather took them.  With an effort he steadied himself, then
+opened and read them one by one, his son's brief letter last--it was
+merely a calm farewell, with a request that justice should be done his
+son.
+
+At that moment Falby entered and said:
+
+"Her ladyship's compliments, and all the guests have arrived, sir."
+
+"My compliments to her ladyship, and ask her to give me five minutes yet,
+Falby."
+
+Turning to his grandson, there seemed to be a moment's hesitation, then
+he reached out his hand.
+
+"You have brought your luggage?  Will you care to dine with us?"
+
+Gaston took the cold outstretched fingers.
+
+"Only my saddle-bag, and I have no evening-dress with me, else I should
+be glad."
+
+There was another glance up and down the athletic figure, a half-
+apprehensive smile as the baronet thought of his wife, and then he said:
+
+"We must see if anything can be done."
+
+He pulled a bell-cord.  A servant appeared.
+
+"Ask the housekeeper to come for a moment, please."  Neither spoke till
+the housekeeper appeared.  "Hovey," he said to the grim woman, "give Mr.
+Gaston the room in the north tower.  Then, from the press in the same
+room lay out the evening-dress which you will find there....  They were
+your father's," he added, turning to the young man.  "It was my wife's
+wish to keep them.  Have they been aired lately, Hovey?"
+
+"Some days ago, sir."
+
+"That will do."  The housekeeper left, agitated.  You will probably be in
+time for the fish," he added, as he bowed to Robert.
+
+"If the clothes do not fit, sir?"
+
+"Your father was about your height and nearly as large, and fashions have
+not changed much."
+
+A few moments afterwards Gaston was in the room which his father had
+occupied twenty-seven years before.  The taciturn housekeeper, eyeing him
+excitedly the while, put out the clothes.  He did not say anything till
+she was about to go.  Then:
+
+"Hovey, were you here in my father's time?"
+
+"I was under-parlourmaid, sir," she said.
+
+"And you are housekeeper now--good!"
+
+The face of the woman crimsoned, hiding her dour wrinkles.  She turned
+away her head.
+
+"I'd have given my right hand if he hadn't gone, sir."
+
+Gaston whistled softly, then:
+
+"So would he, I fancy, before he died.  But I shall not go, so you will
+not need to risk a finger for me.  I am going to stay, Hovey.  Good-
+night.  Look after Brillon, please."
+
+He held out his hand.  Her fingers twitched in his, then grasped them
+nervously.
+
+"Yes, sir.  Good-night, Sir.  It's--it's like him comin' back, sir."
+
+Then she suddenly turned and hurried from the room, a blunt figure to
+whom emotion was not graceful.  "H'm!" said Gaston, as he shut the door.
+"Parlourmaid then, eh?  History at every turn!  'Voici le sabre de mon
+pere!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
+
+Gaston Belward was not sentimental: that belongs to the middle-class
+Englishman's ideal of civilisation.  But he had a civilisation akin to
+the highest; incongruous, therefore, to the general as the sympathy
+between the United States and Russia.  The highest civilisation can be
+independent.  The English aristocrat is at home in the lodge of a Sioux
+chief or the bamboo-hut of a Fijian, and makes brothers of "savages,"
+when those other formal folk, who spend their lives in keeping their
+dignity, would be lofty and superior.
+
+When Gaston looked at his father's clothes and turned them over,
+he had a twinge of honest emotion; but his mind was on the dinner and
+his heritage, and he only said, as he frowned at the tightness of the
+waistband:
+
+"Never mind, we'll make 'em pay, shot and wadding, for what you lost,
+Robert Belward; and wherever you are, I hope you'll see it."
+
+In twelve minutes from the time he entered the bedroom he was ready.
+He pulled the bell-cord, and then passed out.  A servant met him on the
+stairs, and in another minute he was inside the dining-room.  Sir
+William's eyes flashed up.  There was smouldering excitement in his face,
+but one could not have guessed at anything unusual.  A seat had been
+placed for Gaston beside him.  The situation was singular and trying.
+It would have been easier if he had merely come into the drawing-room
+after dinner.  This was in Sir William's mind when he asked him to dine;
+but it was as it was.  Gaston's alert glance found the empty seat.  He
+was about to make towards it, but he caught Sir William's eye and saw it
+signal him to the end of the table near him.  His brain was working with
+celerity and clearness.  He now saw the woman whose portrait had so
+fascinated him in the library.  As his eyes fastened on her here, he
+almost fancied he could see the boy's--his father's-face looking over
+her shoulder.
+
+He instantly went to her, and said: "I am sorry to be late."
+
+His first impulse had been to offer his hand, as, naturally, he would
+have done in "barbaric" lands, but the instinct of this other
+civilisation was at work in him.  He might have been a polite casual
+guest, and not a grandson, bringing the remembrance, the culmination of
+twenty-seven years' tragedy into a home; she might have been a hostess
+with whom he wished to be on terms: that was all.
+
+If the situation was trying for him, it was painful for her.  She had had
+only a whispered announcement before Sir William led the way to dinner.
+Yet she was now all her husband had been, and more.  Repression had been
+her practice for unnumbered years, and the only heralds of her feelings
+were the restless wells of her dark eyes: the physical and mental misery
+she had endured lay hid under the pale composure of her face.  She was
+now brought suddenly before the composite image of her past.  Yet she
+merely lifted a slender hand with long, fine fingers, which, as they
+clasped his, all at once trembled, and then pressed them hotly,
+nervously.  To his surprise, it sent a twinge of colour to his cheek.
+"It was good of you to come down after such a journey," she said.
+Nothing more.
+
+Then he passed on, and sat down to Sir William's courteous gesture.  The
+situation had its difficulties for the guests--perfect guests as they
+were.  Every one was aware of a dramatic incident, for which there had
+been no preparation save Sir William's remark that a grandson had arrived
+from the North Pole or thereabouts; and to continue conversation and
+appear casual put their resources to some test.  But they stood it well,
+though.  their eyes were busy, and the talk was cheerfully mechanical.
+So occupied were they with Gaston's entrance, that they did not know
+how near Lady Dargan came to fainting.
+
+At the button-hole of the coat worn by Gaston hung a tiny piece of red
+ribbon which she had drawn from her sleeve on the terrace twenty-seven
+years ago, and tied there with the words:
+
+"Do you think you will wear it till we meet again?"  And the man had
+replied:
+
+"You'll not see me without it, pretty girl--pretty girl."
+
+A woman is not so unaccountable after all.  She has more imagination than
+a man; she has not many resources to console her for disappointments, and
+she prizes to her last hour the swift moments when wonderful things
+seemed possible.  That man is foolish who shows himself jealous of a
+woman's memories or tokens--those guarantees of her womanliness.
+
+When Lady Dargan saw the ribbon, which Gaston in his hurry had not
+disturbed, tied exactly as she had tied it, a weird feeling came to her,
+and she felt choking.  But her sister's eyes were on her, and Mrs.
+Gasgoyne's voice came across the table clearly:
+
+"Sophie, what were Fred Bideford's colours at Sandown?  You always
+remember that kind of thing."  The warning was sufficient.  Lady Dargan
+could make no effort of memory, but she replied without hesitation--or
+conscience:
+
+"Yellow and brown."
+
+"There," said Mrs. Gasgoyne, "we are both wrong, Captain Maudsley.
+Sophie never makes a mistake."  Maudsley assented politely, but, stealing
+a look at Lady Dargan, wondered what the little by-play meant.  Gaston
+was between Sir William and Mrs. Gasgoyne.  He declined soup and fish,
+which had just been served, because he wished for time to get his
+bearings.  He glanced at the menu as if idly interested, conscious that
+he was under observation.  He felt that he had, some how, the situation
+in his hands.  Everything had gone well, and he knew that his part had
+been played with some aplomb--natural, instinctive.  Unlike most large
+men, he had a mind always alert, not requiring the inspiration of unusual
+moments.  What struck him most forcibly now was the tasteful courtesy
+which had made his entrance easy.  He instinctively compared it to the
+courtesy in the lodge of an Indian chief, or of a Hudson's Bay factor who
+has not seen the outer world for half a century.  It was so different,
+and yet it was much the same.  He had seen a missionary, a layreader,
+come intoxicated into a council of chiefs.  The chiefs did not show that
+they knew his condition till he forced them to do so.  Then two of the
+young men rose, suddenly pinned him in their arms, carried him out, and
+tied him in a lodge.  The next morning they sent him out of their
+country.  Gaston was no philosopher, but he could place a thing when he
+saw it: which is a kind of genius.
+
+Presently Sir William said quietly:
+
+"Mrs. Gasgoyne, you knew Robert well; his son ought to know you."
+
+Gaston turned to Mrs. Gasgoyne, and said in his father's manner as much
+as possible, for now his mind ran back to how his father talked and
+acted, forming a standard for him:
+
+"My father once told me a tale of the Keithley Hunt--something 'away up,'
+as they say in the West--and a Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne was in it."
+
+He made an instant friend of Mrs. Gasgoyne--made her so purposely.
+This was one of the few things from his father's talks upon his past
+life.  He remembered the story because it was interesting, the name
+because it had a sound.
+
+She flushed with pleasure.  That story of the Hunt was one of her
+sweetest recollections.  For her bravery then she had been voted by the
+field "a good fellow," and an admiral present declared that she had a
+head "as long as the maintop bow-line."  She loved admiration, though she
+had no foolish sentiment; she called men silly creatures, and yet would
+go on her knees across country to do a deserving man-friend a service.
+She was fifty and over, yet she had the springing heart of a girl--mostly
+hid behind a brusque manner and a blunt, kindly tongue.
+
+"Your father could always tell a good story," she said.
+
+"He told me one of you: what about telling me one of him?"
+
+Adaptable, he had at once fallen in with her direct speech; the more so
+because it was his natural way; any other ways were "games," as he
+himself said.
+
+She flashed a glance at her sister, and smiled half-ironically.
+
+"I could tell you plenty," she said softly.  "He was a startling fellow,
+and went far sometimes; but you look as if you could go farther."
+
+Gaston helped himself to an entree, wondering whether a knife was used
+with sweetbreads.
+
+"How far could he go?!" he asked.
+
+"In the hunting-field with anybody, with women endlessly, with meanness
+like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place
+you can think of."
+
+Forks only for sweetbreads!  Gaston picked one up.  "He went there."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"I came from there."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"A few hundred miles from the Arctic circle."
+
+"Oh, I didn't think it was that climate!"
+
+"It never is till you arrive.  You are always out in the cold there."
+
+"That sounds American."
+
+"Every man is a sinner one way or another."
+
+"You are very clever--cleverer than your father ever was.
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He went--there.  I've come--from there."
+
+"And you think you will stay--never go back?"
+
+"He was out of it for twenty years, and died.  If I am in it for that
+long, I shall have had enough."
+
+Their eyes met.  The woman looked at him steadily.  "You won't be," she
+replied, this time seriously, and in a very low voice.
+
+"No?  Why?"
+
+"Because you will tire of it all--though you've started very well."
+
+She then answered a question of Captain Maudsley's and turned again to
+Gaston.
+
+"What will make me tire of it?!" he inquired.  She sipped her champagne
+musingly.
+
+"Why, what is in you deeper than all this; with the help of some woman
+probably."
+
+She looked at him searchingly, then added:
+
+"You seem strangely like and yet unlike your father to-night."
+
+"I am wearing his clothes," he said.
+
+She had plenty of nerve, but this startled her.  She shrank a little: it
+seemed uncanny.  Now she remembered that ribbon in the button-hole.
+
+"Poor Sophie!" she thought.  "And this one will make greater mischief
+here."  Then, aloud to him: "Your father was a good fellow, but he did
+wild things."
+
+"I do not see the connection," he answered.  "I am not a good man, and I
+shall do wilder things--is that it?"
+
+"You will do mad things," she replied hardly above a whisper, and talked
+once more with Captain Maudsley.  Gaston now turned to his grandfather,
+who had heard a sentence here and there, and felt that the young man
+carried off the situation well enough.  He then began to talk in a
+general way about Gaston's voyage, of the Hudson's Bay Company, and
+expeditions to the Arctic, drawing Lady Dargan into the conversation.
+
+Whatever might be said of Sir William Belward he was an excellent host.
+He had a cool, unmalicious wit, but that man was unwise who offered
+himself to its severity.  To-night he surpassed himself in suggestive
+talk, until, all at once, seeing Lady Dargan's eyes fixed on Gaston,
+he went silent, sitting back in his chair abstracted.  Soon, however,
+a warning glance from his wife brought him back and saved Lady Dargan
+from collapse; for it seemed impossible to talk alone to this ghost of
+her past.
+
+At this moment Gaston heard a voice near:
+
+"As like as if he'd stepped out of the picture, if it weren't for the
+clothes.  A Gaston too!"
+
+The speaker was Lord Dargan.  He was talking to Archdeacon Varcoe.
+
+Gaston followed Lord Dargan's glance to the portrait of that Sir Gaston
+Belward whose effigy he had seen.  He found himself in form, feature,
+expression; the bold vigilance of eye, the primitive activity of
+shoulder, the small firm foot, the nervous power of the hand.  The eyes
+seemed looking at him.  He answered to the look.  There was in him the
+romantic strain, and something more!  In the remote parts of his being
+there was the capacity for the phenomenal, the strange.  Once again, as
+in the church, he saw the field of Naseby, King Charles, Ireton's men,
+Cromwell and his Ironsides, Prince Rupert and the swarming rush of
+cavalry, and the end of it all!  Had it been a tale of his father's at
+camp-fire?  Had he read it somewhere?  He felt his blood thump in his
+veins.  Another half-hour, wherein he was learning every minute, nothing
+escaping him, everything interesting him; his grandfather and Mrs.
+Gasgoyne especially, then the ladies retired slowly with their crippled
+hostess, who gave Gaston, as she rose, a look almost painfully intense.
+It haunted him.
+
+Now Gaston had his chance.  He had no fear of what he could do with men:
+he had measured himself a few times with English gentlemen as he
+travelled, and he knew where his power lay--not in making himself
+agreeable, but in imposing his personality.
+
+The guests were not soon to forget the talk of that hour.  It played into
+Gaston's hands.  He pretended to nothing; he confessed ignorance here and
+there with great simplicity; but he had the gift of reducing things, as
+it were, to their original elements.  He cut away to the core of a
+matter, and having simple, fixed ideas, he was able to focus the talk,
+which had begun with hunting stories, and ended with the morality of
+duelling.  Gaston's hunting stories had made them breathless, his views
+upon duelling did not free their lungs.
+
+There were sentimentalists present; others who, because it had become
+etiquette not to cross swords, thought it indecent.  Archdeacon Varcoe
+would not be drawn into discussion, but sipped his wine, listened, and
+watched Gaston.
+
+The young man measured his grandfather's mind, and he drove home his
+points mercilessly.
+
+Captain Maudsley said something about "romantic murder."
+
+"That's the trouble," Gaston said.  "I don't know who killed duelling
+in England, but behind it must have been a woman or a shopkeeper:
+sentimentalism, timidity, dead romance.  What is patriotism but romance?
+Ideals is what they call it somewhere.  I've lived in a land full of hard
+work and dangers, but also full of romance.  What is the result?  Why, a
+people off there whom you pity, and who don't need pity.  Romance?  See:
+you only get square justice out of a wise autocrat, not out of your
+'twelve true men'; and duelling is the last decent relic of autocracy.
+Suppose the wronged man does get killed; that is all right: it wasn't
+merely blood he was after, but the right to hit a man in the eye for a
+wrong done.  What is all this hullaballoo--about saving human life?
+There's as much interest--and duty--in dying as living, if you go the
+way your conscience tells you."
+
+A couple of hours later, Gaston, after having seen to his horse, stood
+alone in the drawing-room with his grandfather and grandmother.  As yet
+Lady Belward had spoken not half a dozen words to him.  Sir William
+presently said to him:
+
+"Are you too tired to join us in the library?"
+
+"I'm as fresh as paint, sir," was the reply.
+
+Lady Belward turned without a word, and slowly passed from the room.
+Gaston's eyes followed the crippled figure, which yet had a rare dignity.
+He had a sudden impulse.  He stepped to her and said with an almost
+boyish simplicity:
+
+"You are very tired; let me carry you--grandmother."
+
+He could hear Sir William gasp a little as he laid a quick warm hand on
+hers that held the cane.  She looked at him gravely, sadly, and then
+said:
+
+"I will take your arm, if you please."
+
+He took the cane, and she put a hand towards him.  He ran his strong arm
+around her waist with a little humouring laugh, her hand rested on his
+shoulder, and he timed his step to hers.  Sir William was in an eddy of
+wonder--a strong head was "mazed."  He had looked for a different
+reception of this uncommon kinsman.  How quickly had the new-comer
+conquered himself!  And yet he had a slight strangeness of accent--not
+American, but something which seemed unusual.  He did not reckon with a
+voice which, under cover of easy deliberation, had a convincing quality;
+with a manner of old-fashioned courtesy and stateliness.  As Mrs.
+Gasgoyne had said to the rector, whose eyes had followed Gaston
+everywhere in the drawing-room:
+
+"My dear archdeacon, where did he get it?  Why, he has lived most of his
+life with savages!"
+
+"Vandyke might have painted the man," Lord Dargan had added.
+
+"Vandyke did paint him," had put in Delia Gasgoyne from behind her
+mother.
+
+"How do you mean, Delia?!" Mrs. Gasgoyne had added, looking curiously at
+her.
+
+"His picture hangs in the dining-room."
+
+Then the picture had been discussed, and the girl's eyes had followed
+Gaston--followed him until he had caught their glance.  Without an
+introduction, he had come and dropped into conversation with her, till
+her mother cleverly interrupted.
+
+Inside the library Lady Belward was comfortably placed, and looking up at
+Gaston, said:
+
+"You have your father's ways: I hope that you will be wiser."
+
+"If you will teach me!" he answered gently.
+
+There came two little bright spots on her cheeks, and her hands clasped
+in her lap.  They all sat down.  Sir William spoke:
+
+"It is much to ask that you should tell us of your life now, but it is
+better that we should start with some knowledge of each other."
+
+At that moment Gaston's eyes caught the strange picture on the wall.
+
+"I understand," he answered.  "But I would be starting in the middle of a
+story."
+
+"You mean that you wish to hear your father's history?  Did he not tell
+you?"
+
+"Trifles--that is all."
+
+"Did he ever speak of me?!" asked Lady Belward with low anxiety.
+
+"Yes, when he was dying."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said: 'Tell my mother that Truth waits long, but whips hard.  Tell
+her that I always loved her.'"  She shrank in her chair as if from a
+blow, and then was white and motionless.
+
+"Let us hear your story," Sir William said with a sort of hauteur.
+"You know your own, much of your father's lies buried with him."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Sir William drew a chair up beside his wife.  Gaston sat back, and for a
+moment did not speak.  He was looking into distance.  Presently the blue
+of his eyes went all black, and with strange unwavering concentration he
+gazed straight before him.  A light spread over his face, his hands felt
+for the chair-arms and held them firmly.  He began:
+
+"I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a buffalo-
+hunt while my mother cooked the dinner.  There were scores of tents,
+horses, and many Indians and half-breeds, and a few white men.  My father
+was in command.  I can see my mother's face as she stood over the fire.
+It was not darker than mine; she always seemed more French than Indian,
+and she was thought comely."
+
+Lady Belward shuddered a little, but Gaston did not notice.
+
+"I can remember the great buffalo-hunt.  You heard a heavy rumbling
+sound; you saw a cloud on the prairie.  It heaved, a steam came from it,
+and sometimes you caught the flash of ten thousand eyes as the beasts
+tossed their heads and then bent them again to the ground and rolled on,
+five hundred men after them, our women shouting and laughing, and arrows
+and bullets flying.  .  .  .  I can remember a time also when a great
+Indian battle happened just outside the fort, and, with my mother crying
+after him, my father went out with a priest to stop it.  My father was
+wounded, and then the priest frightened them, and they gathered their
+dead together and buried them.  We lived in a fort for a long time, and
+my mother died there.  She was a good woman, and she loved my father.
+I have seen her on her knees for hours praying when he was away.--I have
+her rosary now.  They called her Ste. Heloise.  Afterwards I was always
+with my father.  He was a good man, but he was never happy; and only at
+the last would he listen to the priest, though they were always great
+friends.  He was not a Catholic of course, but he said that didn't
+matter."
+
+Sir William interrupted huskily.  "Why did he never come back?"
+
+"I do not know quite, but he said to me once, 'Gaston, you'll tell them
+of me some day, and it will be a soft pillow for their heads!  You can
+mend a broken life, but the ring of it is gone.'  I think he meant to
+come back when I was about fourteen; but things happened, and he stayed."
+
+There was a pause.  Gaston seemed brooding, and Lady Belward said:
+
+"Go on, please."
+
+"There isn't so very much to tell.  The life was the only one I had
+known, and it was all right.  But my father had told me of this life.
+He taught me himself--he and Father Decluse and a Moravian missionary for
+awhile.  I knew some Latin and history, a bit of mathematics, a good deal
+of astronomy, some French poets, and Shakespere.  Shakespere is
+wonderful.  .  .  .  My father wanted me to come here at once after he
+died, but I knew better--I wanted to get sense first.  So I took a place
+in the Company.  It wasn't all fun.
+
+"I had to keep my wits sharp.  I was only a youngster, and I had to do
+with men as crafty and as silly as old Polonius.  I was sent to Labrador.
+That was not a life for a Christian.  Once a year a ship comes to the
+port, bringing the year's mail and news from the world.  When you watch
+that ship go out again, and you turn round and see the filthy Esquimaux
+and Indians, and know that you've got to live for another year with them,
+sit in their dirty tepees, eat their raw frozen meat, with an occasional
+glut of pemmican, and the thermometer 70 degrees below zero, you get a
+lump in your throat.
+
+"Then came one winter.  I had one white man, two half-breeds, and an
+Indian with me.  There was darkness day after day, and because the
+Esquimaux and Indians hadn't come up to the fort that winter, it was
+lonely as a tomb.  One by one the men got melancholy and then went mad,
+and I had to tie them up, and care for them and feed them.  The Indian
+was all right, but he got afraid, and wanted to start to a mission
+station three hundred miles on.  It was a bad look-out for me, but I told
+him to go.  I was left alone.  I was only twenty-one, but I was steel to
+my toes--good for wear and tear.  Well, I had one solid month all alone
+with my madmen.  Their jabbering made me sea-sick some times.  At last
+one day I felt I'd go staring mad myself if I didn't do something
+exciting to lift me, as it were.  I got a revolver, sat at the opposite
+end of the room from the three lunatics, and practised shooting at them.
+I had got it into my head that they ought to die, but it was only fair,
+I thought, to give them a chance.  I would try hard to shoot all round
+them--make a halo of bullets for the head of every one, draw them in
+silhouettes of solid lead on the wall.
+
+"I talked to them first, and told them what I was going to do.  They
+seemed to understand, and didn't object.  I began with the silhouettes,
+of course.  I had a box of bullets beside me.  They never squealed.  I
+sent the bullets round them as pretty as the pattern of a milliner.  Then
+I began with their heads.  I did two all right.  They sat and never
+stirred.  But when I came to the last something happened.  It was Jock
+Lawson."
+
+Sir William interposed:
+
+"Jock Lawson--Jock Lawson from here?"
+
+"Yes.  His mother keeps 'The Whisk o' Barley.'"
+
+"So, that is where Jock Lawson went?  He followed your father?"
+
+"Yes.  Jock was mad enough when I began--clean gone.  But, somehow, the
+game I was playing cured him.  'Steady, Jock!' I said.  'Steady!' for I
+saw him move.  I levelled for the second bead of the halo.  My finger was
+on the trigger.  'My God, don't shoot!' he called.  It startled me, my
+hand shook, the thing went off, and Jock had a bullet through his brain.
+
+".  .  .  Then I waked up.  Perhaps I had been mad myself--I don't know.
+But my brain never seemed clearer than when I was playing that game.  It
+was like a magnifying glass: and my eyes were so clear and strong that I
+could see the pores on their skin, and the drops of sweat breaking out on
+Jock's forehead when he yelled."
+
+A low moan came from Lady Belward.  Her face was drawn and pale, but her
+eyes were on Gaston with a deep fascination.  Sir William whispered to
+her.
+
+"No," she said, "I will stay."
+
+Gaston saw the impression he had made.
+
+"Well, I had to bury poor Jock all alone.  I don't think I should have
+minded it so much, if it hadn't been for the faces of those other two
+crazy men.  One of them sat still as death, his eyes following me with
+one long stare, and the other kept praying all the time--he'd been a
+lay preacher once before he backslided, and it came back on him now
+naturally.  Now it would be from Revelation, now out of the Psalms, and
+again a swingeing exhortation for the Spirit to come down and convict me
+of sin.  There was a lot of sanity in it too, for he kept saying at last:
+'O shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the
+bloodthirsty.'  I couldn't stand it, with Jock dead there before me,
+so I gave him a heavy dose of paregoric out of the Company's stores.
+Before he took it he raised his finger and said to me, with a beastly
+stare: 'Thou art the man!'  But the paregoric put him to sleep.  .  .  .
+
+"Then I gave the other something to eat, and dragged Jock out to bury
+him.  I remembered then that he couldn't be buried, for the ground was
+too hard and the ice too thick; so I got ropes, and, when he stiffened,
+slung him up into a big cedar tree, and then went up myself and arranged
+the branches about him comfortably.  It seemed to me that Jock was a baby
+and I was his father.  You couldn't see any blood, and I fixed his hair
+so that it covered the hole in the forehead.  I remember I kissed him on
+the cheek, and then said a prayer--one that I'd got out of my father's
+prayer-book: 'That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land
+or by water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and young
+children; and to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.' Somehow
+I had got it into my head that Jock was going on a long journey, and that
+I was a prisoner and a captive."
+
+Gaston broke off, and added presently:
+
+"Perhaps this is all too awful to hear, but it gives you an idea of what
+kind of things went to make me."  Lady Belward answered for both:
+
+"Tell us all--everything."
+
+"It is late," said Sir William, nervously.
+
+"What does it matter?  It is once in a lifetime," she answered sadly.
+
+Gaston took up the thread:
+
+"Now I come to what will shock you even more, perhaps.  So, be prepared.
+I don't know how many days went, but at last I had three visitors--in
+time I should think: a Moravian missionary, and an Esquimaux and his
+daughter.  I didn't tell the missionary about Jock--there was no use,
+it could do no good.  They stayed four weeks, and during that time one
+of the crazy men died.  The other got better, but had to be watched.  I
+could do anything with him, if I got my eye on him.  Somehow, I must tell
+you, I've got a lot of power that way.  I don't know where it comes from.
+Well, the missionary had to go.  The old Esquimaux thought that he and
+his daughter would stay on if I'd let them.  I was only too glad.  But it
+wasn't wise for the missionary to take the journey alone--it was a bad
+business in any case.  I urged the man that had been crazy to go, for I
+thought activity would do him good.  He agreed, and the two left and got
+to the Mission Station all right, after wicked trouble.  I was alone with
+the Esquimaux and his daughter.  You never know why certain things
+happen, and I can't tell why that winter was so weird; why the old
+Esquimaux should take sick one morning, and in the evening should call
+me and his daughter Lucy--she'd been given a Christian name, of course--
+and say that he was going to die, and he wanted me to marry her" (Lady
+Belward exclaimed, Sir William's hands fingered the chair-arm nervously)
+"there and then, so that he'd know she would be cared for.  He was a
+heathen, but he had been primed by the missionaries about his daughter.
+She was a fine, clever girl, and well educated--the best product of their
+mission.  So he called for a Bible.  There wasn't one in the place, but I
+had my mother's Book of the Mass.  I went to get it, but when I set my
+eyes on it, I couldn't--no, I couldn't do it, for I hadn't the least idea
+but what I should bid my lady good-bye when it suited, and I didn't want
+any swearing at all--not a bit.  I didn't do any.  But what happened had
+to be with or without any ring or book and 'Forasmuch as.'  There had
+been so much funeral and sudden death that a marriage would be a godsend
+anyhow.  So the old Esquimaux got our two hands in his, babbled away in
+half-English, half-Esquimaux, with the girl's eyes shining like a she-
+moose over a dying buck, and about the time we kissed each other, his
+head dropped back--and that is all there was about that."
+
+Gaston now kept his eyes on his listeners.  He was aware that his story
+must sound to them as brutal as might be, but it was a phase of his life,
+and, so far as he could, he wanted to start with a clean sheet; not out
+of love of confidence, for he was self-contained, but he would have
+enough to do to shepherd his future without shepherding his past.  He saw
+that Lady Belward had a sickly fear in her face, while Sir William had
+gone stern and hard.
+
+He went on:
+
+"It saved the situation, did that marriage; though it was no marriage you
+will say.  Neither was it one way, and I didn't intend at the start to
+stand by it an hour longer than I wished.  But she was more than I looked
+for, and it seems to me that she saved my life that winter, or my reason
+anyhow.  There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder every day
+what would happen before night; and that's not a good thing for the brain
+of a chap of twenty-one or two.  The funny part of it is that she wasn't
+a pagan--not a bit.  She could read and speak English in a sweet old-
+fashioned way, and she used to sing to me--such a funny, sorry little
+voice she had--hymns the Moravians had taught her, and one or two English
+songs.  I taught her one or two besides, 'Where the Hawthorn Tree is
+Blooming,' and 'Allan Water'--the first my father had taught me, the
+other an old Scotch trader.  It's different with a woman and a man in a
+place like that.  Two men will go mad together, but there's a saving
+something in the contact of a man's brain with a woman's.  I got fond of
+her, any man would have, for she had something that I never saw in any
+heathen, certainly in no Indian; you'll see it in women from Iceland.
+I determined to marry her in regular style when spring and a missionary
+came.  You can't understand, maybe, how one can settle to a life where
+you've got companionship, and let the world go by.  About that time, I
+thought that I'd let Ridley Court and the rest of it go as a boy's dreams
+go.  I didn't seem to know that I was only satisfied in one set of my
+instincts.  Spring came, so did a missionary, and for better or worse it
+was."
+
+Sir William came to his feet.  "Great Heaven!" he broke out.
+
+His wife tried to rise, but could not.
+
+"This makes everything impossible," added the baronet shortly.
+
+"No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen."
+
+Gaston was cool.  He had begun playing for the stakes from one stand-
+point, and he would not turn back.
+
+He continued:
+
+"I lived with her happily: I never expect to have happiness like that
+again,--never,--and after two years at another post in Labrador, came
+word from the Company that I might go to Quebec, there to be given my
+choice of posts.  I went.  By this time I had again vague ideas that
+sometime I should come here, but how or why I couldn't tell; I was
+drifting, and for her sake willing to drift.  I was glad to take her to
+Quebec, for I guessed she would get ideas, and it didn't strike me that
+she would be out of place.  So we went.  But she was out of place in
+many ways.  It did not suit at all.  We were asked to good houses, for I
+believe I have always had enough of the Belward in me to keep my end up
+anywhere.  The thing went on pretty well, but at last she used to beg me
+to go without her to excursions and parties.  There were always one or
+two quiet women whom she liked to sit with, and because she seemed
+happier for me to go, I did.  I was popular, and got along with women
+well; but I tell you honestly I loved my wife all the time; so that when
+a Christian busy-body poured into her ears some self-made scandal, it was
+a brutal, awful lie--brutal and awful, for she had never known jealousy;
+it did not belong to her old social creed.  But it was in the core of her
+somewhere, and an aboriginal passion at work naked is a thing to be
+remembered.  I had to face it one night.  .  .  .
+
+"I was quiet, and did what I could.  After that I insisted on her going
+with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite of
+herself, the thing grew.  One day we went on an excursion down the St.
+Lawrence.  We were merry, and I was telling yarns.  We were just nearing
+a landing-stage, when a pretty girl, with more gush than sense, caught me
+by the arm and begged some ridiculous thing of me--an autograph, or what
+not.  A minute afterwards I saw my wife spring from the bulwarks down on
+the landing-stage, and rush up the shore into the woods.  .  .  .  We
+were two days finding her.  That settled it.  I was sick enough at heart,
+and I determined to go back to Labrador.  We did so.  Every thing had
+gone on the rocks.  My wife was not, never would be, the same again.  She
+taunted me and worried me, and because I would not quarrel, seemed to
+have a greater grievance--jealousy is a kind of madness.  One night she
+was most galling, and I sat still and said nothing.  My life seemed gone
+of a heap: I was sick--sick to the teeth; hopeless, looking forward to
+nothing.  I imagine my hard quietness roused her.  She said something
+hateful--something about having married her, and not a woman from Quebec.
+I smiled--I couldn't help it; then I laughed, a bit wild, I suppose.
+I saw the flash of steel.  .  .  .  I believe I laughed in her face as I
+fell.  When I came to she was lying with her head on my breast--dead--
+stone dead."
+
+Lady Belward sat with closed eyes, her fingers clasping and unclasping on
+the top of her cane; but Sir William wore a look half-satisfied, half-
+excited.
+
+He now hurried his story.
+
+"I got well, and after that stayed in the North for a year.  Then I
+passed down the continent to Mexico and South America.  There I got a
+commission to go to New Zealand and Australia to sell a lot of horses.
