The Yellow House E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A detective and very mysterious story. Mr. Sabin is called out of blissful retirement to search for his missing wife. He believes Lucille to be kidnapped by members of a secret society of aristocrats. It is interesting to watch Mr. Sabin control himself and walk with such dignity and aristocratic bearing and tact, even as he plots to save his own life and reunite with his beloved Lucille. „The Yellow Crayon” presents a fascinating picture of the political mindset of the day to go along with the twists and turns of the story. Readers of Mr. Oppenheim’s novels may always count on a story of absorbing interest, turning on a complicated plot, worked out with dexterous craftsmanship.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. The Yellow House

II. On The Moor

III. Mr. Bruce Deville

IV. Our Mysterious Neighbors

V. A South American Letter

VI. The Millionaire

VII. A Fruitless Appeal

VIII. The Coming Of Mr. Berdenstein

IX. A Terrible Interruption

X. Canon Of Belchester

XI. The Gathering Of The Cloud

XII. Mr. Berdenstein’s Sister

XIII. For Vengeance

XIV. Adelaide Fortress’s Guest

XV. The Likeness Of Philip Maltabar

XVI. “It Was My Father”

XVII. A Conference Or Two

XVIII. Friends

XIX. A Corner Of The Curtain

XX. I Am The Victim

XXI. Out Of Danger

XXII. An Unholy Compact

XXIII. In The Plantation

XXIV. My Dilemma

XXV. A Proposal

XXVI. The Evidence Of Circumstances

XXVII. A Ghost In Whitechapel

XXVIII. Eastminster

XXIX. The Breaking Of The Storm

XXX. The Master Of Colville Hall

CHAPTER I. THE YELLOW HOUSE

Positively every one, with two unimportant exceptions, had called upon us. The Countess had driven over from Sysington Hall, twelve miles away, with two anæmic-looking daughters, who had gushed over our late roses and the cedar trees which shaded the lawn. The Holgates of Holgate Brand and Lady Naselton of Naselton had presented themselves on the same afternoon. Many others had come in their train, for what these very great people did the neighborhood was bound to endorse. There was a little veiled anxiety, a few elaborately careless questions as to the spelling of our name; but when my father had mentioned the second “f,” and made a casual allusion to the Warwickshire Ffolliots–with whom we were not indeed on speaking terms, but who were certainly our cousins–a distinct breath of relief was followed by a gush of mild cordiality. There were wrong Ffolliots and right Ffolliots. We belonged to the latter. No one had made a mistake or compromised themselves in any way by leaving their cards upon a small country vicar and his daughters. And earlier callers went away and spread a favorable report. Those who were hesitating, hesitated no longer. Our little carriage drive, very steep and very hard to turn in, was cut up with the wheels of many chariots. The whole county within a reasonable distance came, with two exceptions. And those two exceptions were Mr. Bruce Deville of Deville Court, on the borders of whose domain our little church and vicarage lay, and the woman who dwelt in the “Yellow House.”

I asked Lady Naselton about both of them one afternoon. Her ladyship, by the way, had been one of our earliest visitors, and had evinced from the first a strong desire to become my sponsor in Northshire society. She was middle-aged, bright, and modern–a thorough little cosmopolitan, with a marked absence in her deportment and mannerisms of anything bucolic or rural. I enjoyed talking to her, and this was her third visit. We were sitting out upon the lawn, drinking afternoon tea, and making the best of a brilliant October afternoon. A yellow gleam from the front of that oddly-shaped little house, flashing through the dark pine trees, brought it into my mind. It was only from one particular point in our garden that any part of it was visible at all. It chanced that I occupied that particular spot, and during a lull in the conversation it occurred to me to ask a question.

“By the by,” I remarked, “our nearest neighbors have not yet been to see us?”

“Your nearest neighbors!” Lady Naselton repeated. “Whom do you mean? There are a heap of us who live close together.”

“I mean the woman who lives at that little shanty through the plantation,” I answered, inclining my head towards it. “It is a woman who lives there, isn’t it? I fancy that some one told me so, although I have not seen anything of her. Perhaps I was mistaken.”

Lady Naselton lifted both her hands. There was positive relish in her tone when she spoke. The symptoms were unmistakable. Why do the nicest women enjoy shocking and being shocked?

I could see that she was experiencing positive pleasure from my question.

“My dear Miss Ffolliot!” she exclaimed. “My dear girl, don’t you really know anything about her? Hasn’t anybody told you anything?”

