AS YE HAVE SOWN
 
 As Ye Have Sown 
 
 DOLF WYLLARDE 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "The Story of Eden," 
 " The Rat Trap," 
 " Captain Amyas," 
 etc. 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK MCMVII
 
 All rights reserved
 
 FOR THE SAFETY OF THE PUBLIC. 
 
 I think it only fair to state that the names in the book are 
 pronounced in the manner appended : 
 
 Blais is pronounced 
 
 Blais Heron 
 
 Queensleigh 
 
 Lexiter 
 
 Harbinger 
 
 D'Aulnoy 
 
 Windersley 
 
 Lowndes 
 
 Blay. 
 
 Blay Hearn. 
 
 Quinsleigh. 
 
 Lessiter. 
 
 Habbinger. 
 
 Dawny. 
 
 Winchley. 
 
 Lowns (ow as in cow). 
 
 The Duke of London pronounced his name exactly as it is 
 spelt, which shows what an unfashionable person he was, and 
 that his title cannot have been very old, because, of course, 
 the older your family the more corrupted it has become. 
 
 And all the rest of the characters, particularly the Middle 
 Class people, wrote and said their names as if they were one 
 and the same thing. I do not except Vaughan, because that 
 word is so well known to be Vawn that it is no stumbling- 
 block to anybody.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " The King gave a title as guerdon 
 
 To the Knight who the tourney won ; 
 Shall a man pass personal valour 
 With a name to his eldest son ? 
 Let us go back to our manhood, 
 And forget what the King has done ! " 
 
 The Inheritance. 
 
 " HONOUR," said the Duke of London, without intending to 
 be epigrammatic, " consists nowadays in not cheating at cards ! 
 When you come to think of it, there is nothing dishonour- 
 able that a man may not do except that. Oh, and lies I 
 forgot. None of us care to be caught lying ! " 
 
 " Except in the Divorce Court ! " said Lord Lowndes drily. 
 
 " One may always lie for a woman," responded the Duke 
 with perfect seriousness. " But do think a moment, I may 
 covet (and obtain!) my neighbour's wife, or stick you with 
 a horse " 
 
 (" You couldn't ! " said Lord Lowndes politely. " My dear 
 Pic, I know a horse so much better than you do, even with 
 your coachman to prompt you ! ") 
 
 " Or defraud you on the Stock Exchange and make my 
 profit on your loss. So long as it is business I am still a 
 gentleman. But to cheat at cards is unpermissible, some- 
 how. Odd, ain't it? There is no other shabby trick one 
 may not play ! " 
 
 " There is Lexiter, now," said Lord Lowndes contempla- 
 tively. " I mean Caryl, of course, " 
 
 " All the Lexiters are bad lots ! " said the Duke amicably. 
 " What a good thing he won't come into the title ! Loftus
 
 2 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 looks like a linen draper with a City knighthood, but he is 
 a dam' good fellow." 
 
 " The father is a Queensleigh, though. Caryl is like them. 
 Have you ever seen Caryl put his head in the air and say 
 ' I am a Queensleigh?' It's so true it's really ill-bred. 
 What I was goin' to say when you interrupted me " 
 
 " I shall interrupt you again if you drop your g's ! " said 
 the Duke brutally. " You shouldn't be horsey, Lowndes 
 it's your one affectation ! " 
 
 " What I was going to say when you very rudely inter- 
 rupted ! " said Lord Lowndes ferociously, " was that Caryl 
 plays bridge as questionably as a woman. I know that 
 assertion is actionable, but, upon my word, I should be sorry 
 to sit down with him at the Turf to a bridge party! It's 
 enough to make old Lady Queensleigh turn in her grave." 
 
 " Dear old soul ! Do you remember her appetite, and 
 the way she mingled texts with her dinner conversation? 
 Good Lord ! how that woman ate ! I took her down once 
 at Lavington House, and she screamed sermons at me 
 between the courses for two mortal hours! We used to 
 endure endless dinners in those days the King never did 
 us a greater service than when he cut them short." 
 