+I did so, and spent some time in the South Sea Islands.  Again I drifted
+back to the Rockies and over into the plains; found Jacques Brillon, my
+servant, had a couple of years' work and play, gathered together some
+money, as good a horse and outfit as the North could give, and started
+with Brillon and his broncho--having got both sense and experience, I
+hope--for Ridley Court.  And here I am.  There's a lot of my life that I
+haven't told you of, but it doesn't matter, because it's adventure
+mostly, and it can be told at any time; but these are essential facts,
+and it is better that you should hear them.  And that is all, grandfather
+and grandmother."
+
+After a minute Lady Belward rose, leaned on her crutch, and looked at him
+wistfully.  Sir William said: "Are you sure that you will suit this life,
+or it you?"
+
+"It is the only idea I have at present; and, anyhow, it is my rightful
+home, sir."
+
+"I was not thinking of your rights, but of the happiness of us all."
+
+Lady Belward limped to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You have had one great tragedy, so have we: neither could bear another.
+Try to be worthy--of your home."
+
+Then she solemnly kissed him on the cheek.  Soon afterwards they went to
+their rooms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST
+
+In his bedroom Gaston made a discovery.  He chanced to place his hand in
+the tail-pocket of the coat he had worn.  He drew forth a letter.  The
+ink was faded, and the lines were scrawled.  It ran:
+
+     It's no good.  Mr. Ian's been!  It's face the musik now.  If you
+     want me, say so.  I'm for kicks or ha'pence--no diffrense.
+                                                       Yours, J.
+
+He knew the writing very well--Jock Lawson's.  There had been some
+trouble, and Mr. Ian had "been," bringing peril.  What was it?  His
+father and Jock had kept the secret from him.
+
+He put his hand in the pocket again.  There was another note--this time
+in a woman's handwriting:
+
+     Oh, come to me, if you would save us both!  Do not fail.  God help
+     us!  Oh, Robert!
+
+It was signed "Agnes."
+
+Well, here was something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself about
+that.  He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into the
+past, to set his father's wrongs right; but to serve himself, to reap for
+all those years wherein his father had not reaped.  He enjoyed life, and
+he would search this one to the full of his desires.  Before he retired
+he studied the room, handling things that lay where his father placed
+them so many years before.  He was not without emotions in this, but he
+held himself firm.
+
+As he stood ready to get into bed, his eyes chanced upon a portrait of
+his uncle Ian.
+
+"There's where the tug comes!" he said, nodding at it.  "Shake hands,
+and ten paces, Uncle Ian?"
+
+Then he blew out the candle, and in five minutes was sound asleep.
+
+He was out at six o'clock.  He made for the stables, and found Jacques
+pacing the yard.  He smiled at Jacques's dazed look.
+
+"What about the horse, Brillon?!" he said, nodding as he came up.
+
+"Saracen's had a slice of the stable-boy's shoulder--sir."
+
+Amusement loitered in Gaston's eyes.  The "sir" had stuck in Jacques's
+throat.
+
+"Saracen has established himself, then?  Good!  And the broncho?"
+
+"Bien, a trifle only.  They laugh much in the kitchen--"
+
+"The hall, Brillon."
+
+"--in the hall last night.  That hired man over there--"
+
+"That groom, Brillon."
+
+"--that groom, he was a fool, and fat.  He was the worst.  This morning
+he laugh at my broncho.  He say a horse like that is nothing: no pace, no
+travel.  I say the broncho was not so ver' bad, and I tell him try the
+paces.  I whisper soft, and the broncho stand like a lamb.  He mount,
+and sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start.  For a minute it was
+pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was the
+broncho bucking--doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead.  Once
+that--groom--come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like a
+ball, all muck and blood."
+
+The half-breed paused, looking innocently before him.  Gaston's mouth
+quirked.
+
+"A solid success, Brillon.  Teach them all the tricks you can.  At ten
+o'clock come to my room.  The campaign begins then."
+
+Jacques ran a hand through his long black hair, and fingered his sash.
+Gaston understood.
+
+"The hair and ear-rings may remain, Brillon; but the beard and clothes
+must go--except for occasions.  Come along."
+
+For the next two hours Gaston explored the stables and the grounds.
+Nothing escaped him.  He gathered every incident of the surroundings,
+and talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a
+superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at
+the kennels--for the Whipshire hounds were here.  Gaston had never ridden
+to hounds.  It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge.  He was
+strong enough to admit ignorance.  He stood leaning against the door of
+the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter,
+before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of
+distance and soft tones.  His blood beat hard, for suddenly he felt as
+if he had been behind just such a pack one day, one clear desirable day
+of spring.  He saw people gathering at the kennels; saw men drink beer
+and eat sandwiches at the door of the huntsman's house,--a long, low
+dwelling, with crumbling arched doorways like those of a monastery,
+watched them get away from the top of the moor, he among them; heard
+the horn, the whips; and saw the fox break cover.
+
+Then came a rare run for five sweet miles--down a long valley--over
+quick-set hedges, with stiffish streams--another hill--a great combe--
+a lovely valley stretching out--a swerve to the right--over a gate--
+and the brush got at a farmhouse door.
+
+Surely, he had seen it all; but what kink of the brain was it that the
+men wore flowing wigs and immense boot-legs, and sported lace in the
+hunting-field?  And why did he see within that picture another of two
+ladies and a gentleman hawking?
+
+He was roused from his dream by hearing the huntsman say in a quizzical
+voice:
+
+"How do you like the dogs, sir?"
+
+To his last day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold
+surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot.  The words
+that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home the naked
+reproof:
+
+"What is your name, my man?"
+
+"Lugley, sir."
+
+"Lugley!  Lugley!  H'm!  Well, Lugley, I like the hounds better than
+I like you.  Who is Master of the Hounds, Lugley?"
+
+"Captain Maudsley, sir."
+
+"Just so.  You are satisfied with your place, Lugley?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the man in a humble voice, now cowed.
+
+The news of the arrival of the strangers had come to him late at night,
+and, with Whipshire stupidity, he had thought that any one coming from
+the wilds of British America must be but a savage after all.
+
+"Very well; I wouldn't throw myself out of a place, if I were you."
+
+"Oh, no, sir!  Beg pardon, sir, I--"
+
+"Attend to your hounds there, Lugley."
+
+So saying, Gaston nodded Jacques away with him, leaving the huntsman sick
+with apprehension.
+
+"You see how it is to be done, Brillon?!" said Gaston.  Jacques's brown
+eyes twinkled.
+
+"You have the grand trick, sir."
+
+"I enjoy the game; and so shall you, if you will.  You've begun well.
+I don't know much of this life yet; but it seems to me that they are all
+part of a machine, not the idea behind the machine.  They have no
+invention.  Their machine is easy to learn.  Do not pretend; but for
+every bit you learn show something better, something to make them dizzy
+now and then."
+
+He paused on a knoll and looked down.  The castle, the stables, the
+cottages of labourers and villagers lay before them.  In a certain
+highly-cultivated field, men were working.  It was cut off in squares and
+patches.  It had an air which struck Gaston as unusual; why, he could not
+tell.  But he had a strange divining instinct, or whatever it may be
+called.  He made for the field and questioned the workmen.
+
+The field was cut up into allotment gardens.  Here, at a nominal rent,
+the cottager could grow his vegetables; a little spot of the great acre
+of England, which gave the labourer a tiny sense of ownership, of
+manhood.  Gaston was interested.  More, he was determined to carry that
+experiment further, if he ever got the chance.  There was no socialism
+in him.  The true barbarian is like the true aristocrat: more a giver of
+gifts than a lover of co-operation; conserving ownership by right of
+power and superior independence, hereditary or otherwise.  Gaston was
+both barbarian and aristocrat.
+
+"Brillon," he said, as they walked on, "do you think they would be
+happier on the prairies with a hundred acres of land, horses, cows,
+and a pen of pigs?"
+
+"Can I be happy here all at once, sir?"
+
+"That's just it.  It's too late for them.  They couldn't grasp it unless
+they went when they were youngsters.  They'd long for 'Home and Old
+England' and this grub-and-grind life.  Gracious heaven, look at them--
+crumpled-up creatures!  And I'll stake my life, they were as pretty
+children as you'd care to see.  They are out of place in the landscape,
+Brillon; for it is all luxury and lush, and they are crumples--crumples!
+But yet there isn't any use being sorry for them, for they don't grasp
+anything outside the life they are living.  Can't you guess how they
+live?  Look at the doors of the houses shut, and the windows sealed;
+yet they've been up these three hours!  And they'll suck in bad air,
+and bad food; and they'll get cancer, and all that; and they'll die and
+be trotted away to the graveyard for 'passun' to hurry them into their
+little dark cots, in the blessed hope of everlasting life!  I'm going to
+know this thing, Brillon, from tooth to ham-string; and, however it goes,
+we'll have lived up and down the whole scale; and that's something."
+
+He suddenly stopped, and then added:
+
+"I'm likely to go pretty far in this.  I can't tell how or why, but it's
+so.  Now, once more, as yesterday afternoon, for good or for bad, for
+long or for short, for the gods or for the devil, are you with me?
+There's time to turn back even yet, and I'll say no word to your going."
+
+"But no, no! a vow is a vow.  When I cannot run I will walk, when I
+cannot walk I will crawl after you--comme ca!"
+
+Lady Belward did not appear at breakfast.  Sir William and Gaston
+breakfasted alone at half past nine o'clock.  The talk was of the
+stables and the estate generally.
+
+The breakfast-room looked out on a soft lawn, stretching away into a
+broad park, through which a stream ran; and beyond was a green hillside.
+The quiet, the perfect order and discipline, gave a pleasant tingle to
+Gaston's veins.  It was all so easy, and yet so admirable--elegance
+without weight.  He felt at home.  He was not certain of some trifles
+of etiquette; but he and Sir William were alone, and he followed his
+instincts.  Once he frankly asked his grandfather of a matter of form,
+of which he was uncertain the evening before.  The thing was done so
+naturally that the conventional mind of the baronet was not disturbed.
+The Belwards were notable for their brains, and Sir William saw that
+the young man had an unusual share.  He also felt that this startling
+individuality might make a hazardous future; but he liked the fellow, and
+he had a debt to pay to the son of his own dead son.  Of course, if their
+wills came into conflict, there could be but one thing--the young man
+must yield; or, if he played the fool, there must be an end.  Still, he
+hoped the best.  When breakfast was finished, he proposed going to the
+library.
+
+There Sir William talked of the future, asked what Gaston's ideas were,
+and questioned him as to his present affairs.  Gaston frankly said that
+he wanted to live as his father would have done, and that he had no
+property, and no money beyond a hundred pounds, which would last him
+a couple of years on the prairies, but would be fleeting here.
+
+Sir William at once said that he would give him a liberal allowance,
+with, of course, the run of his own stables and their house in town:
+and when he married acceptably, his allowance would be doubled.
+
+"And I wish to say, Gaston," he added, "that your uncle Ian, though heir
+to the title, does not necessarily get the property, which is not
+entailed.  Upon that point I need hardly say more.  He has disappointed
+us.
+
+"Through him Robert left us.  Of his character I need not speak.  Of his
+ability the world speaks variably: he is an artist.  Of his morals I need
+only say that they are scarcely those of an English gentleman, though
+whether that is because he is an artist, I cannot say--I really cannot
+say.  I remember meeting a painter at Lord Dunfolly's,--Dunfolly is a
+singular fellow--and he struck me chiefly as harmless, distinctly
+harmless.  I could not understand why he was at Dunfolly's, he seemed
+of so little use, though Lady Malfire, who writes or something, mooned
+with him a good deal.  I believe there was some scandal or something
+afterwards.  I really do not know.  But you are not a painter, and I
+believe you have character--I fancy so."
+
+"If you mean that I don't play fast and loose, sir, you are right.
+What I do, I do as straight as a needle."  The old man sighed carefully.
+
+"You are very like Robert, and yet there is something else.  I don't
+know, I really don't know what!"
+
+"I ought to have more in me than the rest of the family, sir."
+
+This was somewhat startling.  Sir William's fingers stroked his beardless
+cheek uncertainly.  "Possibly--possibly."
+
+"I've lived a broader life, I've got wider standards, and there are three
+races at work in me."
+
+"Quite so, quite so;" and Sir William fumbled among his papers nervously.
+
+"Sir," said Gaston suddenly, "I told you last night the honest story of
+my life.  I want to start fair and square.  I want the honest story of my
+father's life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean."
+
+He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and
+handed them.  Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned
+them over and over.  Gaston told where he had found them.
+
+Sir William spoke at last.
+
+"The main story is simple enough.  Robert was extravagant, and Ian was
+vicious and extravagant also.  Both got into trouble.  I was younger
+then, and severe.  Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could.  One day things
+came to a climax.  In his wild way, Robert--with Jock Lawson--determined
+to rescue a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of
+the country.  There were reasons.  He was the son of a gentleman; and, as
+we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife--his
+one sin of the kind, I believe.  Ian came to know, and prevented the
+rescue.  Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt.  There
+was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things
+to Robert."
+
+Gaston's eyes were on Lady Belward's portrait.  "What did my grandmother
+say?"
+
+There was a pause, then:
+
+"That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of
+his life would be hateful to her always.  I tell you this because I see
+you look at that portrait.  What I said, I think, was no less.  So,
+Robert, after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the house.
+His mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on the stone
+steps at the door, and became a cripple for life.  At first she remained
+bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that portrait.  It is
+clever, as you may see, and weird.  But there came a time when she kept
+it as a reproach to herself, not Robert.  She is a good woman--a very
+good woman.  I know none better, really no one."
+
+"What became of the arrested man?!" Gaston asked quietly, with the
+oblique suggestiveness of a counsel.
+
+"He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue,
+and the matter was hushed up."
+
+"What became of the wife?"
+
+"She died also within a year."
+
+"Were there any children?"
+
+"One--a girl."
+
+"Whose was the child?"
+
+"You mean--?"
+
+"The husband's or the lover's?"  There was a pause.
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"Where is the girl?"
+
+"My son, do not ask that.  It can do no good--really no good."
+
+"Is it not my due?"
+
+"Do not impose your due.  Believe me, I know best.  If ever there is need
+to tell you, you shall be told.  Trust me.  Has not the girl her due
+also?"
+
+Gaston's eyes held Sir William's a moment.  "You are right, sir," he
+said, "quite right.  I shall not try to know.  But if--"  He paused.
+
+Sir William spoke:
+
+"There is but one person in the world who knows the child's father; and I
+could not ask him, though I have known him long and well--indeed, no."
+
+"I do not ask to understand more," Gaston replied.  "I almost wish I had
+known nothing.  And yet I will ask one thing: is the girl in comfort and
+good surroundings?"
+
+"The best--ah, yes, the very best."
+
+There was a pause, in which both sat thinking; then Sir William wrote out
+a cheque and offered it, with a hint of emotion.  He was recalling how he
+had done the same with this boy's father.
+
+Gaston understood.  He got up, and said: "Honestly, sir, I don't know how
+I shall turn out here; for, if I didn't like it, it couldn't hold me, or,
+if it did, I should probably make things uncomfortable.  But I think I
+shall like it, and I will do my best to make things go well.  Good-
+morning, sir."
+
+With courteous attention Sir William let his grandson out of the room.
+
+And thus did a young man begin his career as Gaston Belward, gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
+
+How that career was continued there are many histories: Jock Lawson's
+mother tells of it in her way, Mrs. Gasgoyne in hers, Hovey in hers,
+Captain Maudsley in his; and so on.  Each looks at it from an individual
+stand-point.  But all agree on two matters: that he did things hitherto
+unknown in the countryside; and that he was free and affable, but could
+pull one up smartly if necessary.
+
+He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with Rosher,
+the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a sailorman,
+home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and with Pogan,
+the groom, who had at last won Saracen's heart.  But one day when the
+meagre village chemist saw him cracking jokes with Beard, the carpenter,
+and sidled in with a silly air of equality, which was merely insolence,
+Gaston softly dismissed him, with his ears tingling.  The carpenter
+proved his right to be a friend of Gaston's by not changing countenance
+and by never speaking of the thing afterwards.
+
+His career was interesting during the eighteen months wherein society
+papers chatted of him amiably and romantically.  He had entered into the
+joys of hunting with enthusiasm and success, and had made a fast and
+admiring friend of Captain Maudsley; while Saracen held his own grandly.
+He had dined with country people, and had dined them; had entered upon
+the fag-end of the London season with keen, amused enjoyment; and had
+engrafted every little use of the convention.  The art was learned, but
+the man was always apart from it; using it as a toy, yet not despising
+it; for, as he said, it had its points, it was necessary.  There was
+yachting in the summer; but he was keener to know the life of England
+and his heritage than to roam afar, and most of the year was spent on the
+estate and thereabouts: with the steward, with the justices of the peace,
+in the fields, in the kennels, among the accounts.
+
+To-day he was in London, haunting Tattersall's, the East End, the docks,
+his club, the London Library--he had a taste for English history,
+especially for that of the seventeenth century; he saturated himself with
+it: to-morrow he would present to his grandfather a scheme for improving
+the estate and benefiting the cottagers.  Or he would suddenly enter the
+village school, and daze and charm the children by asking them strange
+yet simple questions, which sent a shiver of interest to their faces.
+
+One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball
+at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people;
+for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous
+season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years.  But all had gone
+so well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some strangeness,--
+that Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and they had
+ceased to look for anything sensational.
+
+This ball was to be the seal of their approval.  It had been mentioned in
+'Truth' with that freshness and point all its own.  What character than
+Gaston's could more appeal to his naive imagination?  It said in a
+piquant note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero.
+
+Everything was ready.  Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had
+done their parts.  At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands.
+Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway.
+
+He would visit the village school.  He found the junior curate troubling
+the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for them,
+and begging them to do their duty "in that state of life," etc.  He
+listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the
+children to sing.  With inimitable melancholy they sang: "Oh, the Roast
+Beef of Old England!"
+
+Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the
+children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song.  With his
+thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to
+talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice.  He asked them little
+out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and
+then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was,
+giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of
+information, without the nature of a lesson.  Then he taught them the
+chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how
+those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately:
+
+"Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!"
+
+It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward
+driving past.  He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist
+had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a
+newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world,
+nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the
+purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.
+
+They recognised each other.  Ian looked his nephew up and down with a
+cool kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation.
+Gaston went straight to the castle.  He asked for his uncle, and was told
+that he had gone to Lady Belward.  He wandered to the library: it was
+empty.  He lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold's poems,
+opening at "Sohrab and Rustum," read it with a quick-beating heart, and
+then came to "Tristram and Iseult."  He knew little of "that Arthur" and
+his knights of the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure
+of romance to him.  In Tennyson, he had got no further than "Locksley
+Hall," which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and "Maud,"
+which "was big in pathos."  The story and the metre of "Tristram and
+Iseult" beat in his veins.  He got to his feet, and, standing before the
+window, repeated a verse aloud:
+
+              "Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
+               O hunter!  and without a fear
+               Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow,
+               And through the glades thy pasture take
+               For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here!
+               For these thou seest are unmoved;
+               Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
+               A thousand years ago."
+
+He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open.  He again
+repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician.  He
+knew that they were right.  They were hot with life--a life that was no
+more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be.  He
+felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea,
+down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in with
+bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago.  Bearding the Spaniards--
+what did he mean by that?  He shut his eyes and saw a picture: A Moorish
+castle, men firing from the battlements under a blazing sun, a multitude
+of troops before a tall splendid-looking man, in armour chased with gold
+and silver, and fine ribbons flying.  A woman was lifted upon the
+battlements.  He saw the gold of her necklace shake on her flesh like
+sunlight on little waves.  He heard a cry:
+
+At that moment some one said behind him: "You have your father's romantic
+manner."
+
+He quietly put down the book, and met the other's eyes with a steady
+directness.
+
+"Your memory is good, sir."
+
+"Less than thirty years--h'm, not so very long!"
+
+"Looking back--no.  You are my father's brother, Ian Belward?"
+
+"Your uncle Ian."
+
+There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward's manner.
+
+"Well, Uncle Ian, my father asked me to say that he hoped you would get
+as much out of life as he had, and that you would leave it as honest."
+
+"Thank you.  That is very like Robert.  He loved making little speeches.
+It is a pity we did not pull together; but I was hasty, and he was rash.
+He had a foolish career, and you are the result.  My mother has told me
+the story--his and yours."
+
+He sat down, ran his fingers through his grey-brown hair, and looking
+into a mirror, adjusted the bow of his tie, and flipped the flying ends.
+The kind of man was new to Gaston: self-indulgent, intelligent, heavily
+nourished, nonchalant, with a coarse kind of handsomeness.  He felt that
+here was a man of the world, equipped mentally cap-a-pie, as keen as
+cruel.  Reading that in the light of the past, he was ready.
+
+"And yet his rashness will hurt you longer than your haste hurt him."
+
+The artist took the hint bravely.
+
+"That you will have the estate, and I the title, eh?  Well, that looks
+likely just now; but I doubt it all the same.  You'll mess the thing one
+way or another."
+
+He turned from the contemplation of himself, and eyed Gaston lazily.
+Suddenly he started.
+
+"Begad," he said, "where did you get it?"  He rose.
+
+Gaston understood that he saw the resemblance to Sir Gaston Belward.
+
+"Before you were, I am.  I am nearer the real stuff."
+
+The other measured his words insolently:
+
+"But the Pocahontas soils the stream--that's plain."
+
+A moment after Gaston was beside the prostrate body of his uncle,
+feeling his heart.
+
+"Good God," he said, "I didn't think I hit so hard!"  He felt the pulse,
+looked at the livid face, then caught open the waistcoat and put his ear
+to the chest.  He did it all coolly, though swiftly--he was' born for
+action and incident.  And during that moment of suspense he thought of a
+hundred things, chiefly that, for the sake of the family--the family!
+--he must not go to trial.  There were easier ways.
+
+But presently he found that the heart beat.
+
+"Good!  good!" he said, undid the collar, got some water, and rang a
+bell.  Falby came.  Gaston ordered some brandy, and asked for Sir
+William.  After the brandy had been given, consciousness returned.
+Gaston lifted him up.
+
+He presently swallowed more brandy, and while yet his head was at
+Gaston's shoulder, said:
+
+"You are a hard hitter.  But you've certainly lost the game now."
+
+Here he made an effort, and with Gaston's assistance got to his feet.
+At that moment Falby entered to say that Sir William was not in the
+house.  With a wave of the hand Gaston dismissed him.  Deathly pale,
+his uncle lifted his eyebrows at the graceful gesture.
+
+"You do it fairly, nephew," he said ironically yet faintly,--"fairly in
+such little things; but a gentleman, your uncle, your elder, with fists
+--that smacks of low company!"
+
+Gaston made a frank reply as he smothered his pride
+
+"I am sorry for the blow, sir; but was the fault all mine?"
+
+"The fault?  Is that the question?  Faults and manners are not the same.
+At bottom you lack in manners; and that will ruin you at last."
+
+"You slighted my mother!"
+
+"Oh, no!  and if I had, you should not have seen it."
+
+"I am not used to swallow insults.  It is your way, sir.  I know your
+dealings with my father."
+
+"A little more brandy, please.  But your father had manners, after all.
+You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish--which he was
+not."
+
+Gaston was well in hand now, cooler even than his uncle.
+
+"Perhaps you will sum up your criticism now, sir, to save future
+explanation; and then accept my apology."
+
+"To apologise for what no gentleman pardons or does, or acknowledges
+openly when done--H'm!  Were it not well to pause in time, and go back
+to your wild North?  Why so difficult a saddle--Tartarin after Napoleon?
+Think--Tartarin's end!"
+
+Gaston deprecated with a gesture: "Can I do anything for you, sir?"
+
+His uncle now stood up, but swayed a little, and winced from sudden pain.
+A wave of malice crossed his face.
+
+"It's a pity we are relatives, with France so near," he said, "for I see
+you love fighting."  After an instant he added, with a carelessness as
+much assumed as natural: "You may ring the bell, and tell Falby to come
+to my room.  And because I am to appear at the flare-up to-night--all in
+honour of the prodigal's son--this matter is between us, and we meet as
+loving relatives.  You understand my motives, Gaston Robert Belward?"
+
+"Thoroughly."
+
+Gaston rang the bell, and went to open the door for his uncle to pass
+out.  Ian Belward buttoned his close-fitting coat, cast a glance in the
+mirror, and then eyed Gaston's fine figure and well-cut clothes.  In the
+presence of his nephew, there grew the envy of a man who knew that youth
+was passing while every hot instinct and passion remained.  For his age
+he was impossibly young.  Well past fifty he looked thirty-five, no more.
+His luxurious soul loathed the approach of age.  Unlike many men of
+indulgent natures, he loved youth for the sake of his art, and he had
+sacrificed upon that altar more than most men-sacrificed others.  His
+cruelty was not as that of the roughs of Seven Dials or Belleville, but
+it was pitiless.  He admitted to those who asked him why and wherefore
+when his selfishness became brutality, that everything had to give way
+for his work.  His painting of Ariadne represented the misery of two
+women's lives.  And of such was his kingdom of Art.
+
+As he now looked at Gaston he was again struck with the resemblance to
+the portrait in the dining-room, with his foreign out-of-the-way air:
+something that should be seen beneath the flowing wigs of the Stuart
+period.  He had long wanted to do a statue of the ill-fated Monmouth,
+and another greater than that.  Here was the very man: with a proud,
+daring, homeless look, a splendid body, and a kind of cavalier conceit.
+It was significant of him, of his attitude towards himself where his work
+was concerned, that he suddenly turned and shut the door again, telling
+Falby, who appeared, to go to his room; and then said:
+
+"You are my debtor, Cadet--I shall call you that: you shall have a chance
+of paying."
+
+"How?"
+
+In a few concise words he explained, scanning the other's face eagerly.
+
+Gaston showed nothing.  He had passed the apogee of irritation.
+
+"A model?!" he questioned drily.
+
+"Well, if you put it that way.  'Portrait' sounds better.  It shall be
+Gaston Belward, gentleman; but we will call it in public, 'Monmouth the
+Trespasser.'"
+
+Gaston did not wince.  He had taken all the revenge he needed.  The idea
+rather pleased him than other wise.  He had instincts about art, and he
+liked pictures; statuary, poetry, romance; but he had no standards.  He
+was keen also to see the life of the artist, to touch that aristocracy
+more distinguished by mind than manners.
+
+"If that gives 'clearance,' yes.  And your debt to me?"
+
+"I owe you nothing.  You find your own meaning in my words.  I was
+railing, you were serious.  Do not be serious.  Assume it sometimes,
+if you will; be amusing mostly.  So, you will let me paint you--on your
+own horse, eh?"
+
+"That is asking much.  Where?"
+
+"Well, a sketch here this afternoon, while the thing is hot--if this
+damned headache stops!  Then at my studio in London in the spring, or"
+--here he laughed--"in Paris.  I am modest, you see."
+
+"As you will."
+
+Gaston had had a desire for Paris, and this seemed to give a cue for
+going.  He had tested London nearly all round.  He had yet to be
+presented at St. James's, and elected a member of the Trafalgar Club.
+Certainly he had not visited the Tower, Windsor Castle, and the Zoo;
+but that would only disqualify him in the eyes of a colonial.
+
+His uncle's face flushed slightly.  He had not expected such good
+fortune.  He felt that he could do anything with this romantic figure.
+He would do two pictures: Monmouth, and an ancient subject--that legend
+of the ancient city of Ys, on the coast of Brittany.  He had had it in
+his mind for years.  He came back and sat down, keen, eager.
+
+"I've a big subject brewing," he said; "better than the Monmouth, though
+it is good enough as I shall handle it.  It shall be royal, melancholy,
+devilish: a splendid bastard with creation against him; the best, most
+fascinating subject in English history.  The son dead on against the
+father--and the uncle!"
+
+He ceased for a minute, fashioning the picture in his mind; his face
+pale, but alive with interest, which his enthusiasm made into dignity.
+Then he went on:
+
+"But the other: when the king takes up the woman--his mistress--and rides
+into the sea with her on his horse, to save the town!  By Heaven, with
+you to sit, it's my chance!  You've got it all there in you--the immense
+manner.  You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game of Ridley
+Court, and paddle round the Row?  Not you!  You're clever, and you're
+crafty, and you've a way with you.  But you'll come a cropper at this as
+sure as I shall paint two big pictures--if you'll stand to your word."
+
+"We need not discuss my position here.  I am in my proper place--in my
+father's home.  But for the paintings and Paris, as you please."
+
+"That is sensible--Paris is sensible; for you ought to see it right, and
+I'll show you what half the world never see, and wouldn't appreciate if
+they did.  You've got that old, barbaric taste, romance, and you'll find
+your metier in Paris."
+
+Gaston now knew the most interesting side of his uncle's character--which
+few people ever saw, and they mostly women who came to wish they had
+never felt the force of that occasional enthusiasm.  He had been in the
+National Gallery several times, and over and over again he had visited
+the picture places in Bond Street as he passed; but he wanted to get
+behind art life, to dig out the heart of it.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+He was strong enough to admit ignorance
+Not to show surprise at anything
+Truth waits long, but whips hard
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 2.
+
+
+VI.       WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
+VII.      WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
+VIII.     HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
+IX.       HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
+X.        HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
+XI.       HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
+
+A few hours afterwards Gaston sat on his horse, in a quiet corner of the
+grounds, while his uncle sketched him.  After a time he said that Saracen
+would remain quiet no longer.  His uncle held up the sketch.  Gaston
+could scarcely believe that so strong and life-like a thing were possible
+in the time.  It had force and imagination.  He left his uncle with a
+nod, rode quietly through the park, into the village, and on to the moor.
+At the top he turned and looked down.  The perfectness of the landscape
+struck him; it was as if the picture had all grown there--not a suburban
+villa, not a modern cottage, not one tall chimney of a manufactory, but
+just the sweet common life.  The noises of the village were soothing, the
+soft smell of the woodland came over.  He watched a cart go by idly,
+heavily clacking.
+
+As he looked, it came to him: was his uncle right after all?  Was he out
+of place here?  He was not a part of this, though he had adapted himself
+and had learned many fine social ways.  He knew that he lived not exactly
+as though born here and grown up with it all.  But it was also true that
+he had a native sense of courtesy which people called distinguished.
+There was ever a kind of mannered deliberation in his bearing--a part of
+his dramatic temper, and because his father had taught him dignity where
+there were no social functions for its use.  His manner had, therefore,
+a carefulness which in him was elegant artifice.
+
+It could not be complained that he did not act after the fashion of
+gentle people when with them.  But it was equally true that he did many
+things which the friends of his family could not and would not have done.
+For instance, none would have pitched a tent in the grounds, slept in it,
+read in it, and lived in it--when it did not rain.  Probably no one of
+them would have, at individual expense, sent the wife of the village
+policeman to a hospital in London, to be cured--or to die--of cancer.
+None would have troubled to insist that a certain stagnant pool in the
+village be filled up.  Nor would one have suddenly risen in court and
+have acted as counsel for a gipsy!  At the same time, all were too well-
+bred to think that Gaston did this because the gipsy had a daughter with
+him, a girl of strong, wild beauty, with a look of superiority over her
+position.
+
+He thought of all the circumstances now.
+
+It was very many months ago.  The man had been accused of stealing and
+assault, but the evidence was unconvincing to Gaston.  The feeling in
+court was against the gipsy.  Fearing a verdict against him, Gaston rose
+and cross-examined the witnesses, and so adroitly bewildered both them
+and the justices who sat with his grandfather on the case, that, at last,
+he secured the man's freedom.  The girl was French, and knew English
+imperfectly.  Gaston had her sworn, and made the most of her evidence.
+Then, learning that an assault had been made on the gipsy's van by some
+lads who worked at mills in a neighbouring town, he pushed for their
+arrest, and himself made up the loss to the gipsy.
+
+It is possible that there was in the mind of the girl what some common
+people thought: that the thing was done for her favour; for she viewed it
+half-gratefully, half-frowningly, till, on the village green, Gaston
+asked her father what he wished to do--push on or remain to act against
+the lads.
+
+The gipsy, angry as he was, wished to move on.  Gaston lifted his hat to
+the girl and bade her good-bye.  Then she saw that his motives had been
+wholly unselfish--even quixotic, as it appeared to her--silly, she would
+have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him.  She had
+never met a man like him before.  She ran her fingers through her golden-
+brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her waist,
+and said in French:
+
+"He is honest altogether, sir.  He did not steal, and he was not there
+when it happened."
+
+"I know that, my girl.  That is why I did it."
+
+She looked at him keenly.  Her eyes ran up and down his figure, then met
+his curiously.  Their looks swam for a moment.  Something thrilled in
+them both.  The girl took a step nearer.
+
+"You are as much a Romany here as I am," she said, touching her bosom
+with a quick gesture.  "You do not belong; you are too good for it.  How
+do I know?  I do not know; I feel.  I will tell your fortune," she
+suddenly added, reaching for his hand.  "I have only known three that I
+could do it with honestly and truly, and you are one.  It is no lie.