I stifled an imaginary yawn in faint protest against her unbecoming exhilaration. I have not many weaknesses, but I hate scandal and scandal-mongering. All the same I was interested, although I did not care to gratify Lady Naselton by showing it.

“Remember, that I have only been here a week or two,” I remarked; “certainly not long enough to have mastered the annals of the neighborhood. I have not asked any one before. No one has ever mentioned her name. Is there really anything worth hearing?”

Lady Naselton looked down and brushed some crumbs from her lap with a delicately gloved hand. She was evidently an epicure in story-telling. She was trying to make it last out as long as possible.

“Well, my dear girl, I should not like to tell you all that people say,” she began, slowly. “At the same time, as you are a stranger to the neighborhood, and, of course, know nothing about anybody, it is only my duty to put you on your guard. I do not know the particulars myself. I have never inquired. But she is not considered to be at all a proper person. There is something very dubious about her record.”

“How deliciously vague!” I remarked, with involuntary irony. “Don’t you know anything more definite?”

“I find no pleasure in inquiring into such matters,” Lady Naselton replied a little stiffly. “The opinion of those who are better able to judge is sufficient for me.”

“One must inquire, or one cannot, or should not, judge,” I said. “I suppose that there’s something which she does, or does not, do?”

“It is something connected with her past life, I believe,” Lady Naselton remarked.

“Her past life? Isn’t it supposed to be rather interesting nowadays to have a past?”

I began to doubt whether, after all, I was going to be much of a favorite with Lady Naselton. She set her tea cup down, and looked at me with distinct disapproval in her face.

“Amongst a certain class of people it may be,” she answered, severely; “not”–with emphasis–“in Northshire society; not in any part of it with which I am acquainted, I am glad to say. You must allow me to add, Miss Ffolliot, that I am somewhat surprised to hear you, a clergyman’s daughter, express yourself so.”

A clergyman’s daughter. I was continually forgetting that. And, after all, it is much more comfortable to keep one’s self in accord with one’s environment. I pulled myself together, and explained with much surprise–

“I only asked a question, Lady Naselton. I wasn’t expressing my own views. I think that women with a past are very horrid. One is so utterly tired of them in fiction that one does not want to meet them in real life. We won’t talk of this at all. I’m not really interested. Tell me about Mr. Deville instead.”

Now this was a little unkind of me, for I knew quite well that Lady Naselton was brimming with eagerness to tell me a good deal about this undesirable neighbor of ours. As it happened, however, my question afforded her a fresh opportunity, of which she took advantage.

“To tell you of one, unfortunately, is to tell you of the other,” she said, significantly.

I decided to humor her, and raised my eyebrows in the most approved fashion.

“How shocking!” I exclaimed.

I was received in favor again. My reception of the innuendo had been all that could be desired.

“We consider it a most flagrant case,” she continued, leaning over towards me confidentially. “I am thankful to say that of the two Bruce Deville is the least blamed.”

“Isn’t that generally the case?” I murmured. “It is the woman who has to bear the burden.”

“And it is generally the woman who deserves it,” Lady Naselton answered, promptly. “It is my experience, at any rate, and I have seen a good deal more of life than you. In the present case there can be no doubt about it. The woman actually followed him down here, and took up her quarters almost at his gates whilst he was away. She was there with scarcely a stick of furniture in the house for nearly a month. When he came back, would you believe it, the house was furnished from top to bottom with things from the Court. The carts were going backwards and forwards for days. She even went up and selected some of the furniture herself. I saw it all going on with my own eyes. Oh! it was the most barefaced thing!”

“Tell me about Mr. Deville,” I interrupted hastily. “I have not seen him yet. What is he like?”

“Bruce Deville,” she murmured to herself, thoughtfully. Then she was silent for a moment. Something that was almost like a gleam of sorrow passed across her face. Her whole expression was changed.

“Bruce Deville is my godson,” she said, slowly. “I suppose that is why I feel his failure the more keenly.”

“He is a failure, then?” I asked. “Some one was talking about him yesterday, but I only heard fragments here and there. Isn’t he very quixotic, and very poor?”

“Poor!” She repeated the word with peculiar emphasis. Then she rose from her chair, and walked a step or two towards the low fence which enclosed our lawn.

“Come here, child.”

I stood by her side looking across the sunlit stretch of meadows and undulating land. A very pretty landscape it was. The farm houses, with their grey fronts and red-tiled roofs, and snug rickyards close at hand, had a particularly prosperous and picturesque appearance. The land was mostly arable and well-cultivated; field after field of deep golden stubble, and rich, dark soil stretched away to the dim horizon. She held out her hand.