 " For all her Calvinism, she never educated the Old Adam 
 out of her sons ! " said Lord Lowndes positively. " Caryl is 
 a scoundrel and goes to church. I could forgive him his 
 hypocrisy if he did not believe in himself." 
 
 "Tell me " the Duke turned his fine face interestedly to 
 his friend, and tried to raise himself from his recumbent 
 position, whereby a spasm of pain contracted his muscles. 
 " Damn this rheumatism ! It's a family failing. Tell me 
 about Lexiter. Is he going to marry Mornington's 
 daughter ? " 
 
 Lord Lowndes took the cigarette end daintily from the 
 amber holder, fitted a plug of cotton wool and a fresh 
 cigarette, and lit it before he spoke. Even then he did not 
 look at the Duke. 
 
 " Lady Vera evidently wishes her to do so for somewhat 
 obvious reasons," he remarked. " I doubt whether it has 
 dawned on the girl as yet." 
 
 " Or on Mornington ? " 
 
 " You forget that she is rather less Mornington's daughter 
 than Lady Vera's. I have always speculated as to who was
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 3 
 
 her father, but Lady Vera has done a very clever thing- 
 she has made her world forget, if not her husband. I doubt 
 if anyone but you and I remember that there is anything 
 wrong in that household out of the ordinary. Of course 
 if a woman of the Vera Blais type marries a man who has 
 made his money, there is bound to be something wrong 
 and the poor devil of a husband knows where the shoe 
 pinches ! " 
 
 " She is one of the most objectionable women I ever 
 knew ! " said the Duke frankly. " I hate her. And Morn- 
 ington was a nice fellow, wasn't he, years ago ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I didn't know that anyone had got beyond 
 his overcoat! I know Mornington's overcoat, because it 
 sometimes hangs next mine at the Club, but I'm damned if 
 I know any more of the man. He is like a bank safe with 
 all his money and securities locked up inside. I doubt if there 
 is anything else there now." 
 
 " There was a good deal more on one occasion at least," 
 said the Duke slowly, and the two wrinkles, one of pain and 
 one of thought, frowned above his kindly eyes as he turned 
 again in his chair. " He chose to show me his inner man 
 once. It was an experience I have never forgotten." 
 
 " Most people know no more of him than that he made 
 two or three millions over an ingenious cart-wheel invented 
 by his father. I believe he patented it in the States and 
 sold it in England. They called him the Wheelwright for 
 years ! How did you get beyond his spokes ? " 
 
 " I have the misfortune to be a distant relation of Lady 
 Vera's. and he came to me when the crash took place and 
 he knew the child was not his, and laid the case before me." 
 
 " The Deuce he did ! " Lord Lowndes turned round from 
 his position on the hearthrug and stared under bushy brows 
 at his friend. " We have been intimate for nearly fifty years, 
 Pic, and yet every now and then you still surprise me by- 
 knowing the secret of somebody's skeleton closet which you 
 have not revealed! I never heard that about Mornington 
 coming to you, before." 
 
 " When a confidence is out of date it is no longer confi- 
 dential," remarked the Duke drily. "Mornington's daughter 
 is an established fact in Mornington's house, and no one will 
 question her position now, or her inheritance of his millions." 
 
 " There was a question at the time ? " 
 
 T*
 
 4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " He was very nearly mad. Perhaps the Natural Man 
 is a bit of a maniac, and Mornington was very much the 
 Natural Man as he raved to me. He wanted to turn Lady 
 Vera out of doors upon my word I don't know that she 
 didn't deserve it! He had married her from that gambling 
 hell of a house at Ragby, and had not only taken her penniless, 
 but had cleared Lord Ragby's racing debts, about ^50,000. 
 In return she showed him pretty plainly in private life (I 
 believe she was civil in public) that she looked upon him as 
 belonging to a very much lower strata of society than her- 
 self. He was of the Middle Classes, and she was a Blais." 
 
 " Yet you smoothed over the difficulty ! " said Lord 
 Lowndes, with some faint curiosity. 
 