+There is something in it.  My mother had it; but it's all sham mostly."
+Then, under a tree on the green, he indifferent to village gossip, she
+took his hand and told him--not of his fortune alone.  In half-coherent
+fashion she told him of the past--of his life in the North.  She then
+spoke of his future.  She told him of a woman, of another, and another
+still; of an accident at sea, and of a quarrel; then, with a low, wild
+laugh, she stopped, let go his hand, and would say no more.  But her face
+was all flushed, and her eyes like burning beads.  Her father stood near,
+listening.  Now he took her by the arm.
+
+"Here, Andree, that's enough," he said, with rough kindness; "it's no
+good for you or him."
+
+He turned to Gaston, and said in English:
+
+"She's sing'lar, like her mother afore her.  But she's straight."
+
+Gaston lit a cigar.
+
+"Of course."  He looked kindly at the girl.  "You are a weird sort,
+Andree, and perhaps you are right that I'm a Romany too; but I don't know
+where it begins and where it ends.  You are not English gipsies?!" he
+added, to the father.
+
+"I lived in England when I was young.  Her mother was a Breton--not a
+Romany.  We're on the way to France now.  She wants to see where her
+mother was born.  She's got the Breton lingo, and she knows some English;
+but she speaks French mostly."
+
+"Well, well," rejoined Gaston, "take care of yourself, and good luck to
+you.  Good-bye--good-bye, Andree."  He put his hand in his pocket to give
+her some money, but changed his mind.  Her eye stopped him.  He shook
+hands with the man, then turned to her again.  Her eyes were on him--hot,
+shining.  He felt his blood throb, but he returned the look with good-
+natured nonchalance, shook her hand, raised his hat, and walked away,
+thinking what a fine, handsome creature she was.  Presently he said:
+"Poor girl, she'll look at some fellow like that one day, with tragedy
+the end thereof!"
+
+He then fell to wondering about her almost uncanny divination.  He knew
+that all his life he himself had had strange memories, as well as certain
+peculiar powers which had put the honest phenomena and the trickery of
+the Medicine Men in the shade.  He had influenced people by the sheer
+force of presence.  As he walked on, he came to a group of trees in the
+middle of the common.  He paused for a moment, and looked back.  The
+gipsy's van was moving away, and in the doorway stood the girl, her hand
+over her eyes, looking towards him.  He could see the raw colour of her
+scarf.  "She'll make wild trouble," he said to himself.
+
+As Gaston thought of this event, he moved his horse slowly towards a
+combe, and looked out over a noble expanse--valley, field, stream, and
+church-spire.  As he gazed, he saw seated at some distance a girl
+reading.  Not far from her were two boys climbing up and down the combe.
+He watched them.  Presently he saw one boy creep along a shelf of rock
+where the combe broke into a quarry, let himself drop upon another shelf
+below, and then perch upon an overhanging ledge.  He presently saw that
+the lad was now afraid to return.  He heard the other lad cry out, saw
+the girl start up, and run forward, look over the edge of the combe, and
+then make as if to go down.  He set his horse to the gallop, and called
+out.  The girl saw him, and paused.  In two minutes he was off his horse
+and beside her.
+
+It was Alice Wingfield.  She had brought out three boys, who had come
+with her from London, where she had spent most of the year nursing their
+sick mother, her relative.
+
+"I'll have him up in a minute," he said, as he led Saracen to a sapling
+near.  "Don't go near the horse."
+
+He swung himself down from ledge to ledge, and soon was beside the boy.
+In another moment he had the youngster on his back, came slowly up, and
+the adventurer was safe.
+
+"Silly Walter," the girl said, "to frighten yourself and give Mr. Belward
+trouble."
+
+"I didn't think I'd be afraid," protested the lad; "but when I looked
+over the ledge my head went round, and I felt sick--like with the
+channel."
+
+Gaston had seen Alice Wingfield several times at church and in the
+village, and once when, with Lady Belward, he had returned the
+archdeacon's call; but she had been away most of the time since his
+arrival.  She had impressed him as a gentle, wise, elderly little
+creature, who appeared to live for others, and chiefly for her
+grandfather.  She was not unusually pretty, nor yet young,--quite
+as old as himself,--and yet he wondered what it was that made her so
+interesting.  He decided that it was the honesty of her nature, her
+beautiful thoroughness; and then he thought little more about her.  But
+now he dropped into quiet, natural talk with her, as if they had known
+each other for years.  But most women found that they dropped quickly
+into easy talk with him.  That was because he had not learned the small
+gossip which varies little with a thousand people in the same
+circumstances.  But he had a naive fresh sense, everything interested
+him, and he said what he thought with taste and tact, sometimes with wit,
+and always in that cheerful contemplative mood which influences women.
+Some of his sayings were so startling and heretical that they had gone
+the rounds, and certain crisp words out of the argot of the North were
+used by women who wished to be chic and amusing.
+
+Not quite certain why he stayed, but talking on reflectively, Gaston at
+last said:
+
+"You will be coming to us to-night, of course?  We are having a barbecue
+of some kind."
+
+"Yes, I hope so; though my grandfather does not much care to have me go."
+
+"I suppose it is dull for him."
+
+"I am not sure it is that."
+
+"No?  What then?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"The affair is in your honour, Mr. Belward, isn't it?
+
+"Does that answer my question?!" he asked genially.
+
+She blushed.
+
+"No, no, no!  That is not what I meant."
+
+"I was unfair.  Yes, I believe the matter does take that colour;
+though why, I don't know."
+
+She looked at him with simple earnestness.
+
+"You ought to be proud of it; and you ought to be glad of such a high
+position where you can do so much good, if you will."
+
+He smiled, and ran his hand down his horse's leg musingly before he
+replied:
+
+"I've not thought much of doing good, I tell you frankly.  I wasn't
+brought up to think about it; I don't know that I ever did any good in my
+life.  I supposed it was only missionaries and women who did that sort of
+thing."
+
+"But you wrong yourself.  You have done good in this village.  Why, we
+all have talked of it; and though it wasn't done in the usual way--rather
+irregularly--still it was doing good."
+
+He looked down at her astonished.
+
+"Well, here's a pretty libel!  Doing good 'irregularly'?  Why, where have
+I done good at all?"
+
+She ran over the names of several sick people in the village whose bills
+he had paid, the personal help and interest he had given to many, and,
+last of all, she mentioned the case of the village postmaster.
+
+Since Gaston had come, postmasters had been changed.  The little pale-
+faced man who had first held the position disappeared one night, and in
+another twenty-four hours a new one was in his place.  Many stories had
+gone about.  It was rumoured that the little man was short in his
+accounts, and had been got out of the way by Gaston Belward.
+Archdeacon Varcoe knew the truth, and had said that Gaston's sin was not
+unpardonable, in spite of a few squires and their dames who declared it
+was shocking that a man should have such loose ideas, that no good could
+come to the county from it, and that he would put nonsense into the heads
+of the common people.  Alice Wingfield was now to hear Gaston's view of
+the matter.
+
+"So that's it, eh?  Live and let live is doing good?  In that case it
+is easy to be a saint.  What else could a man do?  You say that I am
+generous--How?  What have I spent out of my income on these little
+things?  My income--how did I get it?  I didn't earn it; neither did my
+father.  Not a stroke have I done for it.  I sit high and dry there in
+the Court, they sit low there in the village; and you know how they live.
+Well, I give away a little money which these people and their fathers
+earned for my father and me; and for that you say I am doing good, and
+some other people say I am doing harm--'dangerous charity,' and all that!
+I say that the little I have done is what is always done where man is
+most primitive, by people who never heard 'doing good' preached."
+
+"We must have names for things, you know," she said.
+
+"I suppose so, where morality and humanity have to be taught as Christian
+duty, and not as common manhood."
+
+"Tell me," she presently said, "about Sproule, the postmaster."
+
+"Oh, that?  Well, I will.  The first time I entered the post-office I saw
+there was something on the man's mind.  A youth of twenty-three oughtn't
+to look as he did--married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife
+and child.  I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to
+him: 'You look seedy; what's the matter?' He flushed, and got nervous.
+I made up my mind it was money.  If I had been here longer, I should have
+taken him aside and talked to him like a father.  As it was, things slid
+along.  I was up in town, and here and there.  One evening as I came back
+from town I saw a nasty-looking Jew arrive.  The little postmaster met
+him, and they went away together.  He was in the scoundrel's hands;
+had been betting, and had borrowed first from the Jew, then from the
+Government.  The next evening I was just starting down to have a talk
+with him, when an official came to my grandfather to swear out a warrant.
+I lost no time; got my horse and trap, went down to the office, gave
+the boy three minutes to tell me the truth, and then I sent him away.
+I fixed it up with the authorities, and the wife and child follow the
+youth to America next week.  That's all."
+
+"He deserved to get free, then?"
+
+"He deserved to be punished, but not as he would have been.  There wasn't
+really a vicious spot in the man.  And the wife and child--what was a
+little justice to the possible happiness of those three?  Discretion is a
+part of justice, and I used it, as it is used every day in business and
+judicial life, only we don't see it.  When it gets public, why, some one
+gets blamed.  In this case I was the target; but I don't mind in the
+least--not in the least.  .  .  .  Do you think me very startling or
+lawless?"
+
+"Never lawless; but one could not be quite sure what you would do in any
+particular case."  She looked up at him admiringly.
+
+They had not noticed the approach of Archdeacon Varcoe till he was very
+near them.  His face was troubled.  He had seen how earnest was their
+conversation, and for some reason it made him uneasy.  The girl saw him
+first, and ran to meet him.  He saw her bright delighted look, and he
+sighed involuntarily.  "Something has worried you," she said caressingly.
+Then she told him of the accident, and they all turned and went back
+towards the Court, Gaston walking his horse.  Near the church they met
+Sir William and Lady Belward.  There were salutations, and presently
+Gaston slowly followed his grandfather and grandmother into the
+courtyard.
+
+Sir William, looking back, said to his wife: "Do you think that Gaston
+should be told?"
+
+"No, no, there is no danger.  Gaston, my dear, shall marry Delia
+Gasgoyne."
+
+"Shall marry?  wherefore 'shall'?  Really, I do not see."
+
+"She likes him, she is quite what we would have her, and he is interested
+in her.  My dear, I have seen--I have watched for a year."
+
+He put his hand on hers.
+
+"My wife, you are a goodly prophet."
+
+When Archdeacon Varcoe entered his study on returning, he sat down in a
+chair, and brooded long.  "She must be told," he said at last, aloud.
+"Yes, yes, at once.  God help us both!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
+
+"Sophie, when you talk with the man, remember that you are near fifty,
+and faded.  Don't be sentimental."  So said Mrs. Gasgoyne to Lady Dargan,
+as they saw Gaston coming down the ballroom with Captain Maudsley.
+
+"Reine, you try one's patience.  People would say you were not quite
+disinterested."
+
+"You mean Delia!  Now, listen.  I haven't any wish but that Gaston
+Belward shall see Delia very seldom indeed.  He will inherit the property
+no doubt, and Sir William told me that he had settled a decent fortune on
+him; but for Delia--no--no--no.  Strange, isn't it, when Lady Harriet
+over there aches for him, Indian blood and all?  And why?  Because this
+is a good property, and the fellow is distinguished and romantic-looking:
+but he is impossible--perfectly impossible.  Every line of his face says
+shipwreck."
+
+"You are not usually so prophetic."
+
+"Of course.  But I am prophetic now, for Delia is more than interested,
+silly chuck!  Did you ever read the story of the other Gaston--Sir
+Gaston--whom this one resembles?  No?  Well, you will find it thinly
+disguised in The Knight of Five Joys.  He was killed at Naseby, my dear;
+killed, not by the enemy, but by a page in Rupert's cavalry.  The page
+was a woman!  It's in this one too.  Indian and French blood is a sad
+tincture.  He is not wicked at heart, not at all; but he will do mad
+things yet, my dear.  For he'll tire of all this, and then--half-mourning
+for some one!"
+
+Gaston enjoyed talking with Mrs. Gasgoyne as to no one else.  Other women
+often flattered him, she never did.  Frankly, crisply, she told him
+strange truths, and, without mercy, crumbled his wrong opinions.  He had
+a sense of humour, and he enjoyed her keen chastening raillery.  Besides,
+her talk was always an education in the fine lights and shadows of this
+social life.  He came to her now with a smile, greeted her heartily, and
+then turned to Lady Dargan.  Captain Maudsley carried off Mrs. Gasgoyne,
+and the two were left together--the second time since the evening of
+Gaston's arrival, so many months before.  Lady Dargan had been abroad,
+and was just returned.
+
+They talked a little on unimportant things, and presently Lady Dargan
+said:
+
+"Pardon my asking, but will you tell me why you wore a red ribbon in your
+button-hole the first night you came?"
+
+He smiled, and then looked at her a little curiously.  "My luggage had
+not come, and I wore an old suit of my father's."
+
+Lady Dargan sighed deeply.
+
+"The last night he was in England he wore that coat at dinner," she
+murmured.
+
+"Pardon me, Lady Dargan--you put that ribbon there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her eyes were on him with a candid interest and regard.
+
+"I suppose," he went on, "that his going was abrupt to you?"
+
+"Very--very!" she answered.
+
+She longed to ask if his father ever mentioned her name, but she dared
+not.  Besides, as she said to herself, to what good now?  But she asked
+him to tell her something about his father.  He did so quietly, picking
+out main incidents, and setting them forth, as he had the ability, with
+quiet dramatic strength.  He had just finished when Delia Gasgoyne came
+up with Lord Dargan.
+
+Presently Lord Dargan asked Gaston if he would bring Lady Dargan to the
+other end of the room, where Miss Gasgoyne was to join her mother.  As
+they went, Lady Dargan said a little breathlessly:
+
+"Will you do something for me?"
+
+"I would do much for you," was his reply, for he understood!
+
+"If ever you need a friend, if ever you are in trouble, will you let me
+know?  I wish to take an interest in you.  Promise me."
+
+"I cannot promise, Lady Dargan," he answered, "for such trouble as I have
+had before I have had to bear alone, and the habit is fixed, I fear.
+Still, I am grateful to you just the same, and I shall never forget it.
+But will you tell me why people regard me from so tragical a stand-
+point?"
+
+"Do they?"
+
+"Well, there's yourself, and there's Mrs. Gasgoyne, and there's my uncle
+Ian."
+
+"Perhaps we think you may have trouble because of your uncle Ian."
+
+Gaston shook his head enigmatically, and then said ironically:
+
+"As they would put it in the North, Lady Dargan, he'll cut no figure in
+that matter.  I remember for two."
+
+"That is right--that is right.  Always think that Ian Belward is bad--bad
+at heart.  He is as fascinating as--"
+
+"As the Snake?"
+
+"--as the Snake, and as cruel!  It is the cruelty of wicked selfishness.
+Somehow, I forget that I am talking to his nephew.  But we all know Ian
+Belward--at least, all women do."
+
+"And at least one man does," he answered gravely.  The next minute Gaston
+walked down the room with Delia Gasgoyne on his arm.  The girl delicately
+showed her preference, and he was aware of it.  It pleased him--pleased
+his unconscious egoism.  The early part of his life had been spent among
+Indian women, half-breeds, and a few dull French or English folk, whose
+chief charm was their interest in that wild, free life, now so distant.
+He had met Delia many times since his coming; and there was that in her
+manner--a fine high-bred quality, a sweet speaking reserve--which
+interested him.  He saw her as the best product of this convention.
+
+She was no mere sentimental girl, for she had known at least six seasons,
+and had refused at least six lovers.  She had a proud mind, not wide,
+suited to her position.  Most men had flattered her, had yielded to her;
+this man, either with art or instinctively, mastered her, secured her
+interest by his personality.  Every woman worth the having, down in her
+heart, loves to be mastered: it gives her a sense of security, and she
+likes to lean; for, strong as she may be at times, she is often
+singularly weak.  She knew that her mother deprecated "that Belward
+enigma," but this only sent her on the dangerous way.
+
+To-night she questioned him about his life, and how he should spend the
+summer.  Idling in France, he said.  And she?  She was not sure; but she
+thought that she also would be idling about France in her father's yacht.
+So they might happen to meet.  Meanwhile?  Well, meanwhile, there were
+people coming to stay at Peppingham, their home.  August would see that
+over.  Then freedom.
+
+Was it freedom, to get away from all this--from England and rule and
+measure?  No, she did not mean quite that.  She loved the life with all
+its rules; she could not live without it.  She had been brought up to
+expect and to do certain things.  She liked her comforts, her luxuries,
+many pretty things about her, and days without friction.  To travel?
+Yes, with all modern comforts, no long stages, a really good maid, and
+some fresh interesting books.
+
+What kind of books?  Well, Walter Pater's essays; "The Light of Asia";
+a novel of that wicked man Thomas Hardy; and something light--"The
+Innocents Abroad"--with, possibly, a struggle through De Musset,
+to keep up her French.
+
+It did not seem exciting to Gaston, but it did sound honest, and it was
+in the picture.  He much preferred Meredith, and Swinburne, and Dumas,
+and Hugo; but with her he did also like the whimsical Mark Twain.
+
+He thought of suggestions that Lady Belward had often thrown out; of
+those many talks with Sir William, excellent friends as they were, in
+which the baronet hinted at the security he would feel if there was a
+second family of Belwards.  What if he--?  He smiled strangely, and
+shrank.
+
+Marriage?  There was the touchstone.
+
+After the dance, when he was taking her to her mother, he saw a pale
+intense face looking out to him from a row of others.  He smiled, and the
+smile that came in return was unlike any he had ever seen Alice Wingfield
+wear.  He was puzzled.  It flashed to him strange pathos, affection, and
+entreaty.  He took Delia Gasgoyne to her mother, talked to Lady Belward
+a little, and then went quietly back to where he had seen Alice.  She was
+gone.  Just then some people from town came to speak to him, and he was
+detained.  When he was free he searched, but she was nowhere to be found.
+He went to Lady Belward.  Yes, Miss Wingfield had gone.  Lady Belward
+looked at Gaston anxiously, and asked him why he was curious.  "Because
+she's a lonely-looking little maid," he said, "and I wanted to be kind to
+her.  She didn't seem happy a while ago."
+
+Lady Belward was reassured.
+
+"Yes, she is a sweet creature, Gaston," she said, and added: "You are a
+good boy to-night, a very good host indeed.  It is worth the doing," she
+went on, looking out on the guests proudly.  "I did not think I should
+ever come to it again with any heart, but I do it for you gladly.  Now,
+away to your duty," she added, tapping his breast affectionately with her
+fan, "and when everything is done, come and take me to my room."
+
+Ian Belward passed Gaston as he went.  He had seen the affectionate
+passages.
+
+"'For a good boy!' 'God bless our Home!"' he said, ironically.
+
+Gaston saw the mark of his hand on his uncle's chin, and he forbore
+ironical reply.
+
+"The home is worth the blessing," he rejoined quietly, and passed on.
+
+Three hours later the guests had all gone, and Lady Belward, leaning on
+her grandson's arm, went to her boudoir, while Ian and his father sought
+the library.  Ian was going next morning.  The conference was not likely
+to be cheerful.
+
+Inside her boudoir, Lady Belward sank into a large chair, and let her
+head fall back and her eyes close.  She motioned Gaston to a seat.
+Taking one near, he waited.  After a time she opened her eyes and drew
+herself up.
+
+"My dear," she said, "I wish to talk with you."
+
+"I shall be very glad; but isn't it late? and aren't you tired,
+grandmother?"
+
+"I shall sleep better after," she responded, gently.  She then began
+to review the past; her own long unhappiness, Robert's silence, her
+uncertainty as to his fate, and the after hopelessness, made greater
+by Ian's conduct.  In low, kind words she spoke of his coming and the
+renewal of her hopes, coupled with fear also that he might not fit in
+with his new life, and--she could say it now--do something unbearable.
+Well, he had done nothing unworthy of their name; had acted, on the
+whole, sensibly; and she had not been greatly surprised at certain little
+oddnesses, such as the tent in the grounds, an impossible deer-hunt, and
+some unusual village charities and innovations on the estate.  Nor did
+she object to Brillon, though he had sometimes thrown servants'-hall into
+disorder, and had caused the stablemen and the footmen to fight.  His
+ear-rings and hair were startling, but they were not important.  Gaston
+had been admired by the hunting-field--of which they were glad, for it
+was a test of popularity.  She saw that most people liked him.  Lord
+Dunfolly and Admiral Highburn were enthusiastic.  For her own part, she
+was proud and grateful.  She could enjoy every grain of comfort he gave
+them; and she was thankful to make up to Robert's son what Robert himself
+had lost--poor boy--poor boy!
+
+Her feelings were deep, strong, and sincere.  Her grandson had come,
+strong, individual, considerate, and had moved the tender courses of her
+nature.  At this moment Gaston had his first deep feeling of
+responsibility.
+
+"My dear," she said at last, "people in our position have important
+duties.  Here is a large estate.  Am I not clear?  You will never be
+quite part of this life till you bring a wife here.  That will give you a
+sense of responsibility.  You will wake up to many things then.  Will you
+not marry?  There is Delia Gasgoyne.  Your grandfather and I would be so
+glad.  She is worthy in every way, and she likes you.  She is a good
+girl.  She has never frittered her heart away; and she would make you
+proud of her."
+
+She reached out an anxious hand, and touched his shoulder.  His eyes were
+playing with the pattern of the carpet; but he slowly raised them to
+hers, and looked for a moment without speaking.  Suddenly, in spite of
+himself, he laughed--laughed outright, but not loudly.
+
+Marriage?  Yes, here was the touchstone.  Marry a girl whose family had
+been notable for hundreds of years?  For the moment he did not remember
+his own family.  This was one of the times when he was only conscious
+that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French,
+and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil.
+This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to
+him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it
+all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell;
+but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due
+picturesqueness.  With his grandmother's proposal there shot up in him
+the thought that for him this was absurd.  He to pace the world beside
+this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions
+of the Belwards!  Was it, was it possible?
+
+"Pardon me," he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and
+then look curiously at him, "something struck me, and I couldn't help
+it."
+
+"Was what I said at all ludicrous?"
+
+"Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought
+what was natural for me to think, at first blush."
+
+"There is something wrong," she urged fearfully.  "Is there any reason
+why you cannot marry?  Gaston,"--she trembled towards him,--"you have not
+deceived us--you are not married?"
+
+"My wife is dead, as I told you," he answered gravely, musingly.
+
+"Tell me: there is no woman who has a claim on you?"
+
+"None that I know of--not one.  My follies have not run that way."
+
+"Thank God!  Then there is no reason why you should not marry.  Oh, when
+I look at you I am proud, I am glad that I live!  You bring my youth, my
+son back; and I long for a time when I may clasp your child in my arms,
+and know that Robert's heritage will go on and on, and that there will be
+made up to him, somehow, all that he lost.  Listen: I am an old,
+crippled, suffering woman; I shall soon have done with all this coming
+and going, and I speak to you out of the wisdom of sorrow.  Had Robert
+married, all would have gone well.  He did not: he got into trouble,
+then came Ian's hand in it all; and you know the end.  I fear for you,
+I do indeed.  You will have sore temptations.  Marry--marry soon,
+and make us happy."
+
+He was quiet enough now.  He had seen the grotesque image, now he was
+facing the thing behind it.  "Would it please you so very much?!" he
+said, resting a hand gently on hers.
+
+"I wish to see a child of yours in my arms, dear."
+
+"And the woman you have chosen is Delia Gasgoyne?"
+
+"The choice is for you; but you seem to like each other, and we care for
+her."
+
+He sat thinking for a time, then he got up, and said slowly:
+
+"It shall be so, if Miss Gasgoyne will have me.  And I hope it may turn
+out as you wish."
+
+Then he stooped and kissed her on the cheek.  The proud woman, who had
+unbent little in her lifetime, whose eyes had looked out so coldly on the
+world, who felt for her son Ian an almost impossible aversion, drew down
+his head and kissed it.
+
+"Indian and all?!" he asked, with a quaint bitterness.
+
+"Everything, my dear," she answered.  "God bless you! Good-night."
+
+A few moments after, Gaston went to the library.  He heard the voices
+of Sir William and his uncle.  He knocked and entered.  Ian, with
+exaggerated courtesy, rose.  Gaston, with easy coolness, begged him
+to sit, lit a cigar, and himself sat.
+
+"My father has been feeding me with raw truths, Cadet," said his uncle;
+"and I've been eating them unseasoned.  We have not been, nor are likely
+to be, a happy family, unless in your saturnian reign we learn to say,
+pax vobiscum--do you know Latin?  For I'm told the money-bags and the
+stately pile are for you.  You are to beget children before the Lord,
+and sit in the seat of Justice: 'tis for me to confer honour on you all
+by my genius!"
+
+Gaston sat very still, and, when the speech was ended, said tentatively:
+
+"Why rob yourself?"
+
+"In honouring you all?"
+
+"No, sir; in not yourself having 'a saturnian reign'."
+
+"You are generous."
+
+"No: I came here to ask for a home, for what was mine through my father.
+I ask, and want, nothing more--not even to beget children before the
+Lord!"
+
+"How mellow the tongue!  Well, Cadet, I am not going to quarrel.  Here
+we are with my father.  See, I am willing to be friends.  But you mustn't
+expect that I will not chasten your proud spirit now and then.  That you
+need it, this morning bears witness."
+
+Sir William glanced from one to the other curiously.  He was cold and
+calm, and looked worn.  He had had a trying half-hour with his son, and
+it had told on him.
+
+Gaston at once said to his grandfather: "Of this morning, sir, I will
+tell you.  I--"
+
+Ian interrupted him.
+
+"No, no; that is between us.  Let us not worry my father."
+
+Sir William smiled ironically.
+
+"Your solicitude is refreshing, Ian."
+
+"Late fruit is the sweetest, sir."
+
+Presently Sir William asked Gaston the result of the talk with Lady
+Belward.  Gaston frankly said that he was ready to do as they wished.
+Sir William then said they had chosen this time because Ian was there,
+and it was better to have all open and understood.
+
+Ian laughed.
+
+"Taming the barbarian!  How seriously you all take it.  I am the jester
+for the King.  In the days of the flood I'll bring the olive leaf.  You
+are all in the wash of sentiment: you'll come to the wicked uncle one day
+for common-sense.  But, never mind, Cadet; we are to be friends.  Yes,
+really.  I do not fear for my heritage, and you'll need a helping hand
+one of these days.  Besides, you are an interesting fellow.  So, if you
+will put up with my acid tongue, there's no reason why we shouldn't hit
+it off."
+
+To Sir William's great astonishment, Ian held out his hand with a
+genial smile, which was tolerably honest, for his indulgent nature was
+as capable of great geniality as incapable of high moral conceptions.
+Then, he had before his eye, "Monmouth" and "The King of Ys."
+
+Gaston took his hand, and said: "I have no wish to be an enemy."
+
+Sir William rose, looking at them both.  He could not understand Ian's
+attitude, and he distrusted.  Yet peace was better than war.  Ian's truce
+was also based on a belief that Gaston would make skittles of things.
+A little while afterwards Gaston sat in his room, turning over events
+in his mind.  Time and again his thoughts returned to the one thing--
+marriage.  That marriage with his Esquimaux wife had been in one sense
+none at all, for the end was sure from the beginning.  It was in keeping
+with his youth, the circumstances, the life, it had no responsibilities.
+But this?  To become an integral part of the life--the English country
+gentleman; to be reduced, diluted, to the needs of the convention, and no
+more?  Let him think of the details:--a justice of the peace: to sit on a
+board of directors; to be, perhaps, Master of the Hounds; to unite with
+the Bishop in restoring the cathedral; to make an address at the annual
+flower show.  His wife to open bazaars, give tennis-parties, and be
+patron to the clergy; himself at last, no doubt, to go into Parliament;
+to feel the petty, or serious, responsibilities of a husband and a
+landlord.  Monotony, extreme decorum, civility to the world; endless
+politeness to his wife; with boys at Eton and girls somewhere else; and
+the kind of man he must be to do his duty in all and to all!
+
+It seemed impossible.  He rose and paced the floor.  Never till this
+moment had the full picture of his new life come close.  He felt stifled.
+He put on a cap, and, descending the stairs, went out into the court-yard
+and walked about, the cool air refreshing him.  Gradually there settled
+upon him a stoic acceptance of the conditions.  But would it last?
+
+He stood still and looked at the pile of buildings before him; then he
+turned towards the little church close by, whose spire and roof could be
+seen above the wall.  He waved his hand, as when within it on the day of
+his coming, and said with irony:
+
+"Now for the marriage-linen, Sir Gaston!"
+
+He heard a low knocking at the gate.  He listened.  Yes, there was no
+mistake.  He went to it, and asked quietly:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+There was no reply.  Still the knocking went on.  He quietly opened the
+gate, and threw it back.  A figure in white stepped through and slowly
+passed him.  It was Alice Wingfield.  He spoke to her.  She did not
+answer.  He went close to her and saw that she was asleep!
+
+She was making for the entrance door.  He took her hand gently, and led
+her into a side door, and on into the ballroom.  She moved towards a
+window through which the moonlight streamed, and sat on a cushioned bench
+beneath it.  It was the spot where he had seen her at the dance.  She
+leaned forward, looking into space, as she did at him then.  He moved
+and got in her line of vision.
+
+The picture was weird.  She wore a soft white chamber-gown, her hair
+hung loose on her shoulders, her pale face cowled it in.  The look was
+inexpressibly sad.  Over her fell dim, coloured lights from the stained-
+glass windows; and shadowy ancestors looked silently down from the
+armour-hung walls.
+
+To Gaston, collected as he was, it gave an ominous feeling.  Why did she
+come here even in her sleep?  What did that look mean?  He gazed intently
+into her eyes.
+
+All at once her voice came low and broken, and a sob followed the words:
+
+"Gaston, my brother, my brother!"
+
+He stood for a moment stunned, gazing helplessly at her passive figure.
+
+"Gaston, my brother!" he repeated to himself.  Then the painful matter
+dawned upon him.  This girl, the granddaughter of the rector of the
+parish, was his father's daughter--his own sister.  He had a sudden
+spring of new affection--unfelt for those other relations, his by the
+rights of the law and the gospel.  The pathos of the thing caught him in
+the throat--for her how pitiful, how unhappy!  He was sure that, somehow,
+she had only come to know of it since the afternoon.  Then there had been
+so different a look in her face!
+
+One thing was clear: he had no right to this secret, and it must be for
+now as if it had never been.  He came to her, and took her hand.  She
+rose.  He led her from the room, out into the court-yard, and from there
+through the gate into the road.
+
+All was still.  They passed over to the rectory.  Just inside the gate,
+Gaston saw a figure issue from the house, and come quickly towards them.
+It was the rector, excited, anxious.
+
+Gaston motioned silence, and pointed to her.  Then he briefly whispered
+how she had come.  The clergyman said that he had felt uneasy about her,
+had gone to her room, and was just issuing in search of her.  Gaston
+resigned her, softly advised not waking her, and bade the clergyman good-
+night.
+
+But presently he turned, touched the arm of the old man, and said
+meaningly:
+
+"I know."
+
+The rector's voice shook as he replied: "You have not spoken to her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You will not speak of it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Unless I should die, and she should wish it?"
+
+"Always as she wishes."
+
+They parted, and Gaston returned to the Court.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
+
+The next morning Brillon brought a note from Ian Belward, which said that
+he was starting, and asked Gaston to be sure and come to Paris.  The note
+was carelessly friendly.  After reading it, he lay thinking.  Presently
+he chanced to see Jacques look intently at him.
+
+"Well, Brillon, what is it?!" he asked genially.  Jacques had come on
+better than Gaston had hoped for, but the light play of his nature was
+gone--he was grave, almost melancholy; and, in his way, as notable as his
+master.  Their life in London had changed him much.  A valet in St.
+James's Street was not a hunting comrade on the Coppermine River.  Often
+when Jacques was left alone he stood at the window looking out on the gay
+traffic, scarcely stirring; his eyes slow, brooding.  Occasionally,
+standing so, he would make the sacred gesture.  One who heard him swear
+now and then, in a calm, deliberate way,--at the cook and the porter,--
+would have thought the matters in strange contrast.  But his religion
+was a central habit, followed as mechanically as his appetite or the
+folding of his master's clothes.  Besides, like most woodsmen, he was
+superstitious.  Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm hand
+till his manner had become informed by the new duties.  Jacques's
+greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables.  Here were
+Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful.  But he touched the
+highest point of his London experience when they rode in the Park.
+
+In this Gaston remained singular.  He rode always with Jacques.  Perhaps
+he wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he
+liked this touch of drama; or both.  It created notice, criticism, but he
+was superior to that.  Time and again people asked him to ride, but he
+always pleaded another engagement.  He would then be seen with Jacques
+plus Jacques's earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the
+Row.  Jacques's eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at
+these times.
+
+No figures in the Park were so striking.  There was nothing bizarre, but
+Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at their
+waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a grave
+distance.  Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the hours
+when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie, savannah,
+ice-plain, alkali desert.  When, dismounting, the horses were taken and
+they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip across
+Jacques's shoulders without speaking.  This was their only ritual of
+camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed.  Never
+had man such a servant.  No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he found
+Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on this
+morning, after a strange night.