“You see!” she exclaimed. “Does that look like a poor man’s possessions?”

I shook my head.

“Every village there from east to west, every stone and acre belongs to Bruce Deville, and has belonged to the Devilles for centuries. There is no other land owner on that side of the country. He is lord of the Manor of a dozen parishes!”

I was puzzled.

“Then why do people call him so miserably poor?” I asked. “They say that the Court is virtually closed, and that he lives the life of a hermit, almost without servants even.”

“He either is or says he is as poor as Job,” Lady Naselton continued, resuming her seat. “He is a most extraordinary man. He was away from the country altogether for twelve years, wandering about, without any regular scheme of travel, all over the world. People met him or heard of him in all manner of queer and out-of-the-way places. Then he lived in London for a time, and spent a fortune–I don’t know that I ought to say anything about that to you–on Marie Leparte, the singer. One day he came back suddenly to the Court, which had been shut up all this time, and took up his quarters there in a single room with an old servant. He gave out that he was ruined, and that he desired neither to visit nor to be visited. He behaved in such an extraordinary manner to those who did go to see him, that they are not likely to repeat the attempt.”

“How long has he been living there?” I asked.

“About four years.”

“I suppose that you see him sometimes?”

She shook her head sadly.

“Very seldom. Not oftener than I can help. He is changed so dreadfully.”

“Tell me what he is like.”

“Like! Do you mean personally? He is ugly–hideously ugly–especially now that he takes so little care of himself. He goes about in clothes my coachman would decline to wear, and he slouches. I think a man who slouches is detestable.”

“So do I,” I assented. “What a very unpleasant neighbor to have!”

“Oh, that isn’t the worst,” she continued. “He is impossible in every way. He has a brutal temper and a brutal manner. No one could possibly take him for a gentleman. He is cruel and reckless, and he does nothing but loaf. There are things said about him which I should not dare to repeat to you. I feel it deeply; but it is no use disguising the fact. He is an utter and miserable failure.”

“On the whole,” I remarked, resuming my chair, “it is perhaps well that he has not called. I might not like him.”

Lady Naselton’s hard little laugh rang out upon the afternoon stillness. The idea seemed to afford her infinite but bitter amusement.

“Like him, my dear! Why, he would frighten you to death. Fancy any one liking Bruce Deville! Wait until you’ve seen him. He is the most perfect prototype of degeneration in a great family I have ever come in contact with. The worst of it, too, that he was such a charming boy. Why, isn’t that Mr. Ffolliot coming?” she added, in an altogether different tone. “I am so glad that I am going to meet him at last.”

I looked up and followed her smiling gaze. My father was coming noiselessly across the smooth, green turf towards us. We both of us watched him for a moment, Lady Naselton with a faint look of surprise in her scrutiny. My father was not in the least of the type of the ordinary country clergyman. He was tall and slim, and carried himself with an air of calm distinction. His clean-shaven face was distinctly of the intellectual cast. His hair was only slightly grey, was parted in the middle and vigorously mobile and benevolent. His person in every way was faultless and immaculate, from the tips of his long fingers to the spotless white cravat which alone redeemed the sombreness of his clerical attire. I murmured a few words of introduction, and he bowed over Lady Naselton’s hand with a smile which women generally found entrancing.

“I am very glad to meet Lady Naselton,” he said, courteously. “My daughter has told me so much of your kindness to her.”

Lady Naselton made some pleasing and conventional reply. My father turned to me.

“Have you some tea, Kate?” he asked. “I have been making a long round of calls, and it is a little exhausting.”

“I have some, but it is not fit to drink,” I answered, striking the gong. “Mary shall make some fresh. It will only take a minute or two.”

My father acquiesced silently. He was fastidious in small things, and I knew better than to offer him cold tea. He drew up a basket-chair to us and sat down with a little sigh of relief.

“You have commenced your work here early,” Lady Naselton remarked. “Do you think that you are going to like these parts?”

“The country is delightful,” my father answered readily. “As to the work–well, I scarcely know. Rural existence is such a change after the nervous life of a great city.”

“You had a large parish at Belchester, had you not?” Lady Naselton asked.

“A very large one,” he answered. “I am fond of work. I have always been used to large parishes.”

And two curates, I reflected silently. Lady Naselton was looking sympathetic.

“You will find plenty to do here, I believe,” she remarked. “The schools are in a most backward condition. My husband says that unless there is a great change in them very soon we shall be having the School Board.”