 James Piccadilly, 5th Duke of London, looked away from 
 his companion for a minute before he answered looked 
 across the rich sombre room with its suggestion of invalidism 
 in the padded reclining chairs, the book-rests and adaptable 
 lamps, all the little contrivances for easing the pain of move- 
 ment that even his wealth could not save him from, though 
 it might mitigate it. Over his face, which had a look of 
 patient endurance that ennobled it as a long pedigree could 
 never do, there fell an expression of the weariest cynicism 
 too hopeless to be hard, and too experienced to be unkind. 
 
 " One always smoothes over these things. They are always 
 being done, and we can't help them, so we keep silence for 
 the sake of outward decency. There is hardly one of our big 
 houses that has kept its line really in a straight descent, if 
 you come to think of what you know. Now and then a 
 scandal ends in the Divorce Court, but in ninety-nine cases 
 out of a hundred, the man holds his tongue for the sake of 
 his name and position. See. what I mean ? " 
 
 "I suppose so. It has become a tradition amongst us." 
 
 "I told Mornington he had himself to consider as well as 
 the child. It would have been humiliating for him, as well 
 as for her, to prove that he had been so fooled." 
 
 "What did he say?" 
 
 " He said a very curious thing," said the Duke, his face 
 lighting with a trace of reminiscence. " He had been shak- 
 ing literally shaking with his passion, and suddenly he 
 calmed down as if someone had turned him into stone He 
 regained his self-control all at once, and stood looking at 
 me with his hands gripping the back of a chair as though
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 5 
 
 he held himself within bounds again. And he said (I have 
 never forgotten it), ' I see that you are looking at it from a 
 point of view which is not native to me. I belong to the 
 Middle Class, as my wife has been at some pains to show 
 me by more subtle means than speech. Having married a 
 woman of rank, it seems it is incumbent on me to behave 
 as in her class of life. I will endeavour to adopt her 
 standard, and yours, from henceforth ! ' He never said any 
 more about it, and I have never had an intimate word from 
 him from that day to this. Odd, ain't it?" 
 
 " Yet he acknowledged the child ! " said Lord Lowndes 
 thoughtfully. "Tacitly, at least." 
 
 " I believe there was a fresh row about that, though I 
 only heard it at second hand. You remember her being 
 put into her godmother's care when she was three years 
 old ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. They said she was so delicate she could not 
 be reared in England, and as Lady Helen lived in Madeira 
 it was the most natural course to part her from her mother 
 and have her brought up abroad. Then Lady Vera's friends 
 tried to get up a little sympathy for her, as a fond mother 
 deprived of her offspring ! But some people said that it was 
 simply that she did not mean to be bothered by a growing 
 girl a boy she could have packed off to school. They 
 might have made up a better story than the one of delicacy, 
 anyway." 
 
 "Well, they had to say something! " said the Duke drily. 
 " I believe the facts are these. Lady Violet has a notorious 
 temper " 
 
 "My dear Pic, no one who has looked at her could doubt 
 it! She is Hell on fire when anyone has put her out. And 
 her way of working it off is to vent it on the nearest victim 
 she finds. I've heard her speak to her groom so that I 
 thought she was going to strike him." 
 
 " She can't keep her maids for that reason, so they say. 
 And she used to use the child as a safety valve when she 
 had the poor thing by means of her riding whip. How 
 Mornington found out I don't know, but it appears that he 
 reopened the subject for that time only, and warned her 
 that if she laid one finger on it again he should send it away 
 to Lady Helen to be brought up." 
 
 Lord Lowndes flung his head up and laughed shortly.
 
 6 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " How she must have stormed ! and, equally of course, she 
 could not control herself, even for her own advantage." 
 
 " No. And Mornington always does as he threatens. The 
 child was sent away, and has been away ever since, as far 
 as I know." 
 
 " Her mother used to go and see her when she was at 
 school in Paris," remarked Lord Lowndes. " Their ac- 
 quaintance seems to have been more polite than intimate, 
 and merely saved their being complete strangers. My in- 
 formant is Lady Harbinger ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, she was finished at the same school as Lady 
 Vera's daughter, wasn't she? They are great friends, I 
 believe. Cecily Chilcote must be amongst the few people 
 who were rather glad to hear of Lady Helen's death, though 
 they were relatives of hers I don't believe Miss Mornington 
 would ever have come home otherwise." 
 