+
+"What is it, Jacques?!" he repeated.
+
+The old name!  Jacques shivered a little with pleasure.  Presently he
+broke out with:
+
+"Monsieur, when do we go back?"
+
+"Go back where?"
+
+"To the North, monsieur."
+
+"What's in your noddle now, Brillon?"
+
+The impatient return to "Brillon" cut Jacques like a whip.
+
+"Monsieur," he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening
+nervously, "we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the
+great music here: is it enough?  Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and
+you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock.  When we lie on the Plains of
+Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then.  You remember when we
+sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied
+together?  Well, we were as babes in blankets.  In the Prairie of the Ten
+Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch
+them shake with the coffee-cup.  Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough?
+You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?"
+
+Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers
+through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with
+sharp impatience, said:
+
+"Go to hell!"
+
+The little man's face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with a
+gasp.  Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the
+shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the bed;
+but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively drew
+a sleeve across his eyes.
+
+Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him.  He dropped his eyes,
+slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down.
+
+Jacques made ready.  He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the
+shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say:
+
+"You damned little fool, I'm not worth it!"  Jacques's face shone.
+
+"Every great man has his fool--alors!" was the happy reply.
+
+"Jacques," Gaston presently said, "what's on your mind?"
+
+"I saw--last night, monsieur," he said.
+
+"You saw what?"
+
+"I saw you in the court-yard with the lady."  Gaston was now very grave.
+
+"Did you recognise her?"
+
+"No: she moved all as a spirit."
+
+"Jacques, that matter is between you and me.  I'm going to tell you,
+though, two things; and--where's your string of beads?"
+
+Jacques drew out his rosary.
+
+"That's all right.  Mum as Manitou!  She was asleep; she is my sister.
+And that is all, till there's need for you to know more."
+
+In this new confidence Jacques was content.  The life was a gilded mess,
+but he could endure it now.  Three days passed.  During that time Gaston
+was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan's, and dined at Lord
+Dunfolly's.  For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to
+preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer,
+who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party,
+a knighthood.  Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it "kindred
+aims," he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston's button-hole.  Jacques, who
+was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master's face, and
+he saw a glitter in his eye.  He remembered when they two were in trouble
+with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how
+Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away."
+And immediately after the man did so.
+
+Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say
+down at him, with a curious obliqueness:
+
+"If you please!"
+
+The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers
+dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily.  The meeting
+began.  Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced
+Mr. Babbs as "a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county,
+who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his
+private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its
+purpose."
+
+When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: "That's a trifle vague,
+Belward."
+
+"How can one treat him with importance?"
+
+"He's the sort that makes a noise one way or another."
+
+"Yes.  Obituary: 'At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S.
+G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council.  Sir S. G. Babbs,
+it will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation
+of Vice, and--'"
+
+"That's droll!"
+
+"Why not Vice?  'Twould be just the same in his mind.  He doesn't give
+from a sense of moral duty.  Not he; he's a bungowawen!"
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"That's Indian.  You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with
+beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these
+fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men
+of the Kimash Hills.  And they'll do that while the rum lasts.  Meanwhile
+you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the gods!  .  .  .
+And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?"
+
+The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support
+Sir William Belward.  They were interested to see how Gaston would
+carry it off.
+
+Mr. Babbs's speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man.
+More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to
+close the meeting.  He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers,
+artisans, and labouring-men near.  After some good-natured raillery at
+political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in
+getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who
+promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in
+berating their opponents, he said:
+
+"There's a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o'-war and sailing-
+ships mostly.  I never could quite understand it, nor could any officers
+ever tell me--the fo'castle for the men and the quarter-deck for the
+officers, and what's English to one is Greek to the other.  Well, this
+was all I could see in the game.  They sat about, sometimes talking,
+sometimes not.  All at once a chap would rise and say, 'Allow me to
+speak, me noble lord,' and follow this by hitting some one of the party
+wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere!  [Laughter.]
+Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble
+lordship.  Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it
+was all about.  That is much the way with politics, when it is played
+fair.  But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born
+the same, nor can we live the same.  One man is born a brute, and another
+a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the
+other hasn't.  Now, I've lived where, as they say, one man is as good as
+another.  But he isn't, there or here.  A weak man can't run with a
+strong.  We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against
+something.  It is over.  Are you sure you have got what was meant clear
+in your mind?  [Laughter, and 'Blowed if we'ave!']  Very well; do not
+worry about that.  We have been playing a game of 'Allow me to speak, me
+noble lord!'  And who is going to help you to get the most out of your
+country and your life isn't easy to know.  But we can get hold of a few
+clear ideas, and measure things against them.  I know and have talked
+with a good many of you here ['That's so!  That's so!'], and you know my
+ideas pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen
+the countries where freedom is 'on the job,' as they say.  Now, don't put
+your faith in men and in a party that cry, 'We will make all things new,'
+to the tune of, 'We are a band of brothers.'  Trust in one that says,
+'You cannot undo the centuries.  Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in
+the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.'  And that is
+the real difference between the other party and mine; and these political
+games of ours come to that chiefly."
+
+Presently he called for the hands of the meeting.  They were given for
+Mr. Babbs.
+
+Suddenly a man's strong, arid voice came from the crowd:
+
+"'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' [Great laughter.  Then a pause.]
+Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?"
+
+The audience stilled.  Gaston's face went grave.  He replied, in a firm,
+clear voice.
+
+"In Heaven, my man.  You'll never see him more."  There was silence for a
+moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause.  Presently John Cawley,
+the landlord of "The Whisk o' Barley," made towards Gaston.  Gaston
+greeted him, and inquired after his wife.  He was told that she was very
+ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come.  Gaston had dreaded
+this hour, though he knew it would come one day.  A woman on a death-bed
+has a right to ask for and get the truth.  He had forborne telling her of
+her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with
+asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a
+dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily,
+say more.  But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared,
+wished the truth, whatever it might be.
+
+Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who
+it was had called out at him.  A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told,
+who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn
+without stopping to say: "Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?"  In the past
+he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together.  He had learned
+from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada.
+
+When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present.
+
+"An original speech, upon my word, Belward," said Captain Maudsley.
+
+Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came.
+
+"You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you remember?
+Devil of a speech that!  But, if you will 'allow me to speak, me noble
+lord,' you are the rankest Conservative of us all."
+
+"Don't you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic
+to an autocracy, and vice versa?"
+
+"I don't know it, and I don't know how you do it."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Make them think as you do."
+
+He waved his hand to the departing crowd.
+
+"I don't.  I try to think as they do.  I am always in touch with the
+primitive mind."
+
+"You ought to do great things here, Belward," said the other seriously.
+"You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster."
+
+"Don't be mistaken; I am only adaptable.  There's frank confession."
+
+At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large, self-
+conscious way.  Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted, and
+the fluffy gentleman retired.  When he got out of earshot in the shadows,
+he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying: "Half-breed
+upstart!"  Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his coachman.
+
+Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to "The Whisk o' Barley."  Gaston
+was now intent to tell the whole truth.  He wished that he had done it
+before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself.  Yet
+he shrank.  Presently he thought:
+
+"What is the matter with me?  Before I came here, if I had an idea I
+stuck to it, and didn't have any nonsense when I knew I was right.  I am
+getting sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of
+feeling or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn't better than the
+bad tooth in.  When I really get sentimental I'll fold my Arab tent--so
+help me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!"
+
+A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley's bed, the landlord handing
+him a glass of hot grog, Jock's mother eyeing him feverishly from the
+quilt.  Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then
+told Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him.  He put it gently on the
+woman's head.  The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously.  He sat down
+again, and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of Jock's
+life as he knew it.
+
+Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman's face was cowled in
+the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston's voice went on in a low monotone,
+to the ticking of the great clock in the next room.  Gaston watched her
+face, and there came to him like an inspiration little things Jock did,
+which would mean more to his mother than large adventures.  Her lips
+moved now and again, even a smile flickered.  At last Gaston came to his
+father's own death and the years that followed; then the events in
+Labrador.
+
+He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into
+the mother's eyes, and tell the story.  He did not know how dramatically
+he told it--how he etched it without a waste word.  When he came to that
+scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he
+softened the details greatly.  He did not tell it as he told it at the
+Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear.  There
+was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door
+open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near.
+
+How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there,
+was all told; and then he paused.  He turned a little sick as he saw the
+white face before him.  She drew herself up, her fingers caught away the
+night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and then,
+with a wild, moaning voice, cried out:
+
+"You killed my boy!  You killed my boy!  You killed my boy!"
+
+Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush
+behind him.  He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his
+hand .  .  .  and fell backwards against the bed.
+
+The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it.
+
+"My Jock, my poor boy!" she cried in delirium now.  Cawley had thrown
+his arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock's poaching friend.
+
+The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to Gaston:
+
+"You have killed my boy!"  She kissed Gaston's bloody face.
+
+A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper
+room Jacques was caring for his master.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
+
+Gaston lay for many days at "The Whisk o' Barley."  During that time the
+inn was not open to customers.  The woman also for two days hung at the
+point of death, and then rallied.  She remembered the events of the
+painful night, and often asked after Gaston.  Somehow, her horror of her
+son's death at his hands was met by the injury done him now.  She vaguely
+felt that there had been justice and punishment.  She knew that in the
+room at Labrador Gaston Belward had been scarcely less mad than her son.
+
+Gaston, as soon as he became conscious, said that his assailant must be
+got out of the way of the police, and to that end bade Jacques send for
+Mr. Warren Gasgoyne.  Mr. Gasgoyne and Sir William arrived at the same
+time, but Gaston was unconscious again.  Jacques, however, told them what
+his master's wishes were, and they were carried out; Jock's friend
+secretly left England forever.  Sir William and Mr. Gasgoyne got the
+whole tale from the landlord, whom they asked to say nothing publicly.
+
+Lady Belward drove down each day, and sat beside him for a couple of
+hours-silent, solicitous, smoothing his pillow or his wasting hand.  The
+brain had been injured, and recovery could not be immediate.  Hovey the
+housekeeper had so begged to be installed as nurse, that her wish was
+granted, and she was with him night and day.  Now she shook her head at
+him sadly, now talked in broken sentences to herself, now bustled about
+silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court.  Every
+day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's
+humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one
+said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher at the
+meetin.'"
+
+But the landlord and his wife kept silence, the officers of the law took
+no action, and the town and country newspapers could do no more than
+speak of "A vicious assault upon the heir of Ridley Court."  It had
+become the custom now to leave Ian out of that question.  But the wonder
+died as all wonders do, and Gaston made his fight for health.
+
+The day before he was removed to the Court, Mrs. Cawley was helped up-
+stairs to see him.  She was gaunt and hollow-eyed.  Lady Belward and Mrs.
+Gasgoyne were present.  The woman made her respects, and then stood at
+Gaston's bedside.  He looked up with a painful smile.
+
+"Do you forgive me?!" he asked.  "I've almost paid!"
+
+He touched his bandaged head.
+
+"It ain't for mothers to forgi'e the thing," she replied, in a steady
+voice, "but I can forgi'e the man.  'Twere done i' madness--there beant
+the will workin' i' such.  'Twere a comfort that he'd a prayin' over un."
+
+Gaston took the gnarled fingers in his.  It had never struck him how
+dreadful a thing it was--so used had he been to death in many forms--till
+he had told the story to this mother.
+
+"Mrs. Cawley," he said, "I can't make up to you what Jock would have
+been; but I can do for you in one way as much as Jock.  This house is
+yours from to-day."
+
+He drew a deed from the coverlet, and handed it to her.  He had got it
+from Sir William that morning.  The poor and the crude in mind can only
+understand an objective emotion, and the counters for these are this
+world's goods.  Here was a balm in Gilead.  The love of her child was
+real, but the consolation was so practical to Mrs. Cawley that the lips
+which might have cursed, said:
+
+"Ah, sir, the wind do be fittin' the shore lamb!  I' the last Judgen,
+I'll no speak agen 'ee.  I be sore fretted harm come to 'ee."
+
+At this Mrs. Gasgoyne rose, and in her bustling way dismissed the
+grateful peasant, who fondled the deed and called eagerly down the stairs
+to her husband as she went.
+
+Mrs. Gasgoyne then came back, sat down, and said: "Now you needn't fret
+about that any longer--barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger.  "Didn't
+I say that you would get into trouble?  that you would set the country
+talking?  Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories,
+and raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed.
+You were to have lunched with us the next day--I had asked Lady Harriet
+to meet you, too!--and you didn't; and you have wretched patches where
+your hair ought to be.  How can you promise that you'll not make a madder
+sensation some day?"
+
+Gaston smiled up at her.  Her fresh honesty, under the guise of banter,
+was always grateful to him.  He shook his head, smiled, and said nothing.
+
+She went on.
+
+"I want a promise that you will do what your godfather and godmother
+will swear for you."
+
+She acted on him like wine.
+
+"Of course, anything.  Who are my godfather and godmother?"
+
+She looked him steadily, warmly in the eyes: "Warren and myself."
+
+Now he understood: his promise to his grandmother and grandfather.
+So, they had spoken!  He was sure that Mrs. Gasgoyne had objected.
+He knew that behind her playful treatment of the subject there was real
+scepticism of himself.  It put him on his mettle, and yet he knew she
+read him deeper than any one else, and flattered him least.
+
+He put out his hand, and took hers.
+
+"You take large responsibilities," he said, "but I will try and justify
+you--honestly, yes."
+
+In her hearty way, she kissed him on the cheek.  "There," she responded,
+"if you and Delia do make up your minds, see that you treat her well.
+And you are to come, just as soon as you are able, to stay at Peppingham.
+Delia, silly child, is anxious, and can't see why she mustn't call with
+me now."
+
+In his room at the Court that night, Gaston inquired of Jacques about
+Alice Wingfield, and was told that on the day of the accident she had
+left with her grandfather for the Continent.  He was not sorry.  For his
+own sake he could have wished an understanding between them.  But now he
+was on the way to marriage, and it was as well that there should be no
+new situations.  The girl could not wish the thing known.  There would be
+left him, in this case, to befriend her should it ever be needed.  He
+remembered the spring of pleasure he felt when he first saw other faces
+like his father's--his grandfather's, his grandmother's.  But this girl's
+was so different to him; having the tragedy of the lawless, that
+unconscious suffering stamped by the mother upon the child.  There was,
+however, nothing to be done.  He must wait.
+
+Two days later Lady Dargan called to inquire after him.  He was lying in
+his study with a book, and Lady Belward sent to ask him if he would care
+to see her and Lord Dargan's nephew, Cluny Vosse.  Lady Belward did not
+come; Sir William brought them.  Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled
+more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to
+hear of his illness.  Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse, who
+at once was his admirer.  Gaston liked the youth.  He was fresh, high-
+minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular vanity
+save for his personal appearance.  His face was ever radiant with health,
+shining with satisfaction.  People liked him, and did not discount it by
+saying that he had nothing in him.  Gaston liked him most because he was
+so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest.
+
+Now Cluny sat down, tapped the crown of his hat, looked at him cheerily,
+and said:
+
+"Got in a cracker, didn't he?"
+
+Gaston nodded, amused.
+
+"The fellows at Brooke's had a talkee-talkee, and they'd twenty different
+stories.  Of course it was rot.  We were all cut up though and hoped
+you'd pull through.  Of course there couldn't be any doubt of that--
+you've been through too many, eh?"
+
+Cluny always assumed that Gaston had had numberless tragical adventures
+which, if told, must make Dumas turn in his grave with envy.
+
+Gaston smiled, and laid a hand upon the other's knee.  "I'm not shell-
+proof, Vosse, and it was rather a narrow squeak, I'm told.  But I'm kept,
+you see, for a worse fate and a sadder."
+
+"I say, Belward, you don't mean that!  Your eyes go so queer sometimes,
+that a chap doesn't know what to think.  You ought to live to a hundred.
+You'll have to.  You've got it all--"
+
+"Oh no, my boy, I haven't got anything."  He waved his hand pleasantly
+towards his grandfather.  "I'm on the knees of the gods merely."
+
+Cluny turned on Sir William.
+
+"It isn't any secret, is it, sir?  He gets the lot, doesn't he?"
+
+Sir William's occasional smile came.
+
+"I fancy there's some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the
+title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile."
+
+He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy,
+vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted.
+
+"No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can't he?"
+
+Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston's illness,
+and showing a tactful concern.  But the nephew persisted:
+
+"I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it.  She
+wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course,
+I didn't go.  And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and
+she's ripping."
+
+Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and
+Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere.  Presently she said that
+they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if
+he chanced to be abroad would he come?  He said that he intended to visit
+his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them
+for a short time.
+
+She looked astonished.  "With your uncle Ian!"
+
+"Yes.  He is to show me art-life, and all that."
+
+She looked troubled.  He saw that she wished to say something.
+
+"Yes, Lady Dargan?!" he asked.
+
+She spoke with fluttering seriousness.
+
+"I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend.  I do not
+wait for that.  I ask you not to go to your uncle."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was
+sentimental.
+
+"Because there will be trouble.  I can see it.  You may trust a woman's
+instinct; and I know that man!"  He did not reply at once, but presently
+said:
+
+"I fancy I must keep my promise."
+
+"What is the book you are reading?!" she said, changing the subject, for
+Sir William was listening.
+
+He opened it, and smiled musingly.
+
+"It is called Affairs of Some Consequence in the Reign of Charles I.
+In reading it I seemed to feel that it was incorrect, and my mind kept
+wandering away into patches of things--incidents, scenes, bits of talk
+--as I fancied they really were, not apocryphal or 'edited' as here."
+
+"I say," said Cluny, "that's rum, isn't it?"
+
+"For instance," Gaston continued, "this tale of King Charles and
+Buckingham."  He read it.  "Now here is the scene as I picture it."  In
+quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from a different stand-point.
+
+Sir William stared curiously at Gaston, then felt for some keys in his
+pocket.  He got up and rang the bell.  Gaston was still talking.  He gave
+the keys to Falby with a whispered word.  In a few moments Falby placed a
+small leather box beside Sir William, and retired at a nod.  Sir William
+presently said: "Where did you read those things?"
+
+"I do not know that I ever read them."
+
+"Did your father tell you them?"
+
+"I do not remember so, though he may have."
+
+"Did you ever see this box?"
+
+"Never before."
+
+"You do not know what is in it?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"And you have never seen this key?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge."
+
+"It is very strange."  He opened the box.  "Now, here are private papers
+of Sir Gaston Belward, more than two hundred years old, found almost
+fifty years ago by myself in the office of our family solicitor.
+Listen."
+
+He then began to read from the faded manuscript.  A mysterious feeling
+pervaded the room.  Once or twice Cluny gave a dry nervous kind of laugh.
+Much of what Gaston had said was here in stately old-fashioned language.
+At a certain point the MS. ran:
+
+"I drew back and said, 'As your grace will have it, then--"'
+
+Here Gaston came to a sitting posture, and interrupted.
+
+"Wait, wait!"
+
+He rose, caught one of two swords that were crossed on the wall, and
+stood out.
+
+"This is how it was.  'As your grace will have it, then, to no waste of
+time!'  We fell to.  First he came carefully and made strange feints,
+learned at King Louis's Court, to try my temper.  But I had had these
+tricks of my cousin Secord, and I returned his sport upon him.  Then he
+came swiftly, and forced me back upon the garden wall.  I gave to him
+foot by foot, for he was uncommon swift and dexterous.  He pinched me
+sorely once under the knee, and I returned him one upon the wrist, which
+sent a devilish fire into his eyes.  At that his play became so delicate
+and confusing that I felt I should go dizzy if it stayed; so I tried the
+one great trick cousin Secord taught me, making to run him through, as a
+last effort.  The thing went wrong, but checking off my blunder he
+blundered too,--out of sheer wonder, perhaps, at my bungling,--and I
+disarmed him.  So droll was it that I laughed outright, and he, as quick
+in humour as in temper, stood hand on hip, and presently came to a smile.
+With that my cousin Secord cried: 'The king!  the king!'  I got me up
+quickly--"
+
+Here Gaston, who had in a kind of dream acted the whole scene, swayed
+with faintness, and Cluny caught him, saving him from a fall.  Cluny's
+colour was all gone.  Lady Dargan had sat dazed, and Sir William's face
+was anxious, puzzled.
+
+A few hours later Sir William was alone with Gaston, who was recovered
+and cool.
+
+"Gaston," he said, "I really do not understand this faculty of memory, or
+whatever it is.  Have you any idea how you come by it?"
+
+"Have we any idea how life comes and goes, sir?"
+
+"I confess not.  I confess not, really."
+
+"Well, I'm in the dark about it too; but I sometimes fancy that I'm mixed
+up with that other Gaston."
+
+"It sounds fantastic."
+
+"It is fantastic.  Now, here is this manuscript, and here is a letter I
+wrote this morning.  Put them together."
+
+Sir William did so.
+
+"The handwriting is singularly like."
+
+"Well," continued Gaston, smiling whimsically, "suppose that I am Sir
+Gaston Belward, Baronet, who is thought to lie in the church yonder, the
+title is mine, isn't it?"
+
+Sir William smiled also.
+
+"The evidence is scarce enough to establish succession."
+
+"But there would be no succession.  A previous holder of the title isn't
+dead: ergo, the present holder, has no right."
+
+Gaston had shaded his eyes with his hand, and he was watching Sir
+William's face closely, out of curiosity chiefly.  Sir William regarded
+the thing with hesitating humour.
+
+"Well, well, suppose so.  The property was in the hands of a younger
+branch of the family then.  There was no entail, as now."
+
+"Wasn't there?!" said Gaston enigmatically.
+
+He was thinking of some phrases in a manuscript which he had found in
+this box.
+
+"Perhaps where these papers came from there are others," he added.
+
+Sir William lifted his eyebrows ironically.  "I hardly think so."
+
+Gaston laughed, not wishing him to take the thing at all seriously.  He
+continued airily:
+
+"It would be amusing if the property went with the title after all,
+wouldn't it, sir?"
+
+Sir William got to his feet and said testily: "That should never be while
+I lived!"
+
+"Of course not, sir."
+
+Sir William saw the bull, and laughed, heartily for him.
+
+They bade each other good-night.
+
+"I'll have a look in the solicitor's office all the same," said Gaston to
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
+
+A few days afterwards Gaston joined a small party at Peppingham.  Without
+any accent life was made easy for him.  He was alone much, and yet, to
+himself, he seemed to have enough of company.
+
+The situation did not impose itself conspicuously.  Delia gave him no
+especial reason to be vain.  She had not an exceeding wit, but she had
+charm, and her talk was interesting to Gaston, who had come, for the
+first time, into somewhat intimate relations with an English girl.  He
+was struck with her conventional delicacy and honour on one side, and
+the limitation of her ideas on the other.  But with it all she had some
+slight touch of temperament which lifted her from the usual level.  And
+just now her sprightliness was more marked than it had ever been.
+
+Her great hour seemed come to her.  She knew that there had been talk
+among the elders, and what was meant by Gaston's visit.  Still, they were
+not much alone together.  Gaston saw her mostly with others.  Even a
+woman with a tender strain for a man knows what will serve for her
+ascendancy: the graciousness of her disposition, the occasional flash of
+her mother's temper, and her sense of being superior to a situation--the
+gift of every well-bred English girl.
+
+Cluny Vosse was also at the house, and his devotion was divided between
+Delia and Gaston.  Cluny was a great favourite, and Agatha Gasgoyne, who
+had a wild sense of humour, egged him on with her sister, which gave
+Delia enough to do.  At last Cluny, in a burst of confidence, declared
+that he meant to propose to Delia.  Agatha then became serious, and said
+that Delia was at least four years older than himself, that he was just
+her--Agatha's--age, and that the other match would be very unsuitable.
+This put Cluny on Delia's defence, and he praised her youth, and hinted
+at his own elderliness.  He had lived, he had seen It (Cluny called the
+world and all therein "It"), he was aged; he was in the large eye of
+experience; he had outlived the vices and the virtues of his time, which,
+told in his own naive staccato phrases, made Agatha hug herself.  She
+advised him to go and ask Mr. Belward's advice; begged him not to act
+until he had done so.  And Cluny, who was blind as a bat when a woman
+mocked him, went to Gaston and said:
+
+"See, old chap,--I know you don't mind my calling you that--I've come for
+advice.  Agatha said I'd better.  A fellow comes to a time when he says,
+'Here, I want a shop of my own,' doesn't he?  He's seen It, he's had It
+all colours, he's ready for family duties, and the rest.  That's so,
+isn't it?"
+
+Gaston choked back a laugh, and, purposely putting himself on the wrong
+scent, said:
+
+"And does Agatha agree?"
+
+"Agatha?  Come, Belward, that youngster!  Agatha's only in on a sisterly-
+brotherly basis.  Now, see I've got a little load of L s. d., and I'm to
+get more, especially if Uncle Dick keeps on thinking I am artless.  Well,
+why shouldn't I marry?"
+
+"No reason against it, if husband and father in you yearn for bibs and
+petticoats."
+
+"I say, Belward, don't laugh!"
+
+"I never was more serious.  Who is the girl?"
+
+"She looks up to you as I do-of course that's natural; and if it comes
+off, no one'll have a jollier corner chez nous.  It's Delia."
+
+"Delia?  Delia who?"
+
+"Why, Delia Gasgoyne.  I haven't done the thing quite regular, I know.
+I ought to have gone to her people first; but they know all about me,
+and so does Delia, and I'm on the spot, and it wouldn't look well to be
+taking advantage of that with her father and mother-they'd feel bound to
+be hospitable.  So I've just gone on my own tack, and I've come to Agatha
+and you.  Agatha said to ask you if I'd better speak to Delia now."
+
+"My dear Cluny, are you very much in love?"
+
+"That sounds religious, doesn't it--a kind of Nonconformist business?
+I think she's the very finest.  A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce
+of a swell--and, hang it all, I hate breakfasting alone!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Cluny; but what about a pew in church, with regular
+attendance, and a justice of the peace, and little Cluny Vosses on the
+carpet?"
+
+Cluny's face went crimson.
+
+"I say, Belward, I've seen It all, of course; I know It backwards, and
+I'm not squeamish, but that sounds--flippant-that, with her."
+
+Gaston reached out and caught the boy's shoulder.  "Don't do it, Cluny.
+Spare yourself.  It couldn't come off.  Agatha knows that, I fancy.  She
+is a little sportsman.  I might let you go and speak; but I think my
+chances are better than yours, Cluny.  Hadn't you better let me try
+first?  Then, if I fail, your chances are still the same, eh?"
+
+Cluny gasped.  His warm face went pale, then shot to purple, and finally
+settled into a grey ruddiness.  "Belward," he said at last, "I didn't
+know; upon my soul, I didn't know, or I'd have cut off my head first."
+
+"My dear Cluny, you shall have your chance; but let me go first, I'm
+older."
+
+"Belward, don't take me for a fool.  Why, my trying what you go to do is
+like--is like--"
+
+Cluny's similes failed to come.
+
+"Like a fox and a deer on the same trail?"
+
+"I don't understand that.  Like a yeomanry steeplechase to Sandown--is
+that it?  Belward, I'm sorry.  Playing it so low on a chap you like!"
+
+"Don't say a word, Cluny; and, believe me, you haven't yet seen all of
+It.  There's plenty of time.  When you really have had It, you will learn
+to say of a woman, not that she's the very finest, and that you hate
+breakfasting alone, but something that'll turn your hair white, or keep
+you looking forty when you're sixty."
+
+That evening Gaston dressed with unusual care.  When he entered the
+drawing-room, he looked as handsome as a man need in this world.
+His illness had refined his features and form, and touched off his
+cheerfulness with a fine melancholy.  Delia glowed as she saw the
+admiring glances sent his way, but burned with anger when she also saw
+that he was to take in Lady Gravesend to dinner; for Lady Gravesend had
+spoken slightingly of Gaston--had, indeed, referred to his "nigger
+blood!"  And now her mother had sent her in to dinner on his arm, she
+affable, too affable by a great deal.  Had she heard the dry and subtle
+suggestion of Gaston's talk, she would, however, have justified her
+mother.
+
+About half past nine Delia was in the doorway, talking to one of the
+guests, who, at the call of some one else, suddenly left her.  She heard
+a voice behind her.  "Will you not sing?"
+
+She thrilled, and turned to say: "What shall I sing, Mr. Belward?"
+
+"The song I taught you the other day--'The Waking of the Fire.'"
+
+"But I've never sung it before anybody."
+
+"Do I not count?--But, there, that's unfair!  Believe me, you sing it
+very well."
+
+She lifted her eyes to his:
+
+"You do not pay compliments, and I believe you.  Your 'very well' means
+much.  If you say so, I will do my best."
+
+"I say so.  You are amenable.  Is that your mood to-night?"  He smiled
+brightly.
+
+Her eyes flashed with a sweet malice.
+
+"I am not at all sure.  It depends on how your command to sing is
+justified."
+
+"You cannot help but sing well."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I will help you--make you."
+
+This startled her ever so little.  Was there some fibre of cruelty in
+him, some evil in this influence he had over her?  She shrank, and yet
+again she said that she would rather have his cruelty than another man's
+tenderness, so long as she knew that she had his--  She paused, and did
+not say the word.  She met his eyes steadily--their concentration dazed
+her--then she said almost coldly, her voice sounding far away:
+
+"How, make me?"
+
+"How fine, how proud!" he said to himself, then added:
+
+"I meant 'make' in the helpful sense.  I know the song: I've heard it
+sung, I've sung it; I've taught you; my mind will act on yours, and you
+will sing it well."
+
+"Won't you sing it yourself?  Do, please."
+
+"No; to-night I wish to hear you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I will tell you later.  Can you play the accompaniment?  If not, I--"
+
+"Oh, will you?  I could sing it then, I think.  You played it so
+beautifully the other day--with all those strange chords."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"It is one of the few things that I can play.  I always had a taste for
+music; and up in one of the forts there was an old melodeon, so I
+hammered away for years.  I had to learn difficult things at the start,
+or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that's how I can play one
+or two of Beethoven's symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a few
+others, and go a cropper with a waltz.  Will you come?"
+
+They moved to the piano.  No one at first noticed them.  When he sat
+down, he said:
+
+"You remember the words?"
+
+"Yes, I learned them by heart."
+
+"Good!"
+
+He gently struck the chords.  His gentleness had, however, a firmness, a
+deep persuasiveness, which drew every face like a call.  A few chords
+waving, as it were, over the piano, and then he whispered:
+
+"Now."
+
+"Please go on for a minute longer," she begged.
+
+"My throat feels dry all at once."
+
+"Face away from the rest, towards me," he said gently.
+
+She did so.  His voice took a note softly, and held it.  Presently her
+voice as softly joined it, his stopped, and hers went on:
+
+                   "In the lodge of the Mother of Men,
+                    In the land of Desire,
+                    Are the embers of fire,
+                    Are the ashes of those who return,
+                    Who return to the world:
+                    Who flame at the breath
+                    Of the Mockers of Death.
+                    O Sweet, we will voyage again
+                    To the camp of Love's fire,
+                         Nevermore to return!"
+
+"How am I doing?!" she said at the end of this verse.  She really did not
+know--her voice seemed an endless distance away.  But she felt the
+stillness in the drawing-room.
+
+"Well," he said.  "Now for the other.  Don't be afraid; let your voice,
+let yourself, go."
+
+"I can't let myself go."
+
+"Yes, you can: just swim with the music."
+
+She did swim with it.  Never before had Peppingham drawing-room heard a
+song like this; never before, never after, did any of Delia Gasgoyne's
+friends hear her sing as she did that night.  And Lady Gravesend
+whispered for a week afterwards that Delia Gasgoyne sang a wild love song
+in the most abandoned way with that colonial Belward.  Really a song of
+the most violent sentiment!
+
+There had been witchery in it all.  For Gaston lifted the girl on the
+waves of his music, and did what he pleased with her, as she sang:
+
+              "O love, by the light of thine eye
+               We will fare oversea,
+               We will be
+               As the silver-winged herons that rest
+               By the shallows,
+               The shallows of sapphire stone;
+               No more shall we wander alone.
+               As the foam to the shore
+               Is my spirit to thine;
+               And God's serfs as they fly,--
+               The Mockers of Death
+               They will breathe on the embers of fire:
+               We shall live by that breath,--
+               Sweet, thy heart to my heart,
+               As we journey afar,
+               No more, nevermore, to return!"
+
+When the song was ended there was silence, then an eager murmur, and
+requests for more; but Gaston, still lengthening the close of the
+accompaniment, said quietly:
+
+"No more.  I wanted to hear you sing that song only."
+
+He rose.
+
+"I am so very hot," she said.
+
+"Come into the hall."
+
+They passed into the long corridor, and walked up and down, for a time in
+silence.
+
+"You felt that music?!" he asked at last.
+
+"As I never felt music before," she replied.
+
+"Do you know why I asked you to sing it?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"To see how far you could go with it."
+
+"How far did I go?"
+
+"As far as I expected."
+
+"It was satisfactory?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"But why--experiment--on me?"
+
+"That I might see if you were not, after all, as much a barbarian as I."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"No.  That was myself singing as well as you.  You did not enjoy it
+altogether, did you?"