“We must try and prevent that,” my father said, gravely. “Of course I have to remember that I am only curate-in-charge here, but still I shall do what I can. My youngest daughter Alice is a great assistance to me in such matters. By the by, where is Alice?” he added, turning to me.

“She is in the village somewhere,” I answered. “She will not be home for tea. She has gone to see an old woman–to read to her, I think.”

My father sighed gently. “Alice is a good girl,” he said.

I bore the implied reproof complacently. My father sipped his tea for a moment or two, and then asked a question.

“You were speaking of some one when I crossed the lawn?” he remarked. “Some one not altogether a desirable neighbor I should imagine from Lady Naselton’s tone. Would it be a breach of confidence––”

“Oh, no,” I interrupted. “Lady Naselton was telling me all about the man that lives at the Court–our neighbor, Mr. Bruce Deville.”

My father set his cup down abruptly. His long walk had evidently tired him. He was more than ordinarily pale. He moved his basket-chair a few feet further back into the deep, cool shade of the cedar tree. For a second or two his eyes were half closed and his eyelids quivered.

“Mr. Bruce Deville,” he repeated, softly–“Bruce Deville! It is somewhat an uncommon name.”

“And somewhat an uncommon man!” Lady Naselton remarked, dryly. “A terrible black sheep he is, Mr. Ffolliot. If you really want to achieve a triumph you should attempt his conversion. You should try and get him to come to church. Fancy Bruce Deville in church! The walls would crack and the windows fall in!”

“My predecessor was perhaps not on good terms with him,” my father suggested, softly. “I have known so many unfortunate cases in which the squire of the parish and the vicar have not been able to hit it off.”

Lady Naselton shook her head. She had risen to her feet, and was holding out a delicately gloved hand.

“No, it is not that,” she said. “No one could hit it off with Bruce Deville. I was fond of him once; but I am afraid that he is a very bad lot. I should advise you to give him as wide a berth as possible. Listen. Was that actually six o’clock? I must go this second. Come over and see me soon, won’t you, Miss Ffolliot, and bring your father? I will send a carriage for you any day you like. It is such an awful pull up to Naselton. Goodbye.”

She was gone with a good deal of silken rustle, and a faint emission of perfume from her trailing skirt. Notwithstanding his fatigue, my father accompanied her across the lawn, and handed her into her pony carriage. He remained several minutes talking to her earnestly after she had taken her seat and gathered up the reins, and it seemed to me that he had dropped his voice almost to a whisper. Although I was but a few paces off I could hear nothing of what they were saying. When at last the carriage drove off and he came back to me, he was thoughtful, and there was a dark shade upon his face. He sat quite still for several moments without speaking. Then he looked up at me abruptly.

“If Lady Naselton’s description of our neighbor is at all correct,” he remarked, “he must be a perfect ogre.”

I nodded.

“One would imagine so. He is her godson, but she can find nothing but evil to say of him.”

“Under which circumstances it would be as well for us–for you girls especially–to carefully avoid him,” my father continued, keeping his clear, grey eyes steadily fixed upon my face. “Don’t you agree with me?”

“Most decidedly I do,” I answered.

But, curiously enough, notwithstanding his evil reputation–perhaps because of it–I was already beginning to feel a certain amount of unaccountable interest in Mr. Bruce Deville.

CHAPTER II. ON THE MOOR

After tea my father went to his study, for it was late in the week, and he was a most conscientious writer of sermons. I read for an hour, and then, tired alike of my book and my own company, I strolled up and down the drive. This restlessness was one of my greatest troubles. When the fit came I could neither work nor read nor think connectedly. It was a phase of incipient dissatisfaction with life, morbid, but inevitable. At the end of the drive nearest the road, I met Alice, my youngest sister, walking briskly with a book under her arm, and a quiet smile upon her homely face. I watched her coming towards me, and I almost envied her. What a comfort to be blessed with a placid disposition and an optimistic frame of mind!

“Well, you look as though you had been enjoying yourself,” I remarked, placing myself in her way.

“So I have–after a fashion,” she answered, good humoredly. “Are you wise to be without a hat, Kate? To look at your airy attire one would imagine that it was summer instead of autumn. Come back into the house with me.”

I laughed at her in contempt. There was a difference indeed between my muslin gown and the plain black skirt and jacket, powdered with dust, which was Alice’s usual costume.