 " I saw them both the other night at the Haversham party. 
 It was Miss Mornington's first meeting with the Harbinger's 
 this season, I think. They are only just back from Nice." 
 
 "Harbinger's mother has been dying, or getting well, or 
 something, don't you know. Mornington's daughter was 
 presented at the first Court, I heard, but I have not seen her 
 yet. This last attack of mine has kept me laid up for weeks. 
 What is she like?" 
 
 "Quite the handsomest debutante this season if one can 
 call her a debutante. She has the appearance of a mature 
 woman, though she is only four-and-twenty, I suppose." 
 
 "Is she like Lady Vera?" 
 
 " Well, yes, and no. She has not that tawny brilliance that 
 was supposed to be so wonderful in Lady Vera. I don't 
 admire it myself, it is so hard. The girl her name is 
 Patricia, by the way is a shade darker in every way, and 
 it seems to give her a depth and weight her mother has 
 not." 
 
 "When she was young, Vera Blais was really beautiful, 
 however much one might dislike her expression." 
 
 " So is the daughter. Her figure and her carriage have 
 beaten Lady Vera's, which can't be a pleasant knowledge 
 for such a passee woman. She is tall, and carries herself 
 perfectly I must own there's the look of the thoroughbred 
 in her, but she may not furnish as she promises." 
 
 "Ring the bell, please," said the Duke, with a look of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 7 
 
 pained reproach. " I want a whiskey and soda. Your 
 slang is an offence in my nostrils, and I don't care to smell 
 the stables in my sitting-room ! " 
 
 "Anyway," said Lord Lowndes, with a grin of malice as 
 he pressed the bell, "it's more understandable than your 
 abominable talk of yachts and motors ! " 
 
 The Duke sighed. " That day is over anyhow," he said, 
 and the patient nobility shadowed his face again. " I can't 
 do any of the things for which I care now. Sometimes I 
 think the animal world is really better civilised than we are ! 
 When an old buck can fight no longer the younger beasts 
 set on him and kill him he's no use, and they mercifully 
 put an end to his existence, instead of letting him mope by 
 himself, and feel his failing powers. Oh, Maunders, bring 
 me a whiskey and soda, please." 
 
 Lord Lowndes was suffering the great discomfort of having 
 made a tactless speech, and regretting that physical restric- 
 tions prevented his kicking himself. He looked upon 
 Maunders as an angel of rescue for the first time, having 
 hitherto regarded him as nothing but an excellent servant. 
 There was, in fact, nothing very angelic about Maunders's 
 appearance, for he was a small, neat man with a close-lipped 
 face and sprightly eyes that he was obliged to keep cast 
 down to preserve the demureness of domestic service. 
 
 " I'll have a whiskey, too, Maunders ! " said Lord Lowndes, 
 feeling that his relief needed material expression. He looked 
 at Maunders affectionately, and almost expected to see the 
 wings sprouting from his decorous shoulders. " The Duke 
 has not asked me but I will, all the same." 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon ! " said the Duke, his instinctive 
 courtesy overcoming the challenged retort. " Two glasses 
 then, Maunders. It's very bad for you to drink between 
 meals, with your gout, Lowndes ! " 
 
 " It's worse for you with your rheumatism ! I'm sorry for 
 your doctor what's the use of his putting you on diet?" 
 
 "If you never did anything that was bad for you," said 
 the Duke pleadingly, " your life would end by being bad 
 for you ! What is it, Maunders ? " 
 
 "Shall I draw the curtains, your Grace?" 
 
 "No no. Leave them. I like to see the outside world, 
 even when I am cut off from it ! " 
 
 "Yes, your Grace!" said Maunders, with the air of
 
 8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 humouring the caprices of a spoilt child, and slipped out 
 of the room as neatly as he had slipped in. 
 