+
+"In a way, yes.  But--shall I be honest?  I felt, too, as if, somehow,
+it wasn't quite right; so much--what shall I call it?"
+
+"So much of old Adam and the Garden?  Sit down here for a moment, will
+you?"
+
+She trembled a little, and sat.
+
+"I want to speak plainly and honestly to you," he said, looking earnestly
+at her.  "You know my history--about my wife who died in Labrador, and
+all the rest?"
+
+"Yes, they have told me."
+
+"Well, I have nothing to hide, I think; nothing more that you ought to
+know: though I've been a scamp one way and another."
+
+"'That I ought to know'?!" she repeated.
+
+"Yes: for when a man asks a woman to be his wife, he should be prepared
+to open the cupboard of skeletons."  She was silent; her heart was
+beating so hard that it hurt her.
+
+"I am going to ask you to be my wife, Delia."
+
+She was silent, and sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap.
+
+He went on
+
+"I don't know that you will be wise to accept me, but if you will take
+the risk--"
+
+"Oh, Gaston, Gaston!" she said, and her hands fluttered towards his.
+
+An hour later, he said to her, as they parted for the night:
+
+"I hope, with all my heart, that you will never repent of it, Delia."
+
+"You can make me not repent of it.  It rests with you, Gaston; indeed,
+indeed, all with you."
+
+"Poor girl!" he said, unconsciously, as he entered his room.  He could
+not have told why he said it.  "Why will you always sit up for me,
+Brillon?!" he asked a moment afterwards.
+
+Jacques saw that something had occurred.  "I have nothing else to do,
+sir," he replied.  "Brillon," Gaston added presently, "we're in a devil
+of a scrape now."
+
+"What shall we do, monsieur?"
+
+"Did we ever turn tail?"
+
+"Yes, from a prairie fire."
+
+"Not always.  I've ridden through."
+
+"Alors, it's one chance in ten thousand!"
+
+"There's a woman to be thought of--Jacques."
+
+"There was that other time."
+
+"Well, then?"
+
+Presently Jacques said: "Who is she, monsieur?"
+
+Gaston did not answer.  He was thinking hard.  Jacques said no more.  The
+next morning early the guests knew who the woman was, and by noon Jacques
+also.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
+
+Gaston let himself drift.  The game of love and marriage is exciting, the
+girl was affectionate and admiring, the world was genial, and all things
+came his way.  Towards the end of the hunting season Captain Maudsley had
+an accident.  It would prevent him riding to hounds again, and at his
+suggestion, backed by Lord Dunfolly and Lord Dargan, Gaston became Master
+of the Hounds.  His grandfather and great-grandfather had been Master of
+the Hounds before him.  Hunting was a keen enjoyment--one outlet for wild
+life in him--and at the last meet of the year he rode in Captain
+Maudsley's place.  They had a good run, and the taste of it remained with
+Gaston for many a day; he thought of it sometimes as he rode in the Park
+now every morning--with Delia and her mother.
+
+Jacques and his broncho came no more, or if they did it was at
+unseasonable hours, and then to be often reprimanded (and twice arrested)
+for furious riding.  Gaston had a bad moment when he told Jacques that he
+need not come with him again.  He did it casually, but, cool as he was,
+a cold sweat came on his cheek.  He had to take a little brandy to steady
+himself--yet he had looked into menacing rifle-barrels more than once
+without a tremor.  It was clear, on the face of it, that Delia and her
+mother should be his companions in the Park, and not this grave little
+half-breed; but, somehow, it got on his nerves.  He hesitated for days
+before he could cast the die against Jacques.  It had been the one open
+bond of the old life; yet the man was but a servant, and to be treated as
+such, and was, indeed, except on rarest occasions.  If Delia had known
+that Gaston balanced the matter between her and Jacques, her indignation
+might perhaps have sent matters to a crisis.  But Gaston did the only
+possible thing; and the weeks drifted on.
+
+Happy?  It was inexplicable even to himself that at times, when he left
+Delia, he said unconsciously: "Well, it's a pity!"
+
+But she was happy in her way.  His dark, mysterious face with its
+background of abstraction, his unusual life, distinguished presence,
+and the fact that people of great note sought his conversation, all
+strengthened the bonds, and deepened her imagination; and imagination is
+at the root of much that passes for love.  Gaston was approached at Lord
+Dargan's house by the Premier himself.  It was suggested that he should
+stand for a constituency in the Conservative interest.  Lord Faramond,
+himself picturesque, acute, with a keen knowledge of character and a
+taste for originality, saw material for a useful supporter--fearless,
+independent, with a gift for saying ironical things, and some primitive
+and fundamental principles well digested.
+
+Gaston, smiling, said that he would only be a buffalo fretting on a
+chain.
+
+Lord Faramond replied:
+
+"And why the chain?"  He followed this up by saying: "It is but a case of
+playing lion-tamer down there.  Have one little gift all your own, know
+when to impose it, and you have the pleasure of feeling that your fingers
+move a great machine, the greatest in the world--yes the very greatest.
+There is Little Grapnel just vacant: the faithful Glynn is gone.  Come:
+if you will, I'll send my secretary to-morrow morning-eh?"
+
+"You are not afraid of the buffalo, sir?"
+
+Lord Faramond's fingers touched his arm, drummed it "My greatest need--
+one to roar as gently as the sucking-dove."
+
+"But what if I, not knowing the rules of the game, should think myself
+on the corner of the veldt or in an Indian's tepee, and hit out?"
+
+"You do not carry derringers?"
+
+He smiled.  "No; but--"
+
+He glanced down at his arms.
+
+"Well, well; that will come one day, perhaps!"  Lord Faramond paused,
+abstracted, then added: "But not through you.  Good-bye, then, good-bye.
+Little Grapnel in ten days!"
+
+And it was so.  Little Grapnel was Conservative.  It was mostly a matter
+of nomination, and in two weeks Gaston, in a kind of dream, went down to
+Westminster, lunched with Lord Faramond, and was introduced to the House.
+The Ladies Gallery was full, for the matter was in all the papers, and a
+pretty sensation had been worked up one way and another.
+
+That night, after dinner, Gaston rose to make his maiden speech on a bill
+dealing with an imminent social question.  He was not an amateur.  Time
+upon time he had addressed gatherings in the North, and had once stood at
+the bar of the Canadian Commons to plead the cause of the half-breeds.
+He was pale, but firm, and looked striking.  His eyes went slowly round
+the House, and he began in a low, clear, deliberate voice, which got
+attention at once.  The first sentence was, however, a surprise to every
+one, and not the least to his own party, excepting Lord Faramond.  He
+disclaimed detailed and accurate knowledge of the subject.  He said this
+with an honesty which took away the breath of the House.  In a quiet,
+easy tone he then referred to what had been previously said in the
+debate.
+
+The first thing he did was to crumble away with a regretful kind of
+superiority the arguments of two Conservative speakers, to the sudden
+amusement of the Opposition, who presently cheered him.  He looked up as
+though a little surprised, waited patiently, and went on.  The iconoclasm
+proceeded.  He had one or two fixed ideas in his mind, simple principles
+on social questions of which he had spoken to his leader, and he never
+wavered from the sight of them, though he had yet to state them.  The
+Premier sat, head cocked, with an ironical smile at the cheering, but he
+was wondering whether, after all, his man was sure; whether he could
+stand this fire, and reverse his engine quite as he intended.  One of the
+previous speakers was furious, came over and appealed to Lord Faramond,
+who merely said, "Wait."
+
+Gaston kept on.  The flippant amusement of the Opposition continued.
+Something, however, in his grim steadiness began to impress his own party
+as the other, while from more than one quarter of the House there came a
+murmur of sympathy.  His courage, his stone-cold strength, the disdain
+which was coming into his voice, impressed them, apart from his argument
+or its bearing on the previous debate.  Lord Faramond heard the
+occasional murmurs of approval and smiled.  Then there came a striking
+silence, for Gaston paused.  He looked towards the Ladies Gallery.  As if
+in a dream--for his brain was working with clear, painful power--he saw,
+not Delia nor her mother, nor Lady Dargan, but Alice Wingfield!  He had a
+sting, a rush in his blood.  He felt that none had an interest in him
+such as she: shamed, sorrowful, denied the compensating comfort which his
+brother's love might give her.  Her face, looking through the barriers,
+pale, glowing, anxious, almost weird, seemed set to the bars of a cage.
+
+Gaston turned upon the House, and flashed a glance towards Lord Faramond,
+who, turned round on the Treasury Bench, was looking up at him.  He began
+slowly to pit against his former startling admissions the testimony of
+his few principles, and to buttress them on every side with apposite
+observations, naive, pungent.  Presently there came a poignant edge to
+his trailing tones.  After giving the subject new points of view, showing
+him to have studied Whitechapel as well as Kicking Horse Pass, he
+contended that no social problem could be solved by a bill so crudely
+radical, so impractical.
+
+He was saying: "In the history of the British Parliament--" when some
+angry member cried out, "Who coached you?"
+
+Gaston's quick eye found the man.
+
+"Once," he answered instantly, "one honourable gentleman asked that of
+another in King Charles's Parliament, and the reply then is mine now--
+'You, sir!'"
+
+"How?!" returned the puzzled member.
+
+Gaston smiled:
+
+"The nakedness of the honourable gentleman's mind!"
+
+The game was in his hands.  Lord Faramond twisted a shoulder with
+satisfaction, tossed a whimsical look down the line of the Treasury
+Bench, and from that Bench came unusual applause.
+
+"Where the devil did he get it?!" queried a Minister.
+
+"Out on the buffalo-trail," replied Lord Faramond.  "Good fellow!"
+
+In the Ladies Gallery, Delia clasped her mother's hand with delight; in
+the Strangers Gallery, a man said softly, "Not so bad, Cadet."
+
+Alice Wingfield's face had a light of aching pleasure.  "Gaston, Gaston!"
+she said, in a whisper heard only by the woman sitting next to her, who
+though a stranger gave a murmur of sympathy.
+
+Gaston made his last effort in a comparison of the state of the English
+people now and before she became Cromwell's Commonwealth, and then
+incisively traced the social development onwards.  It was the work of a
+man with a dramatic nature and a mathematical turn.  He put the time,
+the manners, the movements, the men, as in a picture.
+
+Presently he grew scornful.  His words came hotly, like whip-lashes.
+He rose to force and power, though his voice was never loud, rather
+concentrated, resonant.  It dropped suddenly to a tone of persuasiveness
+and conciliation, and declaring that the bill would be merely vicious
+where it meant to be virtuous, ended with the question:
+
+"Shall we burn the house to roast the pig?"
+
+"That sounds American," said the member for Burton-Halsey, "but he hasn't
+an accent.  Pig is vulgar though--vulgar."
+
+"Make it Lamb--make it Lamb!" urged his neighbour.
+
+Meanwhile both sides applauded.  Maiden speeches like this were not
+common.  Lord Faramond turned round to him.  Another member made way
+and Gaston leaned towards the Premier, who nodded and smiled.  "Most
+excellent buffalo!" he said.
+
+"One day we will chain you--to the Treasury Bench."
+
+Gaston smiled.
+
+"You are thought prudent, sir!"
+
+"Ah!  an enemy hath said this."
+
+Gaston looked towards the Ladies Gallery.  Delia's eyes were on him;
+Alice was gone.
+
+A half-hour later he stood in the lobby, waiting for Mrs. Gasgoyne, Lady
+Dargan, and Delia to come.  He had had congratulations in the House; he
+was having them now.  Presently some one touched him on the arm.
+
+"Not so bad, Cadet."
+
+Gaston turned and saw his uncle.  They shook hands.  "You've a gift that
+way," Ian Belward continued, "but to what good?  Bless you, the pot on
+the crackling thorns!  Don't you find it all pretty hollow?"
+
+Gaston was feeling reaction from the nervous work.  "It is exciting."
+
+"Yes, but you'll never have it again as to-night.  The place reeks with
+smugness, vanity, and drudgery.  It's only the swells--Derby, Gladstone,
+and the few--who get any real sport out of it.  I can show you much more
+amusing things."
+
+"For instance?"
+
+"'Hast thou forgotten me?' You hungered for Paris and Art and the joyous
+life.  Well, I'm ready.  I want you.  Paris, too, is waiting, and a good
+cuisine in a cheery menage.  Sup with me at the Garrick, and I'll tell you.
+Come along.  Quis separabit?"
+
+"I have to wait for Mrs. Gasgoyne--and Delia."
+
+"Delia!  Delia!  Goddess of proprieties, has it come to that!"
+
+He saw a sudden glitter in Gaston's eyes, and changed his tone.
+
+"Well, an' a man will he will, and he must be wished good-luck.  So,
+good-luck to you!  I'm sorry, though, for that cuisine in Paris, and the
+grand picnic at Fontainebleau, and Moban and Cerise.  But it can't be
+helped."
+
+He eyed Gaston curiously.  Gaston was not in the least deceived.  His
+uncle added presently, "But you will have supper with me just the same?"
+
+Gaston consented, and at this point the ladies appeared.  He had a thrill
+of pleasure at hearing their praises, but, somehow, of all the fresh
+experiences he had had in England, this, the weightiest, left him least
+elated.  He had now had it all: the reaction was begun, and he knew it.
+
+"Well, Ian Belward, what mischief are you at now?!" said Mrs. Gasgoyne.
+
+"A picture merely, and to offer homage.  How have you tamed our lion,
+and how sweetly does he roar!  I feed him at my Club to-night."
+
+"Ian Belward, you are never so wicked as when you ought most to be
+decent.--I wish I knew your place in this picture," she added brusquely.
+
+"Merely a little corner at their fireside."  He nodded towards Delia and
+Gaston.
+
+"The man has sense, and Delia is my daughter!"
+
+"Precisely why I wish a place in their affections."
+
+"Why don't you marry one of the women you have--spoiled, and spend the
+rest of your time in living yourself down?  You are getting old."
+
+"For their own sakes, I don't.  Put that to my credit.  I'll have but
+one mistress only as the sand gets low.  I've been true to her."
+
+"You, true to anything!"
+
+"The world has said so."
+
+"Nonsense!  You couldn't be."
+
+"Visit my new picture in three months--my biggest thing.  You will say
+my mistress fares well at my hands."
+
+"Mere talk.  I have seen your mistress, and before every picture I have
+thought of those women!  A thing cannot be good at your price: so don't
+talk that sentimental stuff to me."
+
+"Be original; you said that to me thirty years ago."
+
+"I remember perfectly: that did not require much sense."
+
+"No; you tossed it off, as it were.  Yet I'd have made you a good
+husband.  You are the most interesting woman I've ever met."
+
+"The compliment is not remarkable.  Now, Ian Belward, don't try to say
+clever things.  And remember that I will have no mischief-making."
+
+"At thy command--"
+
+"Oh, cease acting, and take Sophie to her carriage."  Two hours later,
+Delia Gasgoyne sat in her bedroom wondering at Gaston's abstraction
+during the drive home.  Yet she had a proud elation at his success,
+and a happy tear came to her eye.
+
+Meanwhile Gaston was supping with his uncle.  Ian was in excellent
+spirits: brilliant, caustic, genial, suggestive.  After a little while
+Gaston rose to the temper of his host.  Already the scene in the Commons
+was fading from him, and when Ian proposed Paris immediately, he did not
+demur.  The season was nearly over,
+
+Ian said; very well, why remain?  His attendance at the House?  Well, it
+would soon be up for the session.  Besides, the most effective thing he
+could do was to disappear for the time.  Be unexpected--that was the key
+to notoriety.  Delia Gasgoyne?  Well, as Gaston had said, they were to
+meet in the Mediterranean in September; meanwhile a brief separation
+would be good for both.  Last of all--he did not wish to press it--but
+there was a promise!
+
+Gaston answered quietly, at last: "I will redeem the promise."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Within thirty-six hours."
+
+"That is, you will be at my studio in Paris within thirty-six hours from
+now?"
+
+"That is it."
+
+"Good!  I shall start at eight to-morrow morning.  You will bring your
+horse, Cadet?"
+
+"Yes, and Brillon."
+
+"He isn't necessary."  Ian's brow clouded slightly.
+
+"Absolutely necessary."
+
+"A fantastic little beggar.  You can get a better valet in France.  Why
+have one at all?"
+
+"I shall not decline from Brillon on a Parisian valet.  Besides, he comes
+as my camarade."
+
+"Goth!  Goth!  My friend the valet!  Cadet, you're a wonderful fellow,
+but you'll never fit in quite."
+
+"I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me."  Ian smiled to himself.
+
+"He has tasted it all--it's not quite satisfying--revolution next!  What
+a smash-up there'll be!  The romantic, the barbaric overlaps.  Well, I
+shall get my picture out of it, and the estate too."
+
+Gaston toyed with his wine-glass, and was deep in thought.  Strange to
+say, he was seeing two pictures.  The tomb of Sir Gaston in the little
+church at Ridley: A gipsy's van on the crest of a common, and a girl
+standing in the doorway.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Down in her heart, loves to be mastered
+I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me
+Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love
+Live and let live is doing good
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+
+XII.      HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
+XIII.     HE JOURNEYS AFAR
+XIV.      IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
+XV.       WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
+XVI.      WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S
+XVII.     THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
+XVIII.    "RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
+
+The next morning he went down to the family solicitor's office.  He had
+done so, off and on, for weeks.  He spent the time in looking through old
+family papers, fishing out ancient documents, partly out of curiosity,
+partly from an unaccountable presentiment.  He had been there about an
+hour this morning when a clerk brought him a small box, which, he said,
+had been found inside another box belonging to the Belward-Staplings, a
+distant branch of the family.  These had asked for certain ancient papers
+lately, and a search had been made, with this result.  The little box was
+not locked, and the key was in it.  How the accident occurred was not
+difficult to imagine.  Generations ago there had probably been a
+conference of the two branches of the family, and the clerk had
+inadvertently locked the one box within the other.  This particular box
+of the Belward-Staplings was not needed again.  Gaston felt that here was
+something.  These hours spent among old papers had given him strange
+sensations, had, on the one hand, shown him his heritage; but had also
+filled him with the spirit of that by-gone time.  He had grown further
+away from the present.  He had played his part as in a drama: his real
+life was in the distant past and out in the land of the heathen.
+
+Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with a
+faded tape.  He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands.
+He saw his own name on the outside of one: "Sir Gaston Robert Belward."
+And there was added: "Bart."  He laughed.  Well, why not complete the
+reproduction?  He was an M. P.--why not a, Baronet?  He knew how it was
+done.  There were a hundred ways.  Throw himself into the arbitration
+question between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand pounds
+of--his grandfather's--money on the Party?  His reply to himself was
+cynical: the game was not worth the candle.  What had he got out of it
+all?  Money?  Yes: and he enjoyed that--the power that it gave--
+thoroughly.  The rest?  He knew that it did not strike as deep as it
+ought: the family tradition, the social scheme--the girl.
+
+"What a brute I am!" he said.  "I'm never wholly of it.  I either want
+to do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsy
+as I did so many years."
+
+The gipsy!  As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had done
+last night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of--how well he
+remembered her name!--of Andree.
+
+He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed.  "Well, well, but it is
+droll!  Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the
+Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany.  I itch for
+change.  And why?  Why?  I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this
+moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas.
+Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?--Jove, I thirst for a
+swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican!  Games, Gaston,
+games!  Why the devil did little Joe worry at being made 'move on'?  I've
+got 'move on' in every pore: I'm the Wandering Jew.  Oh, a gentleman born
+am I!  But the Romany sweats from every inch of you, Gaston Belward!
+What was it that sailor on the Cyprian said of the other?  'For every
+hair of him was rope-yarn, and every drop of blood Stockholm tar!'"
+
+He opened a paper.  Immediately he was interested.  Another; then,
+quickly, two more; and at last, getting to his feet with an exclamation,
+he held a document to the light, and read it through carefully.  He was
+alone in the room.  He calmly folded it up, put it in his pocket, placed
+the rest of the papers back, locked the box, and passing into the next
+room, gave it to the clerk.  Then he went out, a curious smile on his
+face.  He stopped presently on the pavement.
+
+"But it wouldn't hold good, I fancy, after all these years.  Yet Law is
+a queer business.  Anyhow, I've got it."
+
+An hour later he called on Mrs. Gasgoyne and Delia.  Mrs. Gasgoyne was
+not at home.  After a little while, Gaston, having listened to some
+extracts from the newspapers upon his "brilliant, powerful, caustic
+speech, infinite in promise of an important career," quietly told her
+that he was starting for Paris, and asked when they expected to go abroad
+in their yacht.  Delia turned pale, and could not answer for a moment.
+Then she became very still, and as quietly answered that they expected to
+get away by the middle of August.  He would join them?  Yes, certainly,
+at Marseilles, or perhaps, Gibraltar.  Her manner, so well-controlled,
+though her features seemed to shrink all at once, if it did not deceive
+him, gave him the wish to say an affectionate thing.  He took her hand
+and said it.  She thanked him, then suddenly dropped her fingers on his
+shoulder, and murmured with infinite gentleness and pride:
+
+"You will miss me; you ought to!"
+
+He drew the hand down.
+
+"I could not forget you, Delia," he said.
+
+Her eyes came up quickly, and she looked steadily, wonderingly at him.
+
+"Was it necessary to say that?"
+
+She was hurt--inexpressibly,--and she shrank.  He saw that she
+misunderstood him; but he also saw that, on the face of it, the phrase
+was not complimentary.  His reply was deeply kind, effective.  There was
+a pause--and the great moment for them both passed.  Something ought to
+have happened.  It did not.  If she had had that touch of abandon shown
+when she sang "The Waking of the Fire," Gaston might, even at this
+moment, have broken his promise to his uncle; but, somehow, he knew
+himself slipping away from her.  With the tenderness he felt, he still
+knew that he was acting; imitating, reproducing other, better, moments
+with her.  He felt the disrespect to her, but it could not be helped--it
+could not be helped.
+
+He said that he would call and say good-bye to her and Mrs. Gasgoyne at
+four o'clock.  Then he left.  He went to his chambers, gave Jacques
+instructions, did some writing, and returned at four.  Mrs. Gasgoyne had
+not come back.  She had telegraphed that she would not be in for lunch.
+There was nothing remarkable in Gaston's and Delia's farewell.  She
+thought he looked worn, and ought to have change, showing in every word
+that she trusted him, and was anxious that he should be, as she put it
+gaily, "comfy."  She was composed.  The cleverest men are blind in the
+matter of a woman's affections; and Gaston was only a mere man, after
+all.  He thought that she had gone about as far in the way of feeling as
+she could go.
+
+Nevertheless, in his hansom, he frowned, and said: "I oughtn't to go.
+But I'm choking here.  I can't play the game an hour longer without a
+change.  I'll come back all right.  I'll meet her in the Mediterranean
+after my kick-up, and it'll be all O. K.  Jacques and I will ride down
+through Spain to Gibraltar, and meet the Kismet there.  I shall have got
+rid of this restlessness then, and I'll be glad enough to settle down,
+pose for throne and constitution, cultivate the olive branch, and have
+family prayers."
+
+At eight o'clock he appeared at Ridley Court, and bade his grandfather
+and grandmother good-bye.  They were full of pride, and showed their
+affection in indirect ways--Sir William most by offering his opinion on
+the Bill and quoting Gaston frequently; Lady Belward, by saying that next
+year she would certainly go up to town--she had not done so for five
+years!  They both agreed that a scamper on the Continent would now be
+good for him.  At nine o'clock he passed the rectory, on his way, strange
+to note, to the church.  There was one light burning, but it was not in
+the study nor in Alice's window.  He supposed they had not returned.
+He paused and thought.  If anything happened, she should know.  But what
+should happen?  He shook his head.  He moved on to the church.  The doors
+were unlocked.  He went in, drew out a little pocket-lantern, lit it, and
+walked up the aisle.
+
+"A sentimental business this: I don't know why I do it," he thought.
+
+He stopped at the tomb of Sir Gaston Belward, put his hand on it, and
+stood looking at it.
+
+"I wonder if there is anything in it?!" he said aloud: "if he does
+influence me?  if we've got anything to do with each other?  What he did
+I seem to know somehow, more or less.  A little dwarf up in my brain
+drops the nuts down now and then.  Well, Sir Gaston Belward, what is
+going to be the end of all this?  If we can reach across the centuries,
+why, good-night and goodbye to you.  Good-bye."
+
+He turned and went down the aisle.  At the door a voice, a whispering
+voice, floated to him: "Good-bye."
+
+He stopped short and listened.  All was still.  He walked up the aisle,
+and listened again.-Nothing!  He stood before the tomb, looking at it
+curiously.  He was pale, but collected.  He raised the light above his
+head, and looked towards the altar.--Nothing!  Then he went to the door
+again, and paused.--Nothing!
+
+Outside he said
+
+"I'd stake my life I heard it!"
+
+A few minutes afterwards, a girl rose up from behind the organ in the
+chancel, and felt her way outside.  It was Alice Wingfield, who had gone
+to the church to pray.  It was her good-bye which had floated down to
+Gaston.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HE JOURNEYS AFAR
+
+Politicians gossiped.  Where was the new member?  His friends could not
+tell, further than that he had gone abroad.  Lord Faramond did not know,
+but fetched out his lower lip knowingly.
+
+"The fellow has instinct for the game," he said.  Sketches, portraits
+were in the daily and weekly journals, and one hardy journalist even
+gave an interview--which had never occurred.  But Gaston remained a
+picturesque nine-days' figure, and then Parliament rose for the year.
+
+Meanwhile he was in Paris, and every morning early he could be seen with
+Jacques riding up the Champs Elysee and out to the Bois de Boulogne.
+Every afternoon at three he sat for "Monmouth" or the "King of Ys" with
+his horse in his uncle's garden.
+
+Ian Belward might have lived in a fashionable part; he preferred the
+Latin Quarter, with incursions into the other at fancy.  Gaston lived for
+three days in the Boulevard Haussman, and then took apartments, neither
+expensive nor fashionable, in a quiet street.  He was surrounded by
+students and artists, a few great men and a host of small men:
+Collarossi's school here and Delacluse's there: models flitting in and
+out of the studios in his court-yard, who stared at him as he rode, and
+sought to gossip with Jacques--accomplished without great difficulty.
+
+Jacques was transformed.  A cheerful hue grew on his face.  He had been
+an exile, he was now at home.  His French tongue ran, now with words in
+the patois of Normandy, now of Brittany; and all with the accent of
+French Canada, an accent undisturbed by the changes and growths of
+France.  He gossiped, but no word escaped him which threw any light on
+his master's history.
+
+Soon, in the Latin Quarter, they were as notable as they had been at
+Ridley Court or in London.  On the Champs Elysee side people stared at
+the two: chiefly because of Gaston's splendid mount and Jacques's strange
+broncho.  But they felt that they were at home.  Gaston's French was not
+perfect, but it was enough for his needs.  He got a taste of that freedom
+which he had handed over to the dungeons of convention two years before.
+He breathed.  Everything interested him so much that the life he had led
+in England seemed very distant.
+
+He wrote to Delia, of course.  His letters were brief, most interesting,
+not tenderly intimate, and not daily.  From the first they puzzled her a
+little, and continued to do so; but because her mother said, "What an
+impossible man!" she said, "Perfectly possible!  Of course he is not
+like other men; he is a genius."
+
+And the days went on.
+
+Gaston little loved the purlieus of the Place de l'Opera.  One evening at
+a club in the Boulevard Malesherbes bored him.  It was merely Anglo-
+American enjoyment, dashed with French drama.  The Bois was more to his
+taste, for he could stretch his horse's legs; but every day he could be
+found before some simple cafe in Montparnasse, sipping vermouth, and
+watching the gay, light life about him.  He sat up with delight to see an
+artist and his "Madame" returning from a journey in the country, seated
+upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they listed
+with unabashed simplicity.  He dined often at the little Hotel St. Malo
+near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played the host,
+father, critic, patron, comrade--often benefactor--to his bons enfants.
+He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes, made friends, and was
+in all as a savage--or a much-travelled English gentleman.
+
+His uncle Ian had introduced him here as at other places of the kind,
+and, whatever his ulterior object was, had an artist's pleasure at seeing
+a layman enjoy the doings of Paris art life.  Himself lived more
+luxuriously.  In an avenue not far from the Luxembourg he had a small
+hotel with a fine old-fashioned garden behind it, and here distinguished
+artists, musicians, actors, and actresses came at times.
+
+The evening of Gaston's arrival he took him to a cafe and dined him, and
+afterwards to the Boullier--there, merely that he might see; but this
+place had nothing more than a passing interest for him.  His mind had the
+poetry of a free, simple--even wild-life, but he had no instinct for vice
+in the name of amusement.  But the later hours spent in the garden under
+the stars, the cheerful hum of the boulevards coming to them distantly,
+stung his veins like good wine.  They sat and talked, with no word of
+England in it at all, Jacques near, listening.
+
+Ian Belward was at his best: genial, entertaining, with the art of the
+man of no principles, no convictions, and a keen sense of life's sublime
+incongruities.  Even Jacques, whose sense of humour had grown by long
+association with Gaston, enjoyed the piquant conversation.  The next
+evening the same.  About ten o'clock a few men dropped in: a sculptor,
+artists, and Meyerbeer, an American newspaper correspondent--who,
+however, was not known as such to Gaston.
+
+This evening Ian determined to make Gaston talk.  To deepen a man's love
+for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener--he passes from
+the narrator to the advocate unconsciously.  Gaston was not to talk of
+England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles.  He did
+so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French.
+But as he told of one striking incident in the Rockies, he heard Jacques
+make a quick expression of dissent.  He smiled.  He had made some mistake
+in detail.  Now, Jacques had been in his young days in Quebec the village
+story-teller; one who, by inheritance or competency, becomes semi-
+officially a raconteur for the parish; filling in winter evenings,
+nourishing summer afternoons, with tales, weird, childlike, daring.
+
+Now Gaston turned and said to Jacques:
+
+"Well, Brillon, I've forgotten, as you see; tell them how it was."
+
+Two hours later when Jacques retired on some errand, amid ripe applause,
+Ian said:
+
+"You've got an artist there, Cadet: that description of the fight with
+the loop garoo was as good as a thing from Victor Hugo.  Hugo must have
+heard just such yarns, and spun them on the pattern.  Upon my soul, it's
+excellent stuff.  You've lived, you two."
+
+Another night Ian Belward gave a dinner, at which were present an
+actress, a singer of some repute, the American journalist, and others.
+Something that was said sent Gaston's mind to the House of Commons.
+Presently he saw himself in a ridiculous picture: a buffalo dragging the
+Treasury Bench about the Chamber; as one conjures things in an absurd
+dream.  He laughed outright, at a moment when Mademoiselle Cerise was
+telling of a remarkable effect she produced one night in "Fedora,"
+unpremeditated, inspired; and Mademoiselle Cerise, with smiling lips and
+eyes like daggers, called him a bear.  This brought him to him self, and
+he swam with the enjoyment.  He did enjoy it, but not as his uncle wished
+and hoped.  Gaston did not respond eagerly to the charms of Mademoiselle
+Cerise and Madame Juliette.
+
+Was Delia, then, so strong in the barbarian's mind?  He could not think
+so, but Gaston had not shown yet, either for model, for daughter of joy,
+or for the mademoiselles of the stage any disposition to an amour or a
+misalliance; and either would be interesting and sufficient!  Models went
+in and out of Ian's studio and the studios of others, and Gaston chatted
+with them at times; and once he felt the bare arm and bare breast of a
+girl as she sat for a nymph, and said in an interested way that her flesh
+was as firm and fine as a Tongan's.  He even disputed with his uncle on
+the tints of her skin, on seeing him paint it in, showing a fine eye for
+colour.  But there was nothing more; he was impressed, observant,
+interested--that was all.  His uncle began to wonder if the Englishman
+was, after all, deeper in the grain than the savage.  He contented
+himself with the belief that the most vigorous natures are the most
+difficult to rouse.  Mademoiselle Cerise sang, with chic and abandon very
+fascinating to his own sensuous nature, a song with a charming air and
+sentiment.  It was after a night at the opera when they had seen her in
+"Lucia," and the contrast, as she sang in his garden, softly lighted,
+showed her at the most attractive angles.  She drifted from a sparkling
+chanson to the delicate pathos of a song of De Musset's.
+
+Gaston responded to the artist; but to the woman--no.  He had seen a new
+life, even in its abandon, polite, fresh.  It amused him, but he could
+still turn to the remembrance of Delia without blushing, for he had come
+to this in the spirit of the idler, not the libertine.  Mademoiselle
+Cerise said to Ian at last:
+
+"Enfin, is the man stone?  As handsome as a leopard, too!  But, it is no
+matter."
+
+She made another effort to interest him, however.  It galled her that he
+did not fall at her feet as others had done.  Even Ian had come there in
+his day, but she knew him too well.  She had said to him at the time:
+"You, monsieur?  No, thank you.  A week, a month, and then the brute in
+you would out.  You make a woman fond, and then--a mat for your feet, and
+your wicked smile, and savage English words to drive her to the vitriol
+or the Seine.  Et puis, dear monsieur, accept my good friendship; nothing
+more.  I will sing to you, dance to you, even pray for you--we poor
+sinners do that sometimes, and go on sinning; but, again, nothing more."