“Have you ever known me to catch cold through wearing thin clothes or going without a hat?” I asked. “I am tired of being indoors. There have been people here all the afternoon. I wonder that your conscience allows you to shirk your part of the duty and leave all the tiresome entertaining to be done by me!”

She looked at me with wide-opened eyes and a concerned face. Alice was always so painfully literal.

“Why, I thought that you liked it!” she exclaimed. I was in an evil mood, and I determined to shock her. It was never a difficult task.

“So I do sometimes,” I answered; “but to-day my callers have been all women, winding up with an hour and a half of Lady Naselton. One gets so tired of one’s own sex! Not a single man all the afternoon. Somebody else’s husband to pass the bread and butter would have been a godsend!”

Alice pursed up her lips, and turned her head away with a look of displeasure.

“I am surprised to hear you talk like that, Kate,” she said, quietly. “Do you think that it is quite good taste?”

“Be off, you little goose!” I called after her as she passed on towards the house with quickened step and rigid head. The little sober figure turned the bend and disappeared without looking around. She was the perfect type of a clergyman’s daughter–studiously conventional, unremittingly proper, inevitably a little priggish. She was the right person in the right place. She had the supreme good fortune to be in accord with her environment. As for me, I was a veritable black sheep. I looked after her and sighed.

I had no desire to go in; on the other hand, there was nothing to stay out for. I hesitated for a moment, and then strolled on to the end of the avenue. A change in the weather seemed imminent. A grey, murky twilight had followed the afternoon of brilliant sunshine, and a low south wind was moaning amongst the Norwegian firs. I leaned over the gate with my face turned towards the great indistinct front of Deville Court. There was nothing to look at. The trees had taken to themselves fantastic shapes, little wreaths of white mist were rising from the hollows of the park. The landscape was grey, colorless, monotonous. My whole life was like that, I thought, with a sudden despondent chill. The lives of most girls must be unless they are domestic. In our little family Alice absorbed the domesticity. There was not one shred of it in my disposition.

I realized with a start that I was becoming morbid, and turned from the gate towards the house. Suddenly I heard an unexpected sound–the sound of voices close at hand. I stopped short and half turned round. A deep voice rang out upon the still, damp air–

“Get over, Madam! Get over, Marvel!”

There was the sound of the cracking of a whip and the soft patter of dogs’ feet as they came along the lane below–a narrow thoroughfare which was bounded on one side by our wall and on the other by the open stretch of park at the head of which stood Deville Court. There must have been quite twenty of them, all of the same breed–beagles–and amongst them two people were walking, a man and a woman. The man was nearest to me, and I could see him more distinctly. He was tall and very broad, with a ragged beard and long hair. He wore no collar, and there was a great rent in his shabby shooting coat. Of his features I could see nothing. He wore knickerbockers, and stockings, and thick shoes. He was by no means an ordinary looking person, but he was certainly not prepossessing. The most favorable thing about him was his carriage, which was upright and easy, but even that was in a measure spoiled by a distinct suggestion of surliness. The woman by his side I could only see very indistinctly. She was slim, and wore some sort of a plain tailor gown, but she did not appear to be young. As they came nearer to me, I slipped from the drive on to the verge of the shrubbery, standing for a moment in the shadow of a tall laurel bush. I was not seen, but I could hear their voices. The woman was speaking.

“A new vicar, or curate-in-charge, here, isn’t there, Bruce? I fancy I heard that one was expected.”

A sullen, impatient growl came from her side.

“Ay, some fellow with a daughter, Morris was telling me. The parson was bound to come, I suppose, but what the mischief does he want with a daughter?”

A little laugh from the woman–a pleasant, musical laugh.

“Daughters, I believe–I heard some one say that there were two. What a misogynist you are getting! Why shouldn’t the man have daughters if he likes? I really believe that there are two of them.”

There was a contemptuous snort, and a moment’s silence. They were exactly opposite to me now, but the hedge and the shadow of the laurels beneath which I was standing completely shielded me from observation. The man’s huge form stood out with almost startling distinctness against the grey sky. He was lashing the thistles by the side of the road with his long whip.

“Maybe!” he growled. “I’ve seen but one–a pale-faced, black-haired chit.”

I smothered a laugh. I was the pale-faced, black-haired chit, but it was scarcely a polite way of alluding to me, Mr. Bruce Deville. When they had gone by I leaned over the gate again, and watched them vanish amongst the shadows. The sound of their voices came to me indistinctly; but I could hear the deep bass of the man as he slung some scornful exclamation out upon the moist air. His great figure, looming unnaturally large through the misty twilight, was the last to vanish. It was my first glimpse of Mr. Bruce Deville of Deville Court.