 " Maunders," said Lord Lowndes, who was still grateful, 
 " is an excellent servant." 
 
 "Yes, ain't he? I've had him twenty-five years, you see, 
 and trained him. He was awful when he came oh, awful ! " 
 
 " Where did he come from ? " 
 
 "I can't imagine, don't you know. Some little public 
 house, I should think. He twisted up the table napkins 
 into dreadful shapes, and made the butter into cocks and 
 hens ! (He came to me as a butler first, when I was renting 
 Queensleigh's place in Hampshire.) I said, 'Maunders, do 
 please remember that this is not a small country inn ! ' And 
 then he cried." 
 
 " Cried ! " 
 
 " Yes ain't it awkward ? He always goes into a corner 
 and cries if I scold him." 
 
 " I believe he is really very much attached to you ! " 
 
 " Oh, my dear good creature, no servant is attached to 
 anyone unless it's the cook. He is a tip-receiving animal ; 
 he has no finer feelings that cannot be bought. All the men 
 servants cry when I speak to them about anything. The 
 butler cries, and the footman sniffs. And I never damn 
 them like most fellows do. I simply speak to them quite 
 gently and quietly ! " 
 
 "Yes, and you contrive to make them feel worms much 
 more so than if you swore ! " said Lord Lowndes, so very 
 much amused that every line of his face seemed suggesting 
 a smile. " What was Maunders's last little crime ? " 
 
 " Oh, I forget. It was something he had neglected or 
 didn't understand I wanted him to do. I said, 'I know what 
 it is, Maunders you are becoming so dissipated ' (all servants 
 are, don't you know !) ' that it is softening your brain. You 
 simply can't understand an order now you are growing 
 
 1 i > 
 
 senile ! ' 
 
 "No wonder he wept!" said Lord Lowndes, with an ex- 
 plosion of mirth. "He must have been frightened as to 
 which was the madder you or he." 
 
 The Duke opened his mouth to speak just as Maunders 
 opened the door with the whiskey. He motioned to the table 
 beside him, and the man placed it there with the deft- 
 handedness of the expert. There was no jar in setting down
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 9 
 
 the tray no spilling of the lithia water. He moved with 
 the silent precision of an automaton. 
 
 "I'll engage Maunders as soon as you want to get rid of 
 him ! " said Lord Lowndes drily, as the valet disappeared. 
 "I think I can put up with his softening of the brain. It 
 does not seem to have affected his hands ! " 
 
 " He never talks," remarked the Duke, with tardy acknow- 
 ledgment. " I hear that the other servants complain that 
 they can get nothing out of him. Lowndes, if you are not 
 in a hurry I'll play you a game of backgammon over the 
 whiskey." 
 
 " You always beat me at backgammon," said Lord Lowndes 
 amicabl). "That's why you like it. Now if you stuck to 
 chess I could give you nine Ibs. and win hands down ! Chess 
 is the game of my family. They play it in Parliament and 
 private life." 
 
 " I can't play chess," said the Duke. " And I'm too old 
 to learn now. Pull up that table shall we ring for 
 Maunders?" 
 
 " No nonsense ! I know where the backgammon board 
 is at least. What's the matter with the whiskey ? " 
 
 The Duke was making grimaces. " Maunders will mix 
 it as if he thought I wanted to get drunk ! And I'm so 
 thirsty. Fill up that glass to the brim with water, please." 
 
 " Now you are grumbling ! If you had stuck to your diet, 
 Pic, we should have had none of this nonsense ! I told you, 
 you oughtn't to drink whiskey between meals. Is that all 
 right, my dear fellow?" 
 
 With one of the charming, graceful impulses which were 
 at least as peculiar to his family as the playing of chess, he 
 refilled the Duke's glass, placed the backgammon board, 
 and shifted the pillows a little for his friend's aching limbs. 
 And if he were not as tender as the proverbial woman, he 
 was at least as skilful as that much better thing in illness 
 a male nurse. 
 
 Half an hour later Maunders, slipping in to bring the 
 evening papers, found two grey-headed gentlemen absorbed 
 in their game. The Duke had just taken Lord Lowndes up, 
 and the latter was rattling the dice with the fell determination 
 to retaliate next turn.
 