+
+Ian admired her all the more for her refusal of him, and they had been
+good friends.  He had told her of his nephew's coming, had hinted at his
+fortune, at his primitive soul, at the unconventional strain in him, even
+at marriage.  She could not read his purpose, but she knew there was
+something, and answering him with a yes, had waited.  Had Gaston have
+come to her feet she would probably have got at the truth somehow, and
+have worked in his favour--the joy vice takes to side with virtue, at
+times--when it is at no personal sacrifice.  But Gaston was superior in a
+grand way.  He was simple, courteous, interested only.  This stung her,
+and she would bring him to his knees, if she could.  This night she had
+rung all the changes, and had done no more than get his frank applause.
+She became petulant in an airy, exacting way.  She asked him about his
+horse.  This interested him.  She wanted to see it.  To-morrow?  No, no,
+now.  Perhaps to-morrow she would not care to; there was no joy in
+deliberate pleasure.  Now--now--now!  He laughed.  Well then, now, as she
+wished!
+
+Jacques was called.  She said to him:
+
+"Come here, little comrade."  Jacques came.  "Look at me," she added.
+She fixed her eyes on him, and smiled.  She was in the soft flare of the
+lights.
+
+"Well," she said after a moment, "what do you think of me?"
+
+Jacques was confused.  "Madame is beautiful."
+
+"The eyes?!" she urged.
+
+"I have been to Gaspe, and west to Esquimault, and in England, but I have
+never seen such as those," he said.  Race and primitive man spoke there.
+
+She laughed.  "Come closer, little man."
+
+He did so.  She suddenly rose, dropped her hands on his shoulders, and
+kissed his cheek.
+
+"Now bring the horse, and I will kiss him too."
+
+Did she think she could rouse Gaston by kissing his servant?  Yet it did
+not disgust him.  He knew it was a bit of acting, and it was well done.
+Besides, Jacques Brillon was not a mere servant, and he, too, had done
+well.  She sat back and laughed lightly when Jacques was gone.  Then she
+said: "The honest fellow!" and hummed an air:
+
+                  "'The pretty coquette
+                    Well she needs to be wise,
+                    Though she strike to the heart
+                    By a glance of her eyes.
+
+                    "'For the daintiest bird
+                    Is the sport of the storm,
+                    And the rose fadeth most
+                    When the bosom is warm.'"
+
+In twenty minutes the gate of the garden opened, and Jacques appeared
+with Saracen.  The horse's black skin glistened in the lights, and he
+tossed his head and champed his bit.  Gaston rose.  Mademoiselle Cerise
+sprang to her feet and ran forward.  Jacques put out his hand to stop
+her, and Gaston caught her shoulder.  "He's wicked with strangers,"
+Gaston said.  "Chat!" she rejoined, stepped quickly to the horse's head
+and, laughing, put out her hand to stroke him.  Jacques caught the
+beast's nose, and stopped a lunge of the great white teeth.
+
+"Enough, madame, he will kill you!"
+
+"Yet I am beautiful--is it not so?"
+
+"The poor beast is ver' blind."
+
+"A pretty compliment," she rejoined, yet angry at the beast.
+
+Gaston came, took the animal's head in his hands, and whispered.  Saracen
+became tranquil.  Gaston beckoned to Mademoiselle Cerise.  She came.  He
+took her hand in his and put it at the horse's lips.  The horse whinnied
+angrily at first, but permitted a caress from the actress's fingers.
+
+"He does not make friends easily," said Gaston.  "Nor does his master."
+
+Her eyes lifted to his, the lids drooping suggestively.  "But when the
+pact is made--!"
+
+"Till death us do part?"
+
+"Death or ruin."
+
+"Death is better."
+
+"That depends!"
+
+"Ah!  I understand," she said.
+
+"On--the woman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then he became silent.  "Mount the horse," she urged.
+
+Gaston sprang at one bound upon the horse's bare back.  Saracen reared
+and wheeled.
+
+"Splendid!" she said; then, presently: "Take me up with you."
+
+He looked doubting for a moment, then whispered to the horse.
+
+"Come quickly," he said.
+
+She came to the side of the horse.  He stooped, caught her by the waist,
+and lifted her up.  Saracen reared, but Gaston had him down in a moment.
+
+Ian Belward suddenly called out:
+
+"For God's sake, keep that pose for five minutes--only five!"  He caught
+up some canvas.  "Hold candles near them," he said to the others.  They
+did so.  With great swiftness he sketched in the strange picture.  It
+looked weird, almost savage: Gaston's large form, his legs loose at the
+horse's side, the woman in her white drapery clinging to him.
+
+In a little time the artist said:
+
+"There; that will do.  Ten such sittings and my 'King of Ys' will have
+its day with the world.  I'd give two fortunes for the chance of it."
+
+The woman's heart had beat fast with Gaston's arm around her.  He felt
+the thrill of the situation.  Man, woman, and horse were as of a piece.
+
+But Cerise knew, when Gaston let her to the ground again, that she had
+not conquered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
+
+Next morning Gaston was visited by Meyerbeer the American journalist, of
+whose profession he was still ignorant.  He saw him only as a man of raw
+vigour of opinion, crude manners, and heavy temperament.  He had not been
+friendly to him at night, and he was surprised at the morning visit.  The
+hour was such that Gaston must ask him to breakfast.  The two were soon
+at the table of the Hotel St. Malo.  Meyerbeer sniffed the air when he
+saw the place.  The linen was ordinary, the rooms small; but all--he did
+not take this into account--irreproachably clean.  The walls were covered
+with pictures; some taken for unpaid debts, gifts from students since
+risen to fame or gone into the outer darkness,--to young artists' eyes,
+the sordid moneymaking world,--and had there been lost; from a great
+artist or two who remembered the days of his youth and the good host who
+had seen many little colonies of artists come and go.
+
+They sat down to the table, which was soon filled with students and
+artists.  Then Meyerbeer began to see, not only an interesting thing, but
+"copy."  He was, in fact, preparing a certain article which, as he said
+to himself, would "make 'em sit up" in London and New York.  He had found
+out Gaston's history, had read his speech in the Commons, had seen
+paragraphs speculating as to where he was; and now he, Salem Meyerbeer,
+would tell them what the wild fellow was doing.  The Bullier, the cafes
+in the Latin Quarter, apartments in a humble street, dining for one-
+franc-fifty, supping with actresses, posing for the King of Ys with that
+actress in his arms--all excellent in their way.  But now there was
+needed an entanglement, intrigue, amour, and then America should shriek
+at his picture of one of the British aristocracy, and a gentleman of the
+Commons, "on the loose," as he put it.
+
+He would head it:
+
+               "ARISTOCRAT, POLITICIAN, LIBERTINE!"
+
+Then, under that he would put:
+
+               "CAN THE ETHIOPIAN CHANGE HIS SKIN, OR THE
+                    LEOPARD HIS SPOTS?"  Jer. xi. 23.
+
+The morality of such a thing?  Morality only had to do with ruining a
+girl's name, or robbery.  How did it concern this?
+
+So Mr. Meyerbeer kept his ears open.  Presently one of the students said
+to Bagshot, a young artist: "How does the dompteuse come on?"
+
+"Well, I think it's chic enough.  She's magnificent.  The colour of her
+skin against the lions was splendid to-day: a regular rich gold with a
+sweet stain of red like a leaf of maize in September.  There's never been
+such a Una.  I've got my chance; and if I don't pull it off,
+
+              'Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket,
+                And say a poor buffer lies low!'"
+
+"Get the jacket ready," put in a young Frenchman, sneering.
+
+The Englishman's jaw hardened, but he replied coolly
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"I know enough.  The Comte Ploare visits her."
+
+"How the devil does that concern my painting her?"  There was iron in
+Bagshot's voice.
+
+"Who says you are painting her?"
+
+The insult was conspicuous.  Gaston quickly interposed.  His clear strong
+voice rang down the table: "Will you let me come and see your canvas some
+day soon, Mr. Bagshot?  I remember your picture 'A Passion in the
+Desert,' at the Academy this year.  A fine thing: the leopard was free
+and strong.  As an Englishman, I am proud to meet you."
+
+The young Frenchman stared.  The quarrel had passed to a new and
+unexpected quarter.  Gaston's large, solid body, strong face, and
+penetrating eyes were not to be sneered out of sight.  The Frenchman,
+an envious, disappointed artist, had had in his mind a bloodless duel,
+to give a fillip to an unacquired fame.  He had, however, been drinking.
+He flung an insolent glance to meet Gaston's steady look, and said:
+
+"The cock crows of his dunghill!"
+
+Gaston looked at the landlord, then got up calmly and walked down the
+table.  The Frenchman, expecting he knew not what, sprang to his feet,
+snatching up a knife; but Gaston was on him like a hawk, pinioning his
+arms and lifting him off the ground, binding his legs too, all so tight
+that the Frenchman squealed for breath.
+
+"Monsieur," said Gaston to the landlord, "from the door or the window?"
+
+The landlord was pale.  It was in some respects a quarrel of races.
+For, French and English at the tables had got up and were eyeing each
+other.  As to the immediate outcome of the quarrel, there could be no
+doubt.  The English and Americans could break the others to pieces;
+but neither wished that.  The landlord decided the matter:
+
+"Drop him from this window."
+
+He pushed a shutter back, and Gaston dropped the fellow on the hard
+pavement--a matter of five feet.  The Frenchman got up raging, and made
+for the door; but this time he was met by the landlord, who gave him his
+hat, and bade him come no more.  There was applause from both English and
+French.  The journalist chuckled--another column!
+
+Gaston had acted with coolness and common-sense; and when he sat down
+and began talking of the Englishman's picture again as if nothing had
+happened, the others followed, and the meal went on cheerfully.
+
+Presently another young English painter entered, and listened to the
+conversation, which Gaston brought back to Una and the lions.  It was his
+way to force things to his liking, if possible; and he wanted to hear
+about the woman--why, he did not ask himself.  The new arrival, Fancourt
+by name, kept looking at him quizzically.  Gaston presently said that he
+would visit the menagerie and see this famous dompteuse that afternoon.
+
+"She's a brick," said Bagshot.  "I was in debt, a year behind with my
+Pelletier here, and it took all I got for 'A Passion in the Desert' to
+square up.  I'd nothing to go on with.  I spent my last sou in visiting
+the menagerie.  There I got an idea.  I went to her, told her how I was
+fixed, and begged her to give me a chance.  By Jingo!  she brought the
+water to my eyes.  Some think she's a bit of a devil; but she can be a
+devil of a saint, that's all I've got to say."
+
+"Zoug-Zoug's responsible for the devil," said Fancourt to Bagshot.
+
+"Shut up, Fan," rejoined Bagshot, hurriedly, and then whispered to him
+quickly.
+
+Fancourt sent self-conscious glances down the table towards Gaston; and
+then a young American, newly come to Paris, said:
+
+"Who's Zoug-Zoug, and what's Zoug-Zoug?"
+
+"It's milk for babes, youngster," answered Bagshot quickly, and changed
+the conversation.
+
+Gaston saw something strange in the little incident; but he presently
+forgot it for many a day, and then remembered it for many a day, when the
+wheel had spun through a wild arc.
+
+When they rose from the table, Meyerbeer went to Bagshot, and said:
+
+"Say, who's Zoug-Zoug, anyway?!" Bagshot coolly replied:
+
+"I'm acting for another paper.  What price?"
+
+"Fifty dollars," in a low voice, eagerly.  Bagshot meditated.
+
+"H'm, fifty dollars!  Two hundred and fifty francs, or thereabouts.
+Beggarly!"
+
+"A hundred, then."
+
+Bagshot got to his feet, lighting a cigarette.
+
+"Want to have a pretty story against a woman, and to smutch a man, do
+you?  Well, I'm hard up; I don't mind gossip among ourselves; but sell
+the stuff to you--I'll see you damned first!"
+
+This was said sufficiently loud; and after that, Meyerbeer could not ask
+Fancourt, so he departed with Gaston, who courteously dismissed him, to
+his astonishment and regret, for he had determined to visit the menagerie
+with his quarry.
+
+Gaston went to his apartments, and cheerily summoned Jacques.
+
+"Now, little man, for a holiday!  The menagerie: lions, leopards, and a
+grand dompteuse; and afterwards dinner with me at the Cafe Blanche.  I
+want a blow-out of lions and that sort.  I'd like to be a lion-tamer
+myself for a month, or as long as might be."
+
+He caught Jacques by the shoulders--he had not done so since that
+memorable day at Ridley Court.  "See, Jacques, we'll do this every year.
+Six months in England, and three months on the Continent,--in your
+France, if you like,--and three months in the out-of-the-wayest place,
+where there'll be big game.  Hidalgos for six months, Goths for the
+rest."
+
+A half-hour later they were in the menagerie.  They sat near the
+doors where the performers entered.  For a long time they watched the
+performance with delight, clapping and calling bravo like boys.
+Presently the famous dompteuse entered,--Mademoiselle Victorine,--passing
+just below Gaston.  He looked down, interested, at the supple, lithe
+creature making for the cages of lions in the amphitheatre.  The figure
+struck him as familiar.  Presently the girl turned, throwing a glance
+round the theatre.  He caught the dash of the dark, piercing eyes, the
+luminous look, the face unpainted--in its own natural colour: neither hot
+health nor paleness, but a thing to bear the light of day.  "Andree the
+gipsy!" he exclaimed in a low tone.
+
+In less than two years this!  Here was fame.  A wanderer, an Ishmael
+then, her handful of household goods and her father in the grasp of the
+Law: to-day, Mademoiselle Victorine, queen of animal-tamers!  And her
+name associated with the Comte Ploare!
+
+With the Comte Ploare?  Had it come to that?  He remembered the look in
+her face when he bade her good-bye.  Impossible!  Then, immediately he
+laughed.
+
+Why impossible?  And why should he bother his head about it?  People of
+this sort: Mademoiselle Cerise, Madame Juliette, Mademoiselle Victorine--
+what were they to him, or to themselves?
+
+There flashed through his brain three pictures: when he stood by the
+bedside of the old dying Esquimaux in Labrador, and took a girl's hand in
+his; when among the flowers at Peppingham he heard Delia say: "Oh,
+Gaston!  Gaston!" and Alice's face at midnight in the moonlit window at
+Ridley Court.
+
+How strange this figure--spangled, gaudy, standing among her lions--
+seemed by these.  To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was an insult
+to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable.  And yet he could not take his
+eyes off her.  Her performance was splendid.  He was interested,
+speculative.  She certainly had flown high; for, again, why should not a
+dompteuse be a decent woman?  And here were money, fame of a kind, and an
+occupation that sent his blood bounding.  A dompteur!  He had tamed
+moose, and young mountain lions, and a catamount, and had had mad hours
+with pumas and arctic bears; and he could understand how even he might
+easily pass from M.P. to dompteur.  It was not intellectual, but it was
+power of a kind; and it was decent, and healthy, and infinitely better
+than playing the Jew in business, or keeping a tavern, or "shaving"
+notes, and all that.  Truly, the woman was to be admired, for she was
+earning an honest living; and no doubt they lied when they named her with
+Count Ploare.  He kept coming back to that--Count Ploare!  Why could they
+not leave these women alone?  Did they think none of them virtuous?  He
+would stake his life that Andree--he would call her that--was as straight
+as the sun.
+
+"What do you think of her, Jacques?!" he said suddenly.
+
+"It is grand.  Mon Dieu, she is wonderful--and a face all fire!"
+
+Presently she came out of the cage, followed by two great lions.  She
+walked round the ring, a hand on the head of each: one growling, the
+other purring against her, with a ponderous kind of affection.  She
+talked to them as they went, giving occasionally a deep purring sound
+like their own.  Her talk never ceased.  She looked at the audience, but
+only as in a dream.  Her mind was all with the animals.  There was
+something splendid in it: she, herself, was a noble animal; and she
+seemed entirely in place where she was.  The lions were fond of her, and
+she of them; but the first part of her performance had shown that they
+could be capricious.  A lion's love is but a lion's love after all--and
+hers likewise, no doubt!  The three seemed as one in their beauty, the
+woman superbly superior.  Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the
+trail of his sensation.  He thought that he might get an article out of
+it--with the help of Count Ploare and Zoug-Zoug.  Who was Zoug-Zoug?
+He exulted in her picturesqueness, and he determined to lie in wait.  He
+thought it a pity that Comte Ploare was not an Englishman or an American;
+but it couldn't be helped.  Yes, she was, as he said to himself, "a
+stunner."  Meanwhile he watched Gaston, noted his intense interest.
+
+Presently the girl stopped beside the cage.  A chariot was brought out,
+and the two lions were harnessed to it.  Then she called out another
+larger lion, which came unwillingly at first.  She spoke sharply, and
+then struck him.  He growled, but came on.  Then she spoke softly to him,
+and made that peculiar purr, soft and rich.  Now he responded, walked
+round her, coming closer, till his body made a half-circle about her, and
+his head was at her knees.  She dropped her hand on it.  Great applause
+rang through the building.  This play had been quite accidental.  But
+there lay one secret of the girl's success.  She was original; she
+depended greatly on the power of the moment for her best effects, and
+they came at unexpected times.
+
+It was at this instant that, glancing round the theatre in acknowledgment
+of the applause, her eyes rested mechanically on Gaston's box.  There was
+generally some one important in that box: from a foreign prince to a
+young gentleman whose proudest moment was to take off his hat in the Bois
+to the queen of a lawless court.  She had tired of being introduced to
+princes.  What could it mean to her?  And for the young bloods, whose
+greatest regret was that they could not send forth a daughter of joy into
+the Champs Elysee in her carriage, she had ever sent them about their
+business.  She had no corner of pardon for them.  She kissed her lions,
+she hugged the lion's cub that rode back and forth with her to the
+menagerie day by day--her companion in her modest apartments; but sell
+one of these kisses to a young gentleman of Paris, whose ambition was to
+master all the vices, and then let the vices master him!--she had not
+come to that, though, as she said in some bitter moments, she had come
+far.
+
+Count Ploare--there was nothing in that.  A blase man of the world, who
+had found it all not worth the bothering about, neither code nor people--
+he saw in this rich impetuous nature a new range of emotions, a brief
+return to the time when he tasted an open strong life in Algiers, in
+Tahiti.  And he would laugh at the world by marrying her--yes, actually
+marrying her, the dompteuse!  Accident had let him render her a service,
+not unimportant, once at Versailles, and he had been so courteous and
+considerate afterwards, that she had let him see her occasionally, but
+never yet alone.  He soon saw that an amour was impossible.  At last he
+spoke of marriage.  She shook her head.  She ought to have been grateful,
+but she was not.  Why should she be?  She did not know why he wished to
+marry her; but, whatever the reason, he was selfish.  Well, she would be
+selfish.  She did not care for him.  If she married him, it would be
+because she was selfish: because of position, ease; for protection in
+this shameless Paris; and for a home, she who had been a wanderer since
+her birth.
+
+It was mere bargaining.  But at last her free, independent nature
+revolted.  No: she had had enough of the chain, and the loveless hand of
+man, for three months that were burned into her brain--no more!  If ever
+she loved--all; but not the right for Count Ploare to demand the
+affection she gave her lions freely.
+
+The manager of the menagerie had tried for her affections, had offered a
+price for her friendship; and failing, had become as good a friend as
+such a man could be.  She even visited his wife occasionally, and gave
+gifts to his children; and the mother trusted her and told her her
+trials.  And so the thing went on, and the people talked.
+
+As we said, she turned her eyes to Gaston's box.  Instantly they became
+riveted, and then a deep flush swept slowly up her face and burned into
+her splendid hair.  Meyerbeer was watching through his opera-glasses.
+He gave an exclamation of delight:
+
+"By the holy smoke, here's something!" he said aloud.
+
+For an instant Gaston and the girl looked at each other intently.  He
+made a slight sign of recognition with his hand, and then she turned
+away, gone a little pale now.  She stood looking at her lions, as if
+trying to recollect herself.  The lion at her feet helped her.  He had
+a change of temper, and, possibly fretting under inaction, growled.  At
+once she summoned him to get into the chariot.  He hesitated, but did so.
+She put the reins in his paws and took her place behind.  Then a robe of
+purple and ermine was thrown over her shoulders by an attendant; she gave
+a sharp command, and the lions came round the ring, to wild applause.
+Even a Parisian audience had never seen anything like this.  It was
+amusing too; for the coachman-lion was evidently disgusted with his task,
+and growled in a helpless kind of way.
+
+As they passed Gaston's box, they were very near.  The girl threw one
+swift glance; but her face was well controlled now.  She heard, however,
+a whispered word come to her:
+
+"Andree!"
+
+A few moments afterwards she retired, and the performance was in other
+and less remarkable hands.  Presently the manager himself came, and said
+that Mademoiselle Victorine would be glad to see Monsieur Belward if he
+so wished.  Gaston left Jacques, and went.
+
+Meyerbeer noticed the move, and determined to see the meeting if
+possible.  There was something in it, he was sure.  He would invent an
+excuse, and make his way behind.
+
+Gaston and the manager were in the latter's rooms waiting for Victorine.
+Presently a messenger came, saying that Monsieur Belward would find
+Mademoiselle in her dressing-room.  Thither Gaston went, accompanied by
+the manager, who, however, left him at the door, nodding good-naturedly
+to Victorine, and inwardly praying that here was no danger to his
+business, for Victorine was a source of great profit.  Yet he had failed
+himself, and all others had failed in winning her--why should this man
+succeed, if that was his purpose?
+
+There was present an elderly, dark-featured Frenchwoman, who was always
+with Victorine, vigilant, protective, loving her as her own daughter.
+
+"Monsieur!" said Andree, a warm colour in her cheek.  Gaston shook her
+hand cordially, and laughed.  "Mademoiselle--Andree?"
+
+He looked inquiringly.  "Yes, to you," she said.
+
+"You have it all your own way now--isn't it so?"  "With the lions, yes.
+Please sit down.  This is my dear keeper," she said, touching the woman's
+shoulder.  Then, to the woman: "Annette, you have heard me speak of this
+gentleman?"
+
+The woman nodded, and modestly touched Gaston's outstretched hand.
+
+"Monsieur was kind once to my dear Mademoiselle," she said.
+
+Gaston cheerily smiled:
+
+"Nothing, nothing, upon my word!"  Presently he continued:
+
+"Your father, what of him?"  She sighed and shivered a little.
+
+"He died in Auvergne three months after you saw him."
+
+"And you?"  He waved a hand towards the menagerie.
+
+"It is a long story," she answered, not meeting his eyes.  "I hated the
+Romany life.  I became an artist's model; sickened of that,"--her voice
+went quickly here, "joined a travelling menagerie, and became what I am.
+That in brief."
+
+"You have done well," he said admiringly, his face glowing.
+
+"I am a successful dompteuse," she replied.
+
+She then asked him who was his companion in the box.  He told her.
+She insisted on sending for Jacques.  Meanwhile they talked of her
+profession, of the animals.  She grew eloquent.  Jacques arrived, and
+suddenly remembered Andree--stammered, was put at his ease, and dropped
+into talk with Annette.  Gaston fell into reminiscences of wild game, and
+talked intelligently, acutely of her work.  He must wait, she said, until
+the performance closed, and then she would show him the animals as a
+happy family.  Thus a half-hour went by.
+
+Meanwhile, Meyerbeer had asked the manager to take him to Mademoiselle;
+but was told that Victorine never gave information to journalists, and
+would not be interviewed.  Besides, she had a visitor.  Yes, Meyerbeer
+knew it--Mr. Gaston Belward; but that did not matter.  The manager
+thought it did matter.  Then, with an idea of the future, Meyerbeer asked
+to be shown the menagerie thoroughly--he would write it up for England
+and America.
+
+And so it happened that there were two sets of people inspecting the
+menagerie after the performance.  Andree let a dozen of the animals out--
+lions, leopards, a tiger, and a bear,--and they gambolled round her
+playfully, sometimes quarrelling with each other, but brought up smartly
+by her voice and a little whip, which she always carried--the only sign
+of professional life about her, though there was ever a dagger hid in her
+dress.  For the rest, she looked a splendid gipsy.
+
+Gaston suddenly asked if he might visit her.  At the moment she was
+playing with the young tiger.  She paused, was silent, preoccupied.  The
+tiger, feeling neglected, caught her hand with its paw, tearing the skin.
+Gaston whipped out his handkerchief, and stanched the blood.  She wrapped
+the handkerchief quickly round her hand, and then, recovering herself,
+ordered the animals back into their cages.  They trotted away, and the
+attendant locked them up.  Meanwhile Jacques had picked up and handed to
+Gaston a letter, dropped when he drew out his handkerchief.  It was one
+received two days before from Delia Gasgoyne.  He had a pang of
+confusion, and hastily put it into his pocket.
+
+Up to this time there had been no confusion in his mind.  He was going
+back to do his duty; to marry the girl, union with whom would be an
+honour; to take his place in his kingdom.  He had had no minute's doubt
+of that.  It was necessary, and it should be done.  The girl?  Did he not
+admire her, honour her, care for her?  Why, then, this confusion?
+
+Andree said to him that he might come the next morning for breakfast.
+She said it just as the manager and Meyerbeer passed her.  Meyerbeer
+heard it, and saw the look in the faces of both: in hers, bewildered,
+warm, penetrating; in Gaston's, eager, glowing, bold, with a distant kind
+of trouble.
+
+Here was a thickening plot for Paul Pry.  He hugged himself.  But who was
+Zoug-Zoug?  If he could but get at that!  He asked the manager, who said
+he did not know.  He asked a dozen men that evening, but none knew.  He
+would ask Ian Belward.  What a fool not to have thought of him at first.
+He knew all the gossip of Paris, and was always communicative--but was
+he, after all?  He remembered now that the painter had a way of talking
+at discretion: he had never got any really good material from him.  But
+he would try him in this.
+
+So, as Gaston and Jacques travelled down the Boulevard Montparnasse,
+Meyerbeer was not far behind.  The journalist found Ian Belward at home,
+in a cynical indolent mood.
+
+"Wherefore Meyerbeer?!" he said, as he motioned the other to a chair, and
+pushed over vermouth and cigarettes.
+
+"To ask a question."
+
+"One question?  Come, that's penance.  Aren't you lying as usual?"
+
+"No; one only.  I've got the rest of it."
+
+"Got the rest of it, eh?  Nasty mess you've got, whatever it is, I'll be
+bound.  What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers!"
+
+"That's all right.  This vermouth is good enough.  Well, will you answer
+my question?"
+
+"Possibly, if it's not personal.  But Lord knows where your insolence may
+run!  You may ask if I'll introduce you to a decent London club!"
+
+Meyerbeer flushed at last.
+
+"You're rubbing it in," he said angrily.
+
+He did wish to be introduced to a good London club.  "The question isn't
+personal, I guess.  It's this: Who's Zoug-Zoug?"
+
+Smoke had come trailing out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his
+eyes on the ceiling.  It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long,
+straight whiff.  Then the painter brought his head to a natural position
+slowly, and looking with a furtive nonchalance at Meyerbeer, said:
+
+"Who is what?"
+
+"Who's Zoug-Zoug?"
+
+"That is your one solitary question, is it?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Very well.  Now, I'll be scavenger.  What is the story?  Who is the
+woman--for you've got a woman in it, that's certain?"
+
+"Will you tell me, then, whether you know Zoug-Zoug?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The woman is Mademoiselle Victorine, the dompteuse."
+
+"Ah, I've not seen her yet.  She burst upon Paris while I was away.  Now,
+straight: no lies: who are the others?"
+
+Meyerbeer hesitated; for, of course, he did not wish to speak of Gaston
+at this stage in the game.  But he said:
+
+"Count Ploare--and Zoug-Zoug."
+
+"Why don't you tell me the truth?"
+
+"I do.  Now, who is Zoug-Zoug?"
+
+"Find out."
+
+"You said you'd tell me."
+
+"No.  I said I'd tell you if I knew Zoug-Zoug.  I do."
+
+"That's all you'll tell me?"
+
+"That's all.  And see, scavenger, take my advice and let Zoug-Zoug alone.
+He's a man of influence; and he's possessed of a devil.  He'll make you
+sorry, if you meddle with him!"
+
+He rose, and Meyerbeer did the same, saying: "You'd better tell me."
+
+"Now, don't bother me.  Drink your vermouth, take that bundle of
+cigarettes, and hunt Zoug-Zoug else where.  If you find him, let me know.
+Good-bye."
+
+Meyerbeer went out furious.  The treatment had been too heroic.
+
+"I'll give a sweet savour to your family name," he said with an oath, as
+he shook his fist at the closed door.  Ian Belward sat back and looked at
+the ceiling reflectively.
+
+"H'm!" he said at last.  "What the devil does this mean?  Not Andree,
+surely not Andree!  Yet I wasn't called Zoug-Zoug before that.  It was
+Bagshot's insolent inspiration at Auvergne.  Well, well!"
+
+He got up, drew over a portfolio of sketches, took out two or three, put
+them in a row against a divan, sat down, and looked at them half
+quizzically.
+
+"It was rough on you, Andree; but you were hard to please, and I am
+constant to but one.  Yet, begad, you had solid virtues; and I wish, for
+your sake, I had been a different kind of fellow.  Well, well, we'll meet
+again some time, and then we'll be good friends, no doubt."
+
+He turned away from the sketches and picked up some illustrated
+newspapers.  In one was a portrait.  He looked at it, then at the
+sketches again and again.
+
+"There's a resemblance," he said.  "But no, it's not possible.  Andree-
+Mademoiselle Victorine!  That would be amusing.  I'd go to-morrow and
+see, if I weren't off to Fontainebleau.  But there's no hurry: when I
+come back will do."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
+
+At Ridley Court and Peppingham all was serene to the eye.  Letters had
+come to the Court at least once every two weeks from Gaston, and the
+minds of the Baronet and his wife were at ease.  They even went so far as
+to hope that he would influence his uncle; for it was clear to them both
+that whatever Gaston's faults were, they were agreeably different from
+Ian's.  His fame and promise were sweet to their nostrils.  Indeed, the
+young man had brought the wife and husband nearer than they had been
+since Robert vanished over-sea.  Each had blamed the other in an
+indefinite, secret way; but here was Robert's son, on whom they could
+lavish--as they did--their affection, long since forfeited by Ian.
+Finally, one day, after a little burst of thanksgiving, on getting an
+excellent letter from Gaston, telling of his simple, amusing life in
+Paris, Sir William sent him one thousand pounds, begging him to buy a
+small yacht, or to do what he pleased with it.
+
+"A very remarkable man, my dear," Sir William said, as he enclosed the
+cheque.  "Excellent wisdom--excellent!"
+
+"Who could have guessed that he knew so much about the poor and the East
+End, and all those social facts and figures?!" Lady Belward answered
+complacently.
+
+"An unusual mind, with a singular taste for history, and yet a deep
+observation of the present.  I don't know when and how he does it.  I
+really do not know."
+
+"It is nice to think that Lord Faramond approves of him."
+
+"Most noticeable.  And we have not been a Parliamentary family since
+the first Charles's time.  And then it was a Gaston.  Singular--quite
+singular!  Coincidences of looks and character.  Nature plays strange
+games.  Reproduction--reproduction!"
+
+"The Pall Mall Gazette says that he may soon reach the Treasury Bench."
+
+Sir William was abstracted.  He was thinking of that afternoon in
+Gaston's bedroom, when his grandson had acted, before Lady Dargan and
+Cluny Vosse, Sir Gaston's scene with Buckingham.
+
+"Really, most mysterious, most unaccountable.  But it's one of the
+virtues of having a descent.  When it is most needed, it counts, it
+counts."
+
+"Against the half-breed mother!" Lady Belward added.
+
+"Quite so, against the--was it Cree or Blackfoot?  I've heard him speak
+of both, but which is in him I do not remember."
+
+"It is very painful; but, poor fellow, it is not his fault, and we ought
+to be content."
+
+"Indeed, it gives him great originality.  Our old families need
+refreshing now and then."
+
+"Ah, yes, I said so to Mrs. Gasgoyne the other day, and she replied that
+the refreshment might prove intoxicating.  Reine was always rude."
+
+Truth is, Mrs. Gasgoyne was not quite satisfied.  That very day she said
+to her husband:
+
+"You men always stand by each other; but I know you, and you know that I
+know."
+
+"'Thou knowest the secrets of our hearts'; well, then, you know how we
+love you.  So, be merciful."
+
+"Nonsense, Warren!  I tell you he oughtn't to have gone when he did.  He
+has the wild man in him, and I am not satisfied."
+
+"What do you want--me to play the spy?"
+
+"Warren, you're a fool!  What do I want?  I want the first of September
+to come quickly, that we may have him with us.  With Delia he must go
+straight.  She influences him, he admires her--which is better than mere
+love.  Away from her just now, who can tell what mad adventure--!  You
+see, he has had the curb so long!"
+
+But in a day or two there came a letter-unusually long for Gaston--
+to Mrs. Gasgoyne herself.  It was simple, descriptive, with a dash of
+epigram.  It acknowledged that he had felt the curb, and wanted a touch
+of the unconventional.  It spoke of Ian Belward in a dry phrase, and it
+asked for the date of the yacht's arrival at Gibraltar.