I turned round with a terrified start. Almost at my side some heavy body had fallen to the ground with a faint groan. A single step, and I was bending over the prostrate form of a man. I caught his hand and gazed into his face with horrified eyes. It was my father. He must have been within a yard of me when he fell.

His eyes were half closed, and his hands were cold. Gathering up my skirts in my hand, I ran swiftly across the lawn into the house.

I met Alice in the hall. “Get some brandy!” I cried, breathlessly. “Father is ill–out in the garden! Quick!”

She brought it in a moment. Together we hurried back to where I had left him. He had not moved. His cheeks were ghastly pale, and his eyes were still closed. I felt his pulse and his heart, and unfastened his collar.

“There is nothing serious the matter–at least I think not,” I whispered to Alice. “It is only a fainting fit.”

I rubbed his hands, and we forced some brandy between his lips. Presently he opened his eyes, and raised his head a little, looking half fearfully around.

“It was her voice,” he whispered, hoarsely. “It came to me through the shadows! Where is she? What have you done with her? There was a rustling of the leaves–and then I heard her speak!”

“There is no one here but Alice and myself,” I said, bending over him. “You must have been fancying things. Are you better?”

“Better!” He looked up at both of us, and the light came back into his face.

“Ah! I see! I must have fainted!” he exclaimed. “I remember the study was close, and I came to get cool. Yet, I thought–I thought––”

I held out my arm, and he staggered up. He was still white and shaken, but evidently his memory was returning.

“I remember it was close in the study,” he said–“very close; I was tired too. I must have walked too far. I don’t like it though. I must see a doctor; I must certainly see a doctor!”

Alice bent over him full of sympathy, and he took her arm. I walked behind him in silence. A curious thought had taken possession of me. I could not get rid of the impression of my father’s first words, and his white, terrified face. Was it indeed a wild fancy of his, or had he really heard this voice which had stirred him so deeply? I tried to laugh at the idea. I could not. His cry was so natural, his terror so apparent! He had heard a voice. He had been stricken with a sudden terror. Whose was the voice–whence his fear of it? I watched him leaning slightly upon Alice’s arm, and walking on slowly in front of me towards the house. Already he was better. His features had reassumed their customary air of delicate and reserved strength. I looked at him with new and curious eyes. For the first time I wondered whether there might be another world, or the ashes of an old one beneath that grey, impenetrable mask.

CHAPTER III. MR. BRUCE DEVILLE

My father’s first sermon was a great success. As usual, it was polished, eloquent, and simple, and withal original. He preached without manuscript, almost without notes, and he took particular pains to keep within the comprehension of his tiny congregation. Lady Naselton, who waited for me in the aisle, whispered her warm approval.

“Whatever induced your father to come to such an out-of-the-way hole as this?” she exclaimed, as we passed through the porch into the fresh, sunlit air. “Why, he is an orator! He should preach at cathedrals! I never heard any one whose style I like better. But all the same it is a pity to think of such a sermon being preached to such a congregation. Don’t you think so yourself?”

I agreed with her heartily.

“I wonder that you girls let him come here and bury himself, with his talents,” she continued.

“I had not much to do with it,” I reminded her. “You forget that I have lived abroad all my life; I really have only been home for about eight or nine months.”

“Well, I should have thought that your sister would have been more ambitious for him,” she declared. “However, it’s not my business, of course. Since you are here, I shall insist, positively insist, upon coming every Sunday. My husband says that it is such a drag for the horses. Men have such ridiculous ideas where horses are concerned. I am sure that they take more care of them than they do of their wives. Come and have tea with me to-morrow, will you?”

“If I can,” I promised. “It all depends upon what Providence has in store for me in the shape of callers.”

“There is no one left to call,” Lady Naselton declared, with her foot upon the carriage step. “I looked through your card plate the other day whilst I was waiting for you. You will be left in peace for a little while now.”

“You forget our neighbor,” I answered, laughing. “He has not called yet, and I mean him to.”

Lady Naselton leaned back amongst the soft cushions of her barouche, and smiled a pitying smile at me.

“You need not wait for him, at any rate,” she said. “If you do you will suffer for the want of fresh air.”

The carriage drove off, and I skirted the church yard, and made my way round to the Vicarage gate. Away across the park I could see a huge knickerbockered figure leaning over a gate, with his back to me, smoking a pipe. It was not a graceful attitude, nor was it a particularly reputable way of spending a Sunday morning.