 10 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ' ' The Men had the city to squander, 
 
 The joy of the field and the tent ; 
 And nobody knew but the Women 
 What the battle really meant." 
 
 J^he Battle of the New Age. 
 
 THE little maid who answered Mrs. Leroy's ring at the door 
 was so plainly a " temporary " in place of Mrs. Rodney's 
 usual neat servants, that the visitor raised her eyebrows 
 mentally, and wished her friend well through the nuisance of 
 hunting for new domestics. Mrs. Leroy was five feet eight, 
 and the little niaid was five feet nothing; therefore their 
 progress down the passage to the drawing-room was not with- 
 out an element of humour, and as the door was opened, and 
 she heard herself announced as " Mrs. Erard ! " Fate Leroy 
 met her hostess's eyes over the child's head before they 
 could reach each other, and they both laughed. 
 
 " I'm so glad to see you ! " Mrs. Rodney said simply, and 
 the words were the best kind of welcome. " And I must 
 own," she added plaintively, "that it is not all for your own 
 sweet sake, though you are as welcome as flowers in May ! " 
 
 " You are going to ask me if I can tell you of a maid ! " 
 Fate laughed, as she threaded her way carefully past the 
 tea-table to shake hands with two other women who were 
 already drinking tea. " Well, I cannot, personally ; but I 
 have heard of one. The Durham girls told me of her only 
 last week, and they would have taken her themselves, only 
 they wanted a cook not a general." 
 
 " You are an angel ! I will go and see the Durhams to- 
 morrow. Isn't that a dreadful being that let you in ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. n 
 
 " She looks rather awful. Where did you find her? " 
 
 " Oh, through the office. She is a well-meaning little 
 girl, but of course she can only do housework, and I am 
 rather tired of the cooking." 
 
 She did not look tired, save for a faint shadow under her 
 eyes. Fate Leroy glanced quickly at her, and a passing 
 wonder flitted through her mind at the diversity of gifts, 
 and the endurance, of the woman who runs a household on 
 very limited means. It is a minor heroism, unrecorded 
 save in the tradition of the great Middle Class which breeds 
 wives for men who work, and trains them with resources 
 to meet the emergencies of the backwoods or the court. The 
 Rodneys kept two servants a reliable nurse for the two 
 small children, and a "general," whose deficiencies Marion 
 Rodney supplied occasionally, as in the present instance, 
 taking her place almost entirely. She had probably cooked 
 and laid the luncheon, seen the little maid wash up, set her 
 drawing-room to rights, got her own tea, and was now sitting, 
 very perfectly dressed, talking to her visitors as if a woman's 
 usual tasks included those of maid and mistress too. 
 
 " I saw you this morning passing the Badminton ground, 
 Mrs. Leroy," said one of the other visitors, to Fate, a small, 
 fair girl, who looked decidedly unmatronly, though she had 
 been married some five or six years. " Have you joined yet? 
 They say it is such good exercise everyone impressed it on 
 me until I felt I would rather die than play ! Don't you feel 
 injured when people urge you to be healthy? It is as bad 
 as suggesting that you should have a bath every day! The 
 world might take one's cleanliness inside and out for granted, 
 I think. I felt I should dislike Badminton as much as I 
 used to do rice pudding and boiled mutton, but we are very 
 fond of the game now." 
 
 " I have joined, but have not been down to the nets yet," 
 Fate answered. "My husband is so fond of cycling that he 
 cannot bear giving it up for anything else and he has not 
 much time. When he gets down from town we have tea and 
 then start off at once. It is very bad for our digestions, I 
 feel sure, but it seems so sinful to waste fresh air, on his 
 account." 
 
 " I often think one has to work very hard to be allowed 
 very little of the man one marries ! " said the fourth woman 
 thoughtfully. She was a Mrs. Carr, and her husband was a
 
 12 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 solicitor. "The City, or some part of town, swallows him 
 up all day, and when he does return time is so precious that 
 one has hardly a moment to speak to him ! I am positively 
 afraid of having a holiday it makes me so discontented for 
 weeks afterwards. And George feels the same." 
 