+
+"Warren, the man is still sensible," she said.  "This letter is honest.
+He is much a heathen at heart, but I believe he hasn't given Delia cause
+to blush--and that's a good deal!  Dear me, I am fond of the fellow--
+he is so clever.  But clever men are trying."
+
+As for Delia, like every sensible English girl, she enjoyed herself
+in the time of youth, drinking in delightedly the interest attaching
+to Gaston's betrothed.  His letters had been regular, kind yet not
+emotionally affectionate, interesting, uncommon.  He had a knack of
+saying as much in one page as most people did in five.  Her imagination
+was not great, but he stimulated it.  If he wrote a pungent line on
+Daudet or Whistler, on Montaigne or Fielding, she was stimulated to know
+them.  One day he sent her Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which he had picked
+up in New York on his way to England.  This startled her.  She had
+never heard of Whitman.  To her he seemed coarse, incomprehensible,
+ungentlemanly.  She could not understand how Gaston could say beautiful
+things about Montaigne and about Whitman too.  She had no conception how
+he had in him the strain of that first Sir Gaston Belward, and was also
+the son of a half-heathen.
+
+He interested her all the more.  Her letters were hardly so fascinating
+to him.  She was beautifully correct, but she could not make a sentence
+breathe.  He was grateful, but nothing stirred in him.  He could live
+without her--that he knew regretfully.  But he did his part with sincere
+intention.
+
+That was up to the day when he saw Andree as Mademoiselle Victorine.
+Then came a swift change.  Day after day he visited her, always in the
+presence of Annette.  Soon they dined often together, still in Annette's
+presence, and the severity of that rule was never relaxed.
+
+Count Ploare came no more; he had received his dismissal.  Occasionally
+Gaston visited the menagerie, but generally after the performance, when
+Victorine had a half-hour's or an hour's romp with her animals.  This was
+a pleasant time to Gaston.  The wild life in him responded.
+
+These were hours when the girl was quite naive and natural, when she
+spent herself in ripe enjoyment--almost child-like, healthy.  At other
+times there was an indefinable something which Gaston had not noticed in
+England.  But then he had only seen her once.  She, too, saw something in
+him unnoticed before.  It was on his tongue a hundred times to tell her
+that that something was Delia Gasgoyne.  He did not.  Perhaps because it
+seemed so grotesque, perhaps because it was easier to drift.  Besides, as
+he said to himself, he would soon go to join the yacht at Gibraltar, and
+all this would be over-over.  All this?  All what?  A gipsy, a dompteuse
+--what was she to him?  She interested him, he liked her, and she liked
+him, but there had been nothing more between them.  Near as he was to her
+now, he very often saw her in his mind's eye as she passed over Ridley
+Common, looking towards him, her eyes shaded by her hand.
+
+She, too, had continually said to herself that this man could be nothing
+to her--nothing, never!  Yet, why not?  Count Ploare had offered her his
+hand.  But she knew what had been in Count Ploare's mind.  Gaston Belward
+was different--he had befriended her father.  She had not singular
+scruples regarding men, for she despised most of them.  She was not a
+Mademoiselle Cerise, nor a Madame Juliette, though they were higher on
+the plane of art than she; or so the world put it.  She had not known a
+man who had not, one time or another, shown himself common or insulting.
+But since the first moment she had seen Gaston, he had treated her as a
+lady.
+
+A lady?  She had seen enough to smile at that.  She knew that she hadn't
+it in her veins, that she was very much an actress, except in this man's
+company, when she was mostly natural--as natural as one can be who
+has a painful secret.  They had talked together--for how many hours?
+She knew exactly.  And he had never descended to that which--she felt
+instinctively--he would not have shown to the ladies of his English
+world.  She knew what ladies were.  In her first few weeks in Paris,
+her fame mounting, she had lunched with some distinguished people, who
+entertained her as they would have done one of her lions, if that were
+possible.  She understood.  She had a proud, passionate nature; she
+rebelled at this.  Invitations were declined at first on pink note-paper
+with gaudy flowers in a corner, afterwards on cream-laid vellum, when she
+saw what the great folk did.
+
+And so the days went on, he telling her of his life from his boyhood up
+--all but the one thing!  But that one thing she came to know, partly by
+instinct, partly by something he accidentally dropped, partly from
+something Jacques once said to him.  Well, what did it matter to her?
+He would go back; she would remain.  It didn't matter.--Yet, why should
+she lie to herself?  It did matter.  And why should she care about that
+girl in England?  She was not supposed to know.  The other had everything
+in her favour; what had Andree the gipsy girl, or Mademoiselle Victorine,
+the dompteuse?
+
+One Sunday evening, after dining together, she asked him to take her to
+see Saracen.  It was a long-standing promise.  She had never seen him
+riding; for their hours did not coincide until the late afternoon or
+evening.  Taking Annette, they went to his new apartments.  He had
+furnished a large studio as a sitting-room, not luxuriantly but
+pleasantly.  It opened into a pretty little garden, with a few plants
+and trees.  They sat there while Jacques went for the horse.  Next door
+a number of students were singing a song of the boulevards.  It was
+followed by one in a woman's voice, sweet and clear and passionate,
+pitifully reckless.  It was, as if in pure contradiction, the opposite
+of the other--simple, pathetic.  At first there were laughing
+interruptions from the students; but the girl kept on, and soon silence
+prevailed, save for the voice:
+
+              "And when the wine is dry upon the lip,
+               And when the flower is broken by the hand,
+               And when I see the white sails of thy ship
+               Fly on, and leave me there upon the sand:
+               Think you that I shall weep?  Nay, I shall smile:
+               The wine is drunk, the flower it is gone,
+               One weeps not when the days no more beguile,
+               How shall the tear-drops gather in a stone?"
+
+When it was ended, Andree, who had listened intently, drew herself up
+with a little shudder.  She sat long, looking into the garden, the cub
+playing at her feet.  Gaston did not disturb her.  He got refreshments
+and put them on the table, rolled a cigarette, and regarded the scene.
+Her knee was drawn up slightly in her hands, her hat was off, her rich
+brown hair fell loosely about her head, framing it, her dark eyes glowed
+under her bent brows.  The lion's cub crawled up on the divan, and thrust
+its nose under an arm.  Its head clung to her waist.  Who was she?
+thought Gaston.  Delilah, Cleopatra--who?  She was lost in thought.  She
+remained so until the garden door opened, and Jacques entered with
+Saracen.
+
+She looked.  Suddenly she came to her feet with a cry of delight, and ran
+out towards the horse.  There was something essentially child-like in
+her, something also painfully wild-an animal, and a philosopher, and
+twenty-three.
+
+Jacques put out his hand as he had done with Mademoiselle Cerise.
+
+"No, no; he is savage."
+
+"Nonsense!" she rejoined, and came closer.
+
+Gaston watched, interested.  He guessed what she would do.
+
+"A horse!" she added.  "Why, you have seen my lions!  Leave him free:
+stand away from him."
+
+Her words were peremptory, and Jacques obeyed.  The horse stood alone,
+a hoof pawing the ground.  Presently it sprang away, then half-turned
+towards the girl, and stood still.  She kept talking to him and calling
+softly, making a coaxing, animal-like sound, as she always did with her
+lions.
+
+She stepped forward a little and paused.  The horse suddenly turned
+straight towards her, came over slowly, and, with arched neck, dropped
+his head on her shoulder.  She felt the folds of his neck and kissed him.
+He followed her about the garden like a dog.  She brought him to Gaston,
+locked up, and said with a teasing look, "I have conquered him: he is
+mine!"
+
+Gaston looked her in her eyes.  "He is yours."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"He is mine."  His look burned into her soul-how deep, how joyful!
+
+She turned away, her face going suddenly pale.  She kept the horse for
+some time, but at last gave him up again to Jacques.  Gaston stepped from
+the doorway into the garden and met her.  It was now dusk.  Annette was
+inside.  They walked together in silence for a time.  Presently she drew
+close to him.  He felt his veins bounding.  Her hand slid into his arm,
+and, dark as it was, he could see her eyes lifting to his, shining,
+profound.  They had reached the end of the garden, and now turned to come
+back again.
+
+Suddenly he said, his eyes holding hers: "The horse is yours--and mine."
+
+She stood still; but he could see her bosom heaving hard.  She threw up
+her head with a sound half sob, half laugh.  .  .  .
+
+"You are mad!" she said a moment afterwards, as she lifted her head from
+his breast.
+
+He laughed softly, catching her cheek to his.  "Why be sane?  It was to
+be."
+
+"The gipsy and the gentleman?"
+
+"Gipsies all!"
+
+"And the end of it?"
+
+"Do you not love me, Andree?"  She caught her hands over her eyes.
+
+"I do not know what it is--only that it is madness!  I see, oh, I see a
+hundred things."
+
+Her hot eyes were on space.  "What do you see?!" he urged.  She gave a
+sudden cry:
+
+"I see you at my feet--dead."
+
+"Better than you at mine, Andree."
+
+"Let us go," she said hurriedly.
+
+"Wait," he whispered.
+
+They talked for a little time.  Then they entered the studio.  Annette
+was asleep in her chair.  Andree waked her, and they bade Gaston good-
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+WHEREIN LOVE KNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN'S WILL
+
+In another week it was announced that Mademoiselle Victorine would take a
+month's holiday; to the sorrow of her chief, and to the delight of Mr.
+Meyerbeer, who had not yet discovered his man, though he had a pretty
+scandal well-nigh brewed.
+
+Count Ploare was no more, Gaston Belward was.  Zoug-Zoug was in the
+country at Fontainebleau, working at his picture.  He had left on the
+morning after Gaston discovered Andree.  He had written, asking his
+nephew to come for some final sittings.  Possibly, he said, Mademoiselle
+Cerise and others would be down for a Sunday.  Gaston had not gone, had
+briefly declined.  His uncle shrugged his shoulders, and went on with
+other work.  It would end in his having to go to Paris and finish the
+picture there, he said.  Perhaps the youth was getting into mischief?
+So much the better.  He took no newspapers.--What did an artist need of
+them?  He did not even read the notices sent by a press-cutting agency.
+He had a model with him.  She amused him for the time, but it was
+unsatisfactory working on "The King of Ys" from photographs.  He loathed
+it, and gave it up.
+
+One evening Gaston and Andree met at the Gare Montparnasse.  Jacques
+was gone on, but Annette was there.  Meyerbeer was there also, at a safe
+distance.  He saw Gaston purchase tickets, arrange his baggage, and enter
+the train.  He passed the compartment, looking in.  Besides the three,
+there was a priest and a young soldier.
+
+Gaston saw him, and guessed what brought him there.  He had an impulse to
+get out and shake him as would Andree's cub a puppy.  But the train moved
+off.  Meyerbeer found Gaston's porter.  A franc did the business.
+
+"Douarnenez, for Audierne, Brittany," was the legend written in
+Meyerbeer's note-book.  And after that: "Journey twenty hours--change at
+Rennes, Redon, and Quimpere."
+
+"Too far.  I've enough for now," said Meyerbeer, chuckling, as he walked
+away.  "But I'd give five hundred dollars to know who Zoug-Zoug is.  I'll
+make another try."
+
+So he held his sensation back for a while yet.  Of the colony at the
+Hotel St. Malo, not one of the three who knew would tell him.  Bagshot
+had sworn the others to secrecy.
+
+Jacques had gone on with the horses.  He was to rent a house, or get
+rooms at a hotel.  He did very well.  The horses were stalled at the
+Hotel de France.  He had rented an old chateau perched upon a hill, with
+steps approaching, steps flanking; near it strange narrow alleys, leading
+where one cared not to search; a garden of pears and figs, and grapes,
+and innumerable flowers and an arbour; a pavilion, all windows, over an
+entranceway, with a shrine in it--a be-starred shrine below it; bare
+floors, simple furniture, primitiveness at every turn.
+
+Gaston and Andree came, of choice, with a courier in a racketing old
+diligence from Douarnenez, and they laughed with delight, tired as they
+were, at the new quarters.  It must be a gipsy kind of existence at the
+most.
+
+There were rooms for Jacques and Annette, who at once set to work with
+the help of a little Breton maid.  Jacques had not ordered a dinner at
+the hotel, but had got in fresh fish, lobsters, chickens, eggs, and other
+necessaries; and all was ready for a meal which could be got in an hour.
+
+Jacques had now his hour of happiness.  He knew not of these morals--
+they were beyond him; but after a cheerful dinner in the pavilion, with
+an omelette made by Andree herself, Annette went to her room and cried
+herself to sleep.  She was civilised, poor soul, and here they were a
+stone's throw from the cure and the church!  Gaston and Andree,
+refreshed, travelled down the long steps to the village, over the place,
+along the quay, to the lighthouse and the beach, through crowds of
+sardine fishers and simple hard-tongued Bretons.  Cheerful, buoyant at
+dinner, there now came upon the girl an intense quiet and fatigue.  She
+stood and looked long at the sea.  Gaston tried to rouse her.
+
+"This is your native Brittany, Andree," he said.  She pointed far over
+the sea:
+
+"Near that light at Penmark I was born."
+
+"Can you speak the Breton language?"
+
+"Far worse than you speak Parisian French."
+
+He laughed.  "You are so little like these people!"
+
+She had vanity.  That had been part of her life.  Her beauty had brought
+trade when she was a gipsy; she had been the admired of Paris: she was
+only twenty three.  Presently she became restless, and shrank from him.
+Her eyes had a flitting hunted look.  Once they met his with a wild sort
+of pleading or revolt, he could not tell which, and then were continually
+turned away.
+
+If either could have known how hard the little dwarf of sense and memory
+was trying to tell her something.
+
+This new phase stunned him.  What did it mean?  He touched her hand.
+It was hot, and withdrew from his.  He put his arm around her, and she
+shivered, cringed.  But then she was a woman, he thought.  He had met
+one unlike any he had ever known.  He would wait.  He would be patient.
+Would she come--home?  She turned passively and took his arm.  He talked,
+but he knew he was talking poorly, and at last he became silent also.
+But when they came to the steep steps leading to the chateau, he lifted
+her in his arms, carried her to the house, and left her at their chamber-
+door.
+
+Then he went to the pavilion to smoke.  He had no wish to think--
+at least of anything but the girl.  It was not a time for retrospect,
+but to accept a situation.  The die had been cast.  He had followed what
+--his nature, his instincts?  The consequence?
+
+He heard Andree's voice.  He went to her.
+
+The next morning they were in the garden walking about.  They had been
+speaking, but now both were silent.  At last he turned again to her.
+
+"Andree, who was the other man?!" he asked quietly, but with a strange
+troubled look in his eyes.
+
+She shrank away confused, a kind of sickness in her eyes.
+
+"What does it matter?!" she said.
+
+"Of course, of course," he returned in a low, nerveless tone.
+
+They were silent for a long time.  Meanwhile, she seemed to beat up
+a feverish cheerfulness.  At last she said:
+
+"Where do we go this afternoon, Gaston?"
+
+"We will see," he replied.
+
+The day passed, another, and another.  The same: she shrank from him, was
+impatient, agitated, unhappy, went out alone.  Annette saw, and mourned,
+entreated, prayed; Jacques was miserable.  There was no joyous passion
+to redeem the situation for which Gaston had risked so much.
+
+They rode, they took excursions in fishing-boats and little sail-boats.
+Andree entered into these with zest: talked to the sailors, to Jacques,
+caressed children, and was not indifferent to the notice she attracted in
+the village; but was obviously distrait.  Gaston was patient--and
+unhappy.  So, this was the merchandise for which he had bartered all!
+But he had a will, he was determined; he had sowed, he would reap his
+harvest to the useless stubble.
+
+"Do you wish to go back to your work?!" he said quietly, once.
+
+"I have no work," she answered apathetically.  He said no more just then.
+
+The days and weeks went by.  The situation was impossible, not to be
+understood.  Gaston made his final move.  He hoped that perhaps a forced
+crisis might bring about a change.  If it failed--he knew not what!
+She was sitting in the garden below--he alone in the window, smoking.
+A bundle of letters and papers, brought by the postman that evening, were
+beside him.  He would not open them yet.  He felt that there was trouble
+in them--he saw phrases, sentences flitting past him.  But he would play
+this other bitter game out first.  He let them lie.  He heard the bells
+in the church ringing the village commerce done--it was nine o'clock.
+The picture of that other garden in Paris came to him: that night when
+he had first taken this girl into his arms.  She sat below talking to
+Annette and singing a little Breton chanson:
+
+                   "Parvondt varbondt anan oun,
+                    Et die don la lire!
+                    Parvondt varbondt anan oun,
+                    Et die don la, la!"
+
+He called down to her presently.  "Andree!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you come up for a moment, please?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+She came up, leaving the room door open, and bringing the cub with her.
+
+He called Jacques.
+
+"Take the cub to its quarters, Jacques," he said, quietly.
+
+She seemed about to protest, but sat back and watched him.  He shut the
+door--locked it.  Then he came and sat down before her.
+
+"Andree," he said, "this is all impossible."
+
+"What is impossible?"
+
+"You know well.  I am not a mere brute.  The only thing that can redeem
+this life is love."
+
+"That is true," she said, coldly.  "What then?"
+
+"You do not redeem it.  We must part."
+
+She laughed fitfully.  "We must--?"
+
+She leaned towards him.
+
+"To-morrow evening you will go back to Paris.  To-night we part, however:
+that is, our relations cease."
+
+"I shall go from here when it pleases me, Gaston!"
+
+His voice came low and stern, but courteous:
+
+"You must go when I tell you.  Do you think I am the weaker?"
+
+He could see her colour flying, her fingers lacing and interlacing.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to tell me that?!" she asked.
+
+"Afraid?  Of my life--you mean that?  That you will be as common as that?
+No: you will do as I tell you."
+
+He fixed his eyes on hers, and held them.  She sat, looking.  Presently
+she tried to take her eyes away.  She could not.  She shuddered and
+shrank.
+
+He withdrew his eyes for a moment.  "You will go?!" he asked.
+
+"It makes no difference," she answered; then added sharply: "Who are you,
+to look at me like that, to--!"
+
+She paused.
+
+"I am your friend and your master!"
+
+He rose.  "Good-night," he said, at the door, and went out.
+
+He heard the key turn in the lock.  He had forgotten his papers and
+letters.  It did not matter.  He would read them when she was gone--if
+she did go.  He was far from sure that he had succeeded.  He went to bed
+in another room, and was soon asleep.
+
+He was waked in the very early morning by feeling a face against his,
+wet, trembling.
+
+"What is it, Andree?!" he asked.  Her arms ran round his neck.
+
+"Oh, mon amour!  Mon adore!  Je t'aime!  Je t'aime!"
+
+In the evening of this day she said she knew not how it was, but on that
+first evening in Audierne there suddenly came to her a strange terrible
+feeling, which seemed to dry up all the springs of her desire for him.
+She could not help it.  She had fought against it, but it was no use; yet
+she knew that she could not leave him.  After he had told her to go, she
+had had a bitter struggle: now tears, now anger, and a wish to hate.  At
+last she fell asleep.  When she awoke she had changed, she was her old
+self, as in Paris, when she had first confessed her love.  She felt that
+she must die if she did not go to him.  All the first passion returned,
+the passion that began on the common at Ridley Court.  "And now--now,"
+she said, "I know that I cannot live without you."
+
+It seemed so.  Her nature was emptying itself.  Gaston had got the
+merchandise for which he had given a price yet to be known.
+
+"You asked me of the other man," she said.  "I will tell you."
+
+"Not now," he said.  "You loved him?"
+
+"No--ah God, no!" she answered.
+
+An hour after, when she was in her room, he opened the little bundle of
+correspondence.--A memorandum with money from his bankers.  A letter from
+Delia, and also one from Mrs. Gasgoyne, saying that they expected to meet
+him at Gibraltar on a certain day, and asking why he had not written;
+Delia with sorrowful reserve, Mrs. Gasgoyne with impatience.  His letters
+had missed them--he had written on leaving Paris, saying that his plans
+were indefinite, but he would write them definitely soon.  After he came
+to Audierne it seemed impossible to write.  How could he?  No, let the
+American journalist do it.  Better so.  Better himself in the worst
+light, with the full penalty, than his own confession--in itself an
+insult.  So it had gone on.  He slowly tore up the letters.  The next
+were from his grandfather and grandmother--they did not know yet.  He
+could not read them.  A few loving sentences, and then he said:
+
+"What's the good!  Better not."  He tore them up also.  Another--from his
+uncle.  It was brief:
+
+     You've made a sweet mess of it, Cadet.  It's in all the papers to-
+     day.  Meyerbeer telegraphed it to New York and London.  I'll
+     probably come down to see you.  I want to finish my picture on the
+     site of the old City of Ys, there at Point du Raz.  Your girl can
+     pose with you.  I'll do all I can to clear the thing up.  But a
+     British M.P.--that's a tough pill for Clapham!
+
+Gaston's foot tapped the floor angrily.  He scattered the pieces of the
+letter at his feet.  Now for the newspapers.  He opened Le Petit Journal,
+Coil Blas, Galignani, and the New York Tom-Tom, one by one.  Yes, it was
+there, with pictures of himself and Andree.  A screaming sensation.
+Extracts, too, from the English papers by telegram.  He read them all
+unflinchingly.  There was one paragraph which he did not understand:
+
+There was a previous friend of the lady, unknown to the public, called
+Zoug-Zoug.
+
+He remembered that day at the Hotel St. Malo!  Well, the bolt was shot:
+the worst was over.  Quid refert?  Justify himself?
+
+Certainly, to all but Delia Gasgoyne.
+
+Thousands of men did the same--did it in cold blood, without one honest
+feeling.  He did it, at least under a powerful influence.  He could not
+help but smile now at the thought of how he had filled both sides of the
+equation.  On his father's side, bringing down the mad record from
+Naseby; on his mother's, true to the heathen, by following his impulses
+--sacred to primitive man, justified by spear, arrow, and a strong arm.
+Why sheet home this as a scandal?  How did they--the libellers--know but
+that he had married the girl?  Exactly.  He would see to that.  He would
+play his game with open sincerity now.  He could have wished secrecy for
+Delia Gasgoyne, and for his grandfather and grandmother,--he was not
+wilfully brutal,--but otherwise he had no shame at all; he would stand
+openly for his right.  Better one honest passion than a life of deception
+and miserable compromise.  A British M.P.?--He had thrown away his
+reputation, said the papers.  By this?  The girl was no man's wife, he
+was no woman's husband!
+
+Marry her?  Yes, he would marry her; she should be his wife.  His people?
+It was a pity.  Poor old people--they would fret and worry.  He had been
+selfish, had not thought of them?  Well, who could foresee this outrage
+of journalism?  The luck had been dead against him.  Did he not know
+plenty of men in London--he was going to say the Commons, but he was
+fairer to the Commons than it, as a body, would be to him--who did much
+worse?  These had escaped: the hunters had been after him.  What would he
+do?  Take the whip?  He got to his feet with an oath.  Take the whip?
+Never--never!  He would fight this thing tooth and nail.  Had he come to
+England to let them use him for a sensation only--a sequence of
+surprises, to end in a tragedy, all for the furtive pleasure of the
+British breakfast-table?  No, by the Eternal!  What had the first Gaston
+done?  He had fought--fought Villiers and others, and had held up his
+head beside his King and Rupert till the hour of Naseby.
+
+When the summer was over he would return to Paris, to London.  The
+journalist--punish him?  No; too little--a product of his time.  But
+the British people he would fight, and he would not give up Ridley Court.
+He could throw the game over when it was all his, but never when it was
+going dead against him.
+
+That speech in the Commons?  He remembered gladly that he had contended
+for conceptions of social miseries according to surrounding influences of
+growth and situation.  He had not played the hypocrite.
+
+No, not even with Delia.  He had acted honestly at the beginning,
+and afterwards he had done what he could so long as he could.  It was
+inevitable that she must be hurt, even if he had married, not giving her
+what he had given this dompteuse.  After all, was it so terrible?  It
+could not affect her much in the eyes of the world.  And her heart?  He
+did not flatter himself.  Yet he knew that it would be the thing--the
+fallen idol--that would grieve her more than thought of the man.  He
+wished that he could have spared her in the circumstances.  But it had
+all come too suddenly: it was impossible.  He had spared, he could spare,
+nobody.  There was the whole situation.  What now to do?--To remain here
+while it pleased them, then Paris, then London for his fight.
+
+Three days went round.  There were idle hours by the sea, little
+excursions in a sail-boat to Penmark, and at last to Point du Raz.  It
+was a beautiful day, with a gentle breeze, and the point was glorified.
+The boat ran in lightly between the steep dark shore and the comb of reef
+that looked like a host of stealthy pumas crumbling the water.  They
+anchored in the Bay des Trepasses.  An hour on shore exploring the caves,
+and lunching, and then they went back to the boat, accompanied by a
+Breton sailor, who had acted as guide.
+
+Gaston lay reading,--they were in the shade of the cliff,--while Andree
+listened to the Breton tell the legends of the coast.  At length Gaston's
+attention was attracted.  The old sailor was pointing to the shore, and
+speaking in bad French.
+
+"Voila, madame, where the City of Ys stood long before the Bretons came.
+It was a foolish ride."
+
+"I do not know the story.  Tell me."
+
+"There are two or three, but mine is the oldest.  A flood came--sent by
+the gods, for the woman was impious.  The king must ride with her into
+the sea and leave her there, himself to come back, and so save the city."
+
+The sailor paused to scan the sea--something had struck him.  He shook
+his head.  Gaston was watching Andree from behind his book.
+
+"Well, well," she said, impatiently, "what then?  What did he do?"
+
+"The king took up the woman, and rode into the water as far as where you
+see the great white stone--it has been there ever since.  There he had a
+fight--not with the woman, but in his heart.  He turned to the people,
+and cried: 'Dry be your streets, and as ashes your eyes for your king!'
+And then he rode on with the woman till they saw him no more--never!"
+Andree said instantly:
+
+"That was long ago.  Now the king would ride back alone."
+
+She did not look at Gaston, but she knew that his eyes were on her.
+He closed the book, got up, came forward to the sailor, who was again
+looking out to sea, and said carelessly over his shoulder:
+
+"Men who lived centuries ago would act the same now, if they were here."
+
+Her response seemed quite as careless as his: "How do you know?"
+
+"Perhaps I had an innings then," he answered, smiling whimsically.
+
+She was about to speak again, but the guide suddenly said:
+
+"You must get away.  There'll be a change of wind and a bad cross-current
+soon."
+
+In a few minutes the two were bearing out--none too soon, for those pumas
+crowded up once or twice within a fathom of their deck, devilish and
+devouring.  But they wore away with a capricious current, and down a
+tossing sea made for Audierne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
+
+In a couple of hours they rounded Point de Leroily, and ran for the
+harbour.  By hugging the quay in the channel to the left of the bar, they
+were sure of getting in, though the tide was low.  The boat was docile to
+the lug-sail and the helm.  As they were beating in they saw a large
+yacht running straight across a corner of the bar for the channel.  It
+was Warren Gasgoyne's Kismet.
+
+The Kismet had put into Audierne rather than try to pass Point du Raz
+at night.  At Gibraltar a telegram had come telling of the painful
+sensation, and the yacht was instantly headed for England; Mrs. Gasgoyne
+crossing the Continent, Delia preferring to go back with her father--his
+sympathy was more tender.  They had seen no newspapers, and they did not
+know that Gaston was at Audierne.  Gasgoyne knowing, as all the world
+knew, that there was a bar at the mouth of the harbour, allowed himself,
+as he thought, sufficient room, but the wind had suddenly drawn ahead,
+and he was obliged to keep away.  Presently the yacht took the ground
+with great force.
+
+Gasgoyne put the helm hard down, but she would not obey.  He tried at
+once to get in his sails, but the surf was running very strong, and
+presently a heavy sea broke clean over her.  Then came confusion and
+dismay: the flapping of the wet, half-lowered sails, and the whipping of
+the slack ropes, making all effort useless.  There was no chance of her-
+holding.  Foot by foot she was being driven towards the rocks.  Sailors
+stood motionless on the shore.  The lifeboat would be of little use:
+besides, it could not arrive for some time.
+
+Gaston had recognised the Kismet.  He turned to Andree.
+
+"There's danger, but perhaps we can do it.  Will you go?"
+
+She flushed.
+
+"Have I ever been a coward, Gaston?  Tell me what to do."
+
+"Keep the helm firm, and act instantly on my orders."
+
+Instead of coming round into the channel, he kept straight on past the
+lighthouse towards the yacht, until he was something to seaward of her.
+Then, luffing quickly, he dropped sail, let go the anchor, and unshipped
+the mast, while Andree got the oars into the rowlocks.  It was his idea
+to dip under the yacht's stern, but he found himself drifting alongside,
+and in danger of dashing broadside on her.  He got an oar and backed with
+all his strength towards the stern, the anchor holding well.  Then he
+called to those on board to be ready to jump.  Once in line with the
+Kismet's counter, he eased off the painter rapidly, and now dropped
+towards the stern of the wreck.
+
+Gaston was quite cool.  He did not now think of the dramatic nature of
+this meeting, apart from the physical danger.  Delia also had recognised
+him, and guessed who the girl was.  Not to respond to Gaston's call was
+her first instinct.  But then, life was sweet.  Besides, she had to think
+of others.  Her father, too, was chiefly concerned for her safety and for
+his yacht.  He had almost determined to get Delia on Gaston's boat, and
+himself take the chances with the Kismet; but his sailors dissuaded him,
+declaring that the chances were against succour.
+
+The only greetings were words of warning and direction from Gaston.
+Presently there was an opportunity.  Gaston called sharply to Delia,
+and she, standing ready, jumped.  He caught her in his arms as she
+came.  The boat swayed as the others leaped, and he held her close
+meanwhile.  Her eyes closed, she shuddered and went white.  When he put
+her down, she covered her face with her hands, trembling.  Then, suddenly
+she came huddling in a heap, and burst into tears.
+
+They slipped the painter, a sailor took Andree's place at the helm, the
+oars were got out, and they made over to the channel, grazing the bar
+once or twice, by reason of the now heavy load.
+
+Warren Gasgoyne and Gaston had not yet spoken in the way of greeting.
+The former went to Delia now and said a few cheery words, but, from
+behind her handkerchief, she begged him to leave her alone for a moment.
+
+"Nerves, all nerves, Mr. Belward," he said, turning towards Gaston.
+"But, then, it was ticklish-ticklish."
+
+They did not shake hands.  Gaston was looking at Delia, and he did not
+reply.
+
+Mr. Gasgoyne continued:
+
+"Nasty sea coming on--afraid to try Point du Raz.  Of course we didn't
+know you were here."
+
+He looked at Andree curiously.  He was struck by the girl's beauty and
+force.  But how different from Delia!
+
+He suddenly turned, and said bluntly, in a low voice: "Belward, what a
+fool--what a fool!  You had it all at your feet: the best--the very
+best."
+
+Gaston answered quietly:
+
+"It's an awkward time for talking.  The rocks will have your yacht in
+half an hour."
+
+Gasgoyne turned towards it.
+
+"Yes, she'll get a raking fore and aft."  Then, he added, suddenly: "Of
+course you know how we feel about our rescue.  It was plucky of you."
+
+"Pluckier in the girl," was the reply.  "Brave enough," the honest
+rejoinder.
+
+Gaston had an impulse to say, "Shall I thank her for you?" but he was
+conscious how little right he had to be ironical with Warren Gasgoyne,
+and he held his peace.
+
+While the two were now turned away towards the Kismet, Andree came to
+Delia.  She did not quite know how to comfort her, but she was a woman,
+and perhaps a supporting arm would do something.
+
+"There, there," she said, passing a hand round her shoulder, "you are all
+right now.  Don't cry!"
+
+With a gasp of horror, Delia got to her feet, but swayed, and fell
+fainting--into Andree's arms.
+
+She awoke near the landing-place, her father beside her.  Meanwhile
+Andree had read the riddle.  As Mr. Gasgoyne bathed Delia's face, and
+Gaston her wrists, and gave her brandy, she sat still and intent,
+watching.  Tears and fainting!  Would she--Andree-have given way like
+that in the same circumstances?  No.  But this girl--Delia--was of a
+different order: was that it?  All nerves and sentiment!  At one of those
+lunches in the grand world she had seen a lady burst into tears suddenly
+at some one's reference to Senegal.  She herself had only cried four
+times, that she remembered; when her mother died; when her father was
+called a thief; when, one day, she suffered the first great shame of her
+life in the mountains of Auvergne; and the night when she waked a second
+time to her love for Gaston.  She dared to call it love, though good
+Annette had called it a mortal sin.
+
+What was to be done?  The other woman must suffer.
+
+The man was hers--hers for ever.  He had said it: for ever.  Yet her
+heart had a wild hunger for that something which this girl had and she
+had not.  But the man was hers; she had won him away from this other.
+
+Delia came upon the quay bravely, passing through the crowd of staring
+fishermen, who presently gave Gaston a guttural cheer.  Three of them,
+indeed, had been drinking his health.  They embraced him and kissed him,
+begging him to come with them for absinthe.  He arranged the matter with
+a couple of francs.
+
+Then he wondered what now was to be done.  He could not insult the
+Gasgoynes by asking them to come to the chateau.  He proposed the Hotel
+de France to Mr. Gasgoyne, who assented.  It was difficult to separate
+here on the quay: they must all walk together to the hotel.  Gaston
+turned to speak to Andree, but she was gone.  She had saved the
+situation.
+
+The three spoke little, and then but formally, as they walked to the
+hotel.  Mr. Gasgoyne said that they would leave by train for Paris the
+next day, going to Douarnenez that evening.  They had saved nothing from
+the yacht.
+
+Delia did not speak.  She was pale, composed now.  In the hotel Mr.
+Gasgoyne arranged for rooms, while Gaston got some sailors together, and,
+in Mr. Gasgoyne's name, offered a price for the recovery of the yacht or
+of certain things in her.  Then he went into the hotel to see if he could
+do anything further.  The door of the sitting-room was open, and no
+answer coming to his knock, he entered.
+
+Delia was standing in the window.  Against her will her father had gone
+to find a doctor.  Gaston would have drawn back if she had not turned
+round wearily to him.
+
+Perhaps it were well to get it over now.  He came forward.  She made no
+motion.
+
+"I hope you feel better?!" he said.  "It was a bad accident."
+
+"I am tired and shaken, of course," she responded.  "It was very brave of
+you."
+
+He hesitated, then said:
+
+"We were more fortunate than brave."
+
+He was determined to have Andree included.  She deserved that; the wrong
+to Delia was not hers.
+
+But she answered after the manner of a woman: "The girl--ah, yes, please
+thank her for us.  What is her name?"
+
+"She is known in Audierne as Madame Belward."  The girl started.  Her
+face had a cold, scornful pride.  "The Bretons, then, have a taste for
+fiction?"
+
+"No, they speak as they are taught."
+
+"They understand, then, as little as I."
+
+How proud, how ineffaceably superior she was!
+
+"Be ignorant for ever," he answered quietly.
+
+"I do not need the counsel, believe me."
+
+Her hand trembled, though it rested against the window-trembled with
+indignation: the insult of his elopement kept beating up her throat in
+spite of her.
+
+At that moment a servant knocked, entered, and said that a parcel had
+been brought for mademoiselle.  It was laid upon the table.  Delia,
+wondering, ordered it to be opened.  A bundle of clothes was disclosed--
+Andree's!  Gaston recognised them, and caught his breath with wonder and
+confusion.
+
+"Who has sent them?!" Delia said to the servant.  "They come from the
+Chateau Ronan, mademoiselle."
+
+Delia dismissed the servant.
+
+"The Chateau Ronan?!" she asked of Gaston.  "Where I am living."
+
+"It is not necessary to speak of this?"  She flushed.
+
+"Not at all.  I will have them sent back.  There is a little shop near by
+where you can get what you may need."
+
+Andree had acted according to her lights.  It was not an olive-branch,
+but a touch of primitive hospitality.  She was Delia's enemy at sight,
+but a woman must have linen.
+
+Mr. Gasgoyne entered.  Gaston prepared to go.  "Is there anything more
+that I can do?!" he said, as it were, to both.
+
+The girl replied.  "Nothing at all, thank you."  They did not shake
+hands.
+
+Mr. Gasgoyne could not think that all had necessarily ended.  The thing
+might be patched up one day yet.  This affair with the dompteuse was mad
+sailing, but the man might round-to suddenly and be no worse for the
+escapade.
+
+"We are going early in the morning," he said.  "We can get along all
+right.  Good-bye.  When do you come to England?"
+
+The reply was prompt.  "In a few weeks."
+
+He looked at both.  The girl, seeing that he was going to speak further,
+bowed and left the room.
+
+His eyes followed her.  After a moment, he said firmly
+
+"Mr. Gasgoyne, I am going to face all."
+
+"To live it down, Belward?"
+
+"I am going to fight it down."
+
+"Well, there's a difference.  You have made a mess of things, and shocked
+us all.  I needn't say what more.  It's done, and now you know what such
+things mean to a good woman--and, I hope also, to the father of a good
+woman."
+
+The man's voice broke a little.  He added:
+
+"They used to come to swords or pistols on such points.  We can't settle
+it in that way.  Anyhow, you have handicapped us to-day."  Then, with a
+burst of reproach, indignation, and trouble: "Great God, as if you hadn't
+been the luckiest man on earth!  Delia, the estate, the Commons--all for
+a dompteuse!"
+
+"Let us say nothing more," said Gaston, choking down wrath at the
+reference to Andree, but sorrowful, and pitying Mr. Gasgoyne.  Besides,
+the man had a right to rail.
+
+Soon after they parted courteously.
+
+Gaston went to the chateau.  As he came up the stone steps he met a
+procession--it was the feast-day of the Virgin--of priests and people
+and little children, filing up from the village and the sea, singing as
+they came.  He drew up to the wall, stood upon the stone seat, and took
+off his hat while the procession passed.  He had met the cure, first
+accidentally on the shore, and afterwards in the cure's house, finding
+much in common--he had known many priests in the North, known much good
+of them.  The cure glanced up at him now as they passed, and a half-sad
+smile crossed his face.  Gaston caught it as it passed.  The cure read
+his case truly enough and gently enough too.  In some wise hour he would
+plead with Gaston for the woman's soul and his own.
+
+Gaston did not find Andree at the chateau.  She had gone out alone
+towards the sea, Annette said, by a route at the rear of the village.
+He went also, but did not find her.  As he came again to the quay he saw
+the Kismet beating upon the rocks--the sailors had given up any idea of
+saving her.  He stood and watched the sea breaking over her, and the
+whole scene flashed back on him.  He thought how easily he could be
+sentimental over the thing.  But that was not his nature.  He had made
+his bed, but he would not lie in it--he would carry it on his back.
+They all said that he had gone on the rocks.  He laughed.
+
+"I can turn that tide: I can make things come my way," he said.  "All
+they want is sensation, it isn't morals that concerns them.  Well, IT
+give them sensation.  They expect me to hide, and drop out of the game.
+Never--so help me Heaven!  I'll play it so they'll forget this!"
+
+He rolled and lighted a cigarette, and went again to the chateau.  Dinner
+was ready--had been ready for some time.  He sat down, and presently
+Andree came.  There was a look in her face that he could not understand.
+They ate their dinner quietly, not mentioning the events of the
+afternoon.
+
+Presently a telegram was brought to him.  It read: "Come.  My office,
+Downing Street, Friday.  Expect you."  It was signed "Faramond."  At the
+same time came letters: from his grandfather, from Captain Maudsley.  The
+first was stern, imperious, reproachful.--Shame for those that took him
+in and made him, a ruined reputation, a spoiled tradition: he had been
+but a heathen after all!  There was only left to bid him farewell,
+and to enclose a cheque for two thousand pounds.
+
+Captain Maudsley called him a fool, and asked him what he meant to do
+--hoped he would give up the woman at once, and come back.  He owed
+something to his position as Master of the Hounds--a tradition that
+oughtn't to be messed about.
+
+There it all was: not a word about radical morality or immorality; but
+the tradition of Family, the Commons, Master of the Hounds!
+
+But there was another letter.  He did not recognise the handwriting, and
+the envelope had a black edge.  He turned it over and over, forgetting
+that Andree was watching him.  Looking up, he caught her eyes, with their
+strange, sad look.  She guessed what was in these letters.  She knew
+English well enough to under stand them.  He interpreted her look, and
+pushed them over.
+
+"You may read them, if you wish; but I wouldn't, if I were you."
+
+She read the telegram first, and asked who "Faramond" was.  Then she read
+Sir William Belward's letter, and afterwards Captain Maudsley's.
+
+"It has all come at once," she said: "the girl and these!  What will you
+do?  Give 'the woman' up for the honour of the Master of the Hounds?"
+
+The tone was bitter, exasperating.  Gaston was patient.
+
+"What do you think, Andree?"
+
+"It has only begun," she said.  "Wait, King of Ys.  Read that other
+letter."
+
+Her eyes were fascinated by the black border.  He opened it with a
+strange slowness.  It began without any form of address, it had the
+superscription of a street in Manchester Square:
+
+     If you were not in deep trouble I would not write.  But because I
+     know that more hard things than kind will be said by others, I want
+     to say what is in my heart, which is quick to feel for you.  I know
+     that you have sinned, but I pray for you every day, and I cannot
+     believe that God will not answer.  Oh!  think of the wrong that you
+     have done: of the wrong to the girl, to her soul's good.  Think of
+     that, and right the wrong in so far as you can.  Oh, Gaston, my
+     brother, I need not explain why I write thus.  My grandfather,
+     before he died, three weeks ago, told me that you know!--and I also
+     have known ever since the day you saved the boy.  Ah, think of one
+     who would give years of her life to see you good and noble and
+     happy.  .  .  .
+
+Then followed a deep, sincere appeal to his manhood, and afterwards a
+wish that their real relations should be made known to the world if he
+needed her, or if disaster came; that she might share and comfort his
+life, whatever it might be.  Then again:
+
+     If you love her, and she loves you, and is sorry for what she has
+     done, marry her and save her from everlasting shame.  I am staying
+     with my grandfather's cousin, the Dean of Dighbury, the father of
+     the boy you saved.  He is very kind, and he knows all.  May God
+     guide you aright, and may you believe that no one speaks more
+     truthfully to you than your sorrowful and affectionate sister,
+
+                                             ALICE WINGFIELD.
+
+He put the letter down beside him, made a cigarette, and poured out some
+coffee for them both.  He was holding himself with a tight hand.  This
+letter had touched him as nothing in his life had done since his father's
+death.  It had nothing of noblesse oblige, but straight statement of
+wrong, as she saw it.  And a sister without an open right to the title:
+the mere fidelity of blood!  His father had brought this sorrowful life
+into the world and he had made it more sorrowful--poor little thing--poor
+girl!
+
+"What are you going to do?!" asked Andree.  "Do you go back--with Delia?"
+
+He winced.  Yet why should he expect of her too great refinement?  She
+had not had a chance, she had not the stuff for it in her veins; she had
+never been taught.  But behind it all was her passion--her love--for him.
+
+"You know that's altogether impossible!" he answered.
+
+"She would not take you back."
+
+"Probably not.  She has pride."
+
+"Pride-chat!  She'd jump at the chance!"
+
+"That sounds rude, Andree; and it is contradictory."
+
+"Rude!  Well, I'm only a gipsy and a dompteuse!"
+
+"Is that all, my girl?"
+
+"That's all, now."  Then, with a sudden change and a quick sob: "But I
+may be--  Oh, I can't say it, Gaston!"  She hid her face for a moment on
+his shoulder.  "My God!"
+
+He got to his feet.  He had not thought of that--of another besides
+themselves.  He had drifted.  A hundred ideas ran back and forth.  He
+went to the window and stood looking out.  Alice's letter was still in
+his fingers.
+
+She came and touched his shoulder.
+
+"Are you going to leave me, Gaston?  What does that letter say?"
+
+He looked at her kindly, with a protective tenderness.
+
+"Read the letter, Andree," he said.
+
+She did so, at first slowly, then quickly, then over and over again.
+He stood motionless in the window.  She pushed the letter between his
+fingers.  He did not turn.  "I cannot understand everything, but what she
+says she means.  Oh, Gaston, what a fool, what a fool you've been!"
+
+After a moment, however, she threw her arms about him with animal-like
+fierceness.
+
+"But I can't give you up--I can't."  Then, with another of those sudden
+changes, she added, with a wild little laugh: "I can't, I can't, O Master
+of the Hounds!"
+
+There came a knock at the door.  Annette entered with a letter.  The
+postman had not delivered it on his rounds, because the address was not
+correct.  It was for madame.  Andree took it, started at the handwriting,
+tore open the envelope, and read:
+
+     Zoug-Zoug congratulates you on the conquest of his nephew.  Zoug-
+     Zoug's name is not George Maur, as you knew him.  Allah's blessing,
+     with Zoug-Zoug's!
+
+     What fame you've got now--dompteuse, and the sweet scandal!
+
+The journalist had found out Zoug-Zoug at last, and Ian Belward had
+talked with the manager of the menagerie.
+
+Andree shuddered and put the letter in her pocket.  Now she understood
+why she had shrunk from Gaston that first night and those first days in
+Audierne: that strange sixth sense, divination--vague, helpless
+prescience.  And here, suddenly, she shrank again, but with a different
+thought.  She hurriedly left the room and went to her chamber.
+
+In a few moments he came to her.  She was sitting upright in a chair,
+looking straight before her.  Her lips were bloodless, her eyes were
+burning.  He came and took her hands.
+
+"What is it, Andree?!" he said.  "That letter, what is it?"
+
+She looked at him steadily.  "You'll be sorry if you read it."  But she
+gave it to him.  He lighted a candle, put it on a little table, sat down,
+and read.  The shock went deep; so deep that it made no violent sign on
+the surface.  He spread the letter out before him.  The candle showed his
+face gone grey and knotted with misery.  He could bear all the rest:
+fight, do all that was right to the coming mother of his child; but this
+made him sick and dizzy.  He felt as he did when he waked up in Labrador,
+with his wife's dead lips pressed to his neck.  It was strange too that
+Andree was as quiet as he: no storm-misery had gone deep with her also.
+
+"Do you care to tell me about it?!" he asked.
+
+She sat back in her chair, her hands over her eyes.  Presently, still
+sitting so, she spoke.
+
+Ian Belward had painted them and their van in the hills of Auvergne, and
+had persuaded her to sit for a picture.  He had treated her courteously
+at first.  Her father was taken ill suddenly, and died.  She was alone
+for a few days afterwards.  Ian Belward came to her.  Of that miserable,
+heart-rending, cruel time,--the life-sorrow of a defenceless girl,--
+Gaston heard with a hard sort of coldness.  The promised marriage was
+a matter for the man's mirth a week later.  They came across three young
+artists from Paris--Bagshot, Fancourt, and another--who camped one night
+beside them.  It was then she fully realised the deep shame of her
+position.  The next night she ran away and joined a travelling menagerie.
+The rest he knew.  When she had ended there was silence for a time,
+broken only by one quick gasping sob from Gaston.  The girl sat still
+as death, her eyes on him intently.
+
+"Poor Andree!  Poor girl!" he said at last.  She sighed pitifully.
+
+"What shall we do?!" she asked.  He scarcely spoke above a whisper:
+
+"There must be time to think.  I will go to London."
+
+"You will come back?"
+
+"Yes--in five days, if I live."
+
+"I believe you," she said quietly.  "You never lied to me.  When you
+return we will know what to do."  Her manner was strangely quiet.
+"A little trading schooner goes from Douarnenez to England to-morrow
+morning," she went on.  "There is a notice of it in the market-place.
+That would save the journey to Paris.'"
+
+"Yes, that will do very well.  I will start for Douarnenez at once."
+
+"Will Jacques go too?"
+
+"No."
+
+An hour later he passed Delia and her father on the road to Douarnenez.
+He did not recognise them, but Delia, seeing him, shrank away in a corner
+of the carriage, trembling.
+
+Jacques had wished to go to London with Gaston, but had been denied.  He
+was to care for the horses.  When he saw his master ride down over the
+place, waving a hand back towards him, he came in and said to Andree:
+
+"Madame, there is trouble--I do not know what.  But I once said I would
+never leave him, wherever he go or whatever he did.  Well, I never will
+leave him--or you, madame--no."
+
+"That is right, that is right," she said earnestly; "you must never leave
+him, Jacques.  He is a good man."
+
+When Jacques had gone she shut herself up in her room.  She was gathering
+all her life into the compass of an hour.  She felt but one thing: the
+ruin of her happiness and Gaston's.
+
+"He is a good man," she said over and over to herself.  And the other--
+Ian Belward?  All the barbarian in her was alive.
+
+The next morning she started for Paris, saying to Jacques and Annette
+that she would return in four days.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"RETURN, O SHULAMITE!"
+
+Almost the first person that Gaston recognised in London was Cluny Vosse.
+He had been to Victoria Station to see a friend off by the train, and as
+he was leaving, Gaston and he recognised each other.  The lad's greeting
+was a little shy until he saw that Gaston was cool and composed as usual
+--in effect, nothing had happened.  Cluny was delighted, and opened his
+mind:
+
+"They'd kicked up a deuce of a row in the papers, and there'd been no end
+of talk; but he didn't see what all the babble was about, and he'd said
+so again and again to Lady Dargan."
+
+"And Lady Dargan, Cluny?!" asked Gaston quietly.  Cluny could not be
+dishonest, though he would try hard not to say painful things.
+
+"Well, she was a bit fierce at first--she's a woman, you know; but
+afterwards she went like a baby; cried, and wouldn't stay at Cannes any
+longer: so we're back in town.  We're going down to the country, though,
+to-morrow or next day."
+
+"Do you think I had better call, Cluny?!" Gaston ventured suggestively.
+
+"Yes, yes, of course," Cluny replied, with great eagerness, as if to
+justify the matter to himself.  Gaston smiled, said that he might,--
+he was only in town for a few days, and dropped Cluny in Pall Mall.
+Cluny came running back.
+
+"I say, Belward, things'll come around just as they were before, won't
+they?  You're going to cut in, and not let 'em walk on you?"
+
+"Yes, I'm 'going to cut in,' Cluny boy."  Cluny brightened.
+
+"And of course it isn't all over with Delia, is it?"  He blushed.
+
+Gaston reached out and dropped a hand on Cluny's shoulder.
+
+"I'm afraid it is all over, Cluny."  Cluny spoke without thinking.
+
+"I say, it's rough on her, isn't it?"
+
+Then he was confused, hurriedly offered Gaston a cigarette, a hasty good-
+bye was said, and they parted.  Gaston went first to Lord Faramond.  He
+encountered inquisition, cynical humour, flashes of sympathy, with a
+general flavour of reproach.  The tradition of the Commons!  Ah, one way
+only: he must come back alone--alone--and live it down.  Fortunately, it
+wasn't an intrigue--no matter of divorce--a dompteuse, he believed.  It
+must end, of course, and he would see what could be done.  Such a chance
+--such a chance as he had had!  Make it up with his grandfather, and
+reverse the record--reverse the record: that was the only way.  This
+meeting must, of course, be strictly between themselves.  But he was
+really interested for him, for his people, and for the tradition of the
+Commons.
+
+"I am Master of the Hounds too," said Gaston dryly.  Lord Faramond caught
+the meaning, and smiled grimly.
+
+Then came Gaston's decision--he would come back--not to live the thing
+down, but to hold his place as long as he could: to fight.
+
+Lord Faramond shrugged a shoulder.  "Without her?"
+
+"I cannot say that."
+
+"With her, I can promise nothing--nothing.  You cannot fight it so.
+No one man is stronger than massed opinion.  It is merely a matter of
+pressure.  No, no; I can promise nothing in that case."
+
+The Premier's face had gone cold and disdainful.  Why should a clever
+man like Belward be so infatuated?  He rose, Gaston thanked him for the
+meeting, and was about to go, when the Prime Minister, tapping his
+shoulder kindly, said:
+
+"Mr. Belward, you are not playing to the rules of the game."  He waved
+his hand towards the Chamber of the House.  "It is the greatest game in
+the world.  She must go!  Do not reply.  You will come back without her
+--good-bye!"
+
+Then came Ridley Court.  He entered on Sir William and Lady Belward
+without announcement.  Sir William came to his feet, austere and pale.
+Lady Belward's fingers trembled on the lace she held.  They looked many
+years older.  Neither spoke his name, nor did they offer their hands.
+Gaston did not wince, he had expected it.  He owed these old people
+something.  They lived according to their lights, they had acted
+righteously as by their code, they had used him well--well always.
+
+"Will you hear the whole story?!" he said.  He felt that it would be best
+to tell them all.  "Can it do any good?!" asked Sir William.  He looked
+towards his wife.
+
+"Perhaps it is better to hear it," she murmured.  She was clinging to a
+vague hope.
+
+Gaston told the story plainly, briefly, as he had told his earlier
+history.  Its concision and simplicity were poignant.  From the day he
+first saw Andree in the justice's room till the hour when she opened Ian
+Belward's letter, his tale went.  Then he paused.
+
+"I remember very well," Sir William said, with painful meditation: "a
+strange girl, with a remarkable face.  You pleaded for her father then.
+Ah, yes, an unhappy case!"
+
+"There is more?!" asked Lady Belward, leaning on her cane.  She seemed
+very frail.
+
+Then with a terrible brevity Gaston told them of his uncle, of the letter
+to Andree: all, except that Andree was his wife.  He had no idea of
+sparing Ian Belward now.  A groan escaped Lady Belward.
+
+"And now--now, what will you do?!" asked the baronet.
+
+"I do not know.  I am going back first to Andree."  Sir William's face
+was ashy.
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"I promised, and I will go back."  Lady Belward's voice quivered:
+
+"Stay, ah, stay, and redeem the past!  You can, you can outlive it."
+
+Always the same: live it down!
+
+"It is no use," he answered; "I must return."
+
+Then in a few words he thanked them for all, and bade them good-bye.  He
+did not offer his hand, nor did they.  But at the door he heard Lady
+Belward say in a pleading voice:
+
+"Gaston!"
+
+He returned.  She held out her hand.
+
+"You must not do as your father did," she said.  "Give the woman up,
+and come back to us.  Am I nothing to you--nothing?"
+
+"Is there no other way?!" he asked, gravely, sorrowfully.
+
+She did not reply.  He turned to his grandfather.  "There is no other
+way," said the old man, sternly.  Then in a voice almost shrill with pain
+and indignation, he cried out as he had never done in his life: "Nothing,
+nothing, nothing but disgrace!  My God in heaven!  a lion-tamer--a gipsy!
+An honourable name dragged through the mire!  Go back," he said grandly;
+"go back to the woman and her lions--savages, savages, savages!"
+
+"Savages after the manner of our forefathers," Gaston answered quietly.
+"The first Gaston showed us the way.  His wife was a strolling player's
+daughter.  Good-bye, sir."
+
+Lady Belward's face was in her hands.  "Good-bye-grandmother," he said at
+the door, and then he was gone.
+
+At the outer door the old housekeeper stepped forward, her gloomy face
+most agitated.
+
+"Oh, sir, oh, sir, you will come back again?  Oh, don't go like your
+father!"
+
+He suddenly threw an arm about her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek.
+
+"I'll come back--yes I'll come back here--if I can.  Good-bye, Hovey."
+
+In the library Sir William and Lady Belward sat silent for a time.
+Presently Sir William rose, and walked up and down.  He paused at last,
+and said, in a strange, hesitating voice, his hands chafing each other:
+
+"I forgot myself, my dear.  I fear I was violent.  I would like to ask
+his pardon.  Ah, yes, yes!"
+
+Then he sat down and took her hand, and held it long in the silence.
+
+"It all feels so empty--so empty," she said at last, as the tower-clock
+struck hollow on the air.
+
+The old man could not reply, but he drew her close to him, and Hovey,
+from the door, saw his tears dropping on her white hair.
+
+Gaston went to Manchester Square.  He half dreaded a meeting with Alice,
+and yet he wished it.  He did not find her.  She had gone to Paris with
+her uncle, the servant said.  He got their address.  There was little
+left to do but to avoid reporters, two of whom almost forced themselves
+in upon him.  He was to go back to Douarnenez by the little boat that
+brought him, and at seven o'clock in the morning he watched the mists of
+England recede.
+
+He chanced to put his hand into a light overcoat which he had got at his
+chambers before he started.  He drew out a paper, the one discovered in
+the solicitor's office in London.  It was an ancient deed of entail of
+the property, drawn by Sir Gaston Belward, which, through being lost,
+was never put into force.  He was not sure that it had value.  If it had,
+all chance of the estate was gone for him; it would be his uncle's.
+Well, what did it matter?  Yes, it did matter: Andree!  For her?  No, not
+for her.  He would play straight.  He would take his future as it came:
+he would not drop this paper into the water.
+
+He smiled bitterly, got an envelope at a publichouse on the quay, wrote a
+few words in pencil on the document, and in a few moments it was on its
+way to Sir William Belward, who when he received it said:
+
+"Worthless, quite worthless, but he has an honest mind--an honest mind!"
+
+Meanwhile, Andree was in Paris.  Leaving her bag at the Gare
+Montparnasse, she had gone straight to Ian Belward's house.  She had
+lived years in the last few hours.  She had had no sleep on the journey,
+and her mind had been strained unbearably.  It had, however, a fixed
+idea, which shuttled in and out in a hundred shapes, but ever pointing to
+one end.  She had determined on a painful thing--the only way.
+
+She reached the house, and was admitted.  In answer to questions, she had
+an appointment with monsieur.  He was not within.  Well, she would wait.
+She was motioned into the studio.  She was outwardly calm.  The servant
+presently recognised her.  He had been to the menagerie, and he had seen
+her with Gaston.  His manner changed instantly.  Could he do anything?
+No, nothing.  She was left alone.  For a long time she sat motionless,
+then a sudden restlessness seized her.  Her brain seemed a burning
+atmosphere, in which every thought, every thing showed with an unbearable
+intensity.  The terrible clearness of it all--how it made her eyes, her
+heart ache!  Her blood was beating hard against every pore.  She felt
+that she would go mad if he did not come.  Once she took out the stiletto
+she had concealed in the bosom of her cloak, and looked at it.  She had
+always carried it when among the beasts at the menagerie, but had never
+yet used it.
+
+Time passed.  She felt ill; she became blind with pain.  Presently the
+servant entered with a telegram.  His master would not be back until the
+next morning.
+
+Very well, she would return in the morning.  She gave him money.  He was
+not to say that she had called.  In the Boulevard Montparnasse she took a
+cab.  To the menagerie, she said to the driver.  How strange it all
+looked: the Invalides, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la
+Concorde!  The innumerable lights were so near and yet so far: it was a
+kink of the brain, but she seemed withdrawn from them, not they from her.
+A woman passed with a baby in her arms.  The light from a kiosk fell on
+it as she passed.  What a pretty, sweet face it had.  Why did it not have
+a pretty, delicate Breton cap?  As she went on, that kept beating in her
+brain--why did not the child wear a dainty Breton cap--a white Breton
+cap?  The face kept peeping from behind the lights--without the dainty
+Breton cap.
+
+The menagerie at last.  She dismissed the cab, went to a little door at
+the back of the building, and knocked.  She was admitted.  The care-taker
+exclaimed with pleasure.  She wished to visit the animals?  He would go
+with her; and he picked up a light.  No, she would go alone.  How were
+Hector and Balzac, and Antoinette?  She took the keys.  How cool and
+pleasant they were to the touch!  The steel of the lantern too--how
+exquisitely soothing!  He must lie down again: she would wake him as she
+came out.  No, no, she would go alone.
+
+She went to cage after cage.  At last to that of the largest lions.
+There was a deep answering purr to her soft call.  As she entered, she
+saw a heap moving in one corner--a lion lately bought.  She spoke, and
+there was an angry growl.  She wheeled to leave the cage, but her cloak
+caught the door, and it snapped shut.
+
+Too late.  A blow brought her to the ground.  She had made no cry, and
+now she lay so still!
+
+The watchman had fallen asleep again.  In the early morning he
+remembered.  The greyish golden dawn was creeping in, when he found her
+with two lions protecting, keeping guard over her, while another crouched
+snarling in a corner.  There was no mark on her face.
+
+The point of the stiletto which she had carried in her cloak had pierced
+her when she fell.
+
+In a hotel near the Arc de Triomphe Alice Wingfield read the news.
+It was she who tenderly prepared the body for burial, who telegraphed to
+Gaston at Audierne, getting a reply from Jacques that he was not yet back
+from London.  The next day Andree was found a quiet place in the cemetery
+at Montmartre.
+
+In the evening Alice and her relative started for Audierne.
+
+                    .........................
+
+On board the Fleur d'Orange Gaston struggled with the problem.  There was
+one thought ever coming.  He shut it out at this point, and it crept in
+at that.  He remembered when two men, old friends, discovered that one,
+unknowingly, had been living with the wife of the other.  There was one
+too many--the situation was impossible.  The men played a game of cards
+to see which should die.  But they did not reckon with the other factor.
+It was the woman who died.
+
+Was not his own situation far worse?  With his uncle living--but no,
+no, it was out of the question!  Yet Ian Belward had been shameless,
+a sensualist, who had wrecked the girl's happiness and his.  He himself
+had done a mad thing in the eyes of the world, but it was more mad than
+wicked.  Had this happened in the North with another man, how easily
+would the problem have been solved!
+
+Go to his uncle and tell him that he must remove himself for ever from
+the situation?  Demand it, force it?  Impossible--this was Europe.
+
+They arrived at Douarnenez.  The diligence had gone.  A fishing-boat was
+starting for Audierne.  He decided to go by it.  Breton fishermen are
+usually shy of storm to foolishness, and one or two of the crew urged the
+drunken skipper not to start, for there were signs of a south-west wind,
+too friendly to the Bay des Trepasses.  The skipper was, however,
+cheerfully reckless, and growled down objection.
+
+The boat came on with a sweet wind off the land for a time.  Suddenly,
+when in the neighbourhood of Point du Raz, the wind drew ahead very
+squally, with rain in gusts out of the south-west.  The skipper put the
+boat on the starboard tack, close-hauled and close-reefed the sails,
+keeping as near the wind as possible, with the hope of weathering the
+rocky point at the western extremity of the Bay des Trepasses.  By that
+time there was a heavy sea running; night came on, and the weather grew
+very thick.  They heard the breakers presently, but they could not make
+out the Point.  Old sailor as he was, and knowing as well as any man the
+perilous ground, the skipper lost his drunken head this time, and
+presently lost his way also in the dark and murk of the storm.
+
+At eight o'clock she struck.  She was thrown on her side, a heavy sea
+broke over her, and they were all washed off.  No one raised a cry.  They
+were busy fighting Death.
+
+Gaston was a strong swimmer.  It did not occur to him that perhaps this
+was the easiest way out of the maze.  He had ever been a fighter.  The
+seas tossed him here and there.  He saw faces about him for an instant--
+shaggy wild Breton faces--but they dropped away, he knew not where.  The
+current kept driving him inshore.  As in a dream, he could hear the
+breakers--the pumas on their tread-mill of death.  How long would it
+last?  How long before he would be beaten upon that tread-mill--fondled
+to death by those mad paws?  Presently dreams came-kind, vague, distant
+dreams.  His brain flew like a drunken dove to far points of the world
+and back again.  A moment it rested.  Andree!  He had made no provision
+for her, none at all.  He must live, he must fight on for her, the
+homeless girl, his wife.
+
+He fought on and on.  No longer in the water, as it seemed to him.  He
+had travelled very far.  He heard the clash of sabres, the distant roar
+of cannon, the beating of horses' hoofs--the thud-thud, tread-tread of an
+army.  How reckless and wild it was!  He stretched up his arm to strike-
+what was it?  Something hard that bruised: then his whole body was dashed
+against the thing.  He was back again, awake.  With a last effort he drew
+himself up on a huge rock that stands lonely in the wash of the bay.
+Then he cried out, "Andree!" and fell senseless--safe.
+
+The storm went down.  The cold, fast-travelling moon came out, saw the
+one living thing in that wild bay, and hurried on into the dark again;
+but came and went so till morning, playing hide-and-seek with the man and
+his Ararat.
+
+Daylight saw him, wet, haggard, broken, looking out over the waste of
+shaken water.  Upon the shore glared the stone of the vanished City of Ys
+in the warm sun, and the fierce pumas trod their grumbling way.  Sea-
+gulls flew about the quiet set figure, in whose brooding eyes there were
+at once despair and salvation.
+
+He was standing between two worlds.  He had had his great crisis, and his
+wounded soul rested for a moment ere he ventured out upon the highways
+again.  He knew not how it was, but there had passed into him the dignity
+of sorrow and the joy of deliverance at the same time.  He saw life's
+responsibilities clearer, duties swam grandly before him.  It was a large
+dream, in which, for the time, he was not conscious of those troubles
+which, yesterday, had clenched his hands and knotted his forehead.  He
+had come a step higher in the way of life, and into his spirit had flowed
+a new and sobered power.  His heart was sore, but his mind was lifted up.
+The fatal wrangle of the pumas there below, the sound of it, would be in
+his ears for ever, but he had come above it; the searching vigour of the
+sun entered into his bones.
+
+He knew that he was going back to England--to ample work and strong days,
+but he did not know that he was going alone.  He did not know that Andree
+was gone forever; that she had found her true place: in his undying
+memory.
+
+So intent was he, that at first he did not see a boat making into the bay
+towards him.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Clever men are trying
+He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement
+What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR ENTIRE "THE TRESPASSER":
+
+Clever men are trying
+Down in her heart, loves to be mastered
+He had no instinct for vice in the name of amusement
+He was strong enough to admit ignorance
+I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me
+Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love
+Live and let live is doing good
+Not to show surprise at anything
+Truth waits long, but whips hard
+What a nice mob you press fellows are--wholesale scavengers
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, BY PARKER, ALL ***
+
+********* This file should be named gp49w10.txt or gp49w10.zip **********
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