 The fair, small woman Mrs. Hilliard took up the wail 
 plaintively. " I always want to thump silly people who talk 
 about husbands and wives getting tired of each other I only 
 wish we had a chance ! I was ashamed of myself last year 
 in Devonshire all the people took us for a honeymoon 
 couple of the old type ! Disgraceful, wasn't it ? And we've 
 been married six years ! How did you enjoy your holiday, 
 Mrs. Leroy? I thought it was so sensible of you to go in 
 June ! It is such a lovely month in the country." 
 
 " It was sheer necessity rather than brilliance of selection 
 that took us away then," said Mrs. Leroy, with her soft 
 laugh. "The men above my husband are both objectionable 
 people who take August and July as a matter of course and 
 they cannot, two of them, be away at the same time. I pray 
 annually for their deaths, but Providence has not seen their 
 fitness for Heaven as yet." 
 
 " It never does, does it?" said Mrs. Carr, sympathetically. 
 " George has an uncle whose ill-health we always drink on 
 his birthday, and we have quite decided that the first of 
 April shall be the anniversary of his death but he is eighty- 
 five, and still flourishes on an income for which we pine ! " 
 Her beautiful dark eyes met Mrs. Leroy's across the room, 
 and they both laughed. In reality, Mrs. Carr would not 
 have wished the death of anything but an eating-moth and 
 that only on account of her household gear. " At any rate, 
 you had beautiful weather," she remarked. " It was swelter- 
 ing, as the newspapers say, in Sunnington." 
 
 " And one feels it so in a small house ! Eldred was so 
 delirious with the sea that I hated having to come home. 
 We had an excellent time, though the very first thing we 
 did was to lose my luggage, and my landlady had to supply 
 me with everything for the night. She was a short, fat 
 woman, and the nightdress reached just below my knees 
 and and my husband wanted me to sleep in his great coat ! " 
 (The tears were standing in her clear eyes now from the 
 laughter of the recollection.) " She was a dear good soul all 
 the same. She looked at me comprehensively, and then she
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 13 
 
 went away and brought me a hand-glass all of her own 
 accord ! " 
 
 " It is plain what she thought of you, Fate ! " said Mrs. 
 Rodney drily, with an appreciative glance at her friend's 
 figure. 
 
 Fate Leroy possessed the quality of being the point of 
 sight to which all perspective lines seemed drawn in any 
 community. She was not really so handsome as Mrs. Carr 
 her figure was no better than Mrs. Rodney's she had not 
 the actual girlish prettiness of Mrs. Hilliard ; but for all that, 
 she was the centre of the group, and the eyes of all the 
 others rested upon her. A tall, fair Englishwoman, whose 
 soul was as clean as her underlinen and whose body was as 
 healthy as her pliant mind. No man ever called her a pretty 
 woman to his neighbour but she never failed to create her 
 impression as she wished it. 
 
 " I do call it so hard ! " she said in whimsical complaint. 
 " When people look at me they never think of the virtuous 
 woman, whose price is above rubies, as they should they 
 go away and fetch looking-glasses ! " 
 
 " It's their way of paying a compliment, dear," said Mrs. 
 Rodney soothingly. " Now don't look at the clock, Fate 
 the train is really not due yet ! " 
 
 " I always know when it is getting near five o'clock by Mrs. 
 Leroy's face ! " said Mrs. Hilliard teasingly. " She cannot 
 keep her eyes off the clock, and becomes every minute more 
 anxious ! Does anything ever prevent your meeting your 
 husband's train, Mrs. Leroy?" 
 
 " He would think that the house was burnt down and my 
 charred ashes amongst the ruins, if I did not ! " said Fate 
 rising, with a happy little smile that made her soft face 
 dimple. For such a tall woman, and one so perfectly self- 
 possessed, she had a singularly young appearance when 
 strictly criticised there was not a hard angle in her features, 
 which were really rather irregular, and if her grey eyes were 
 passionless to the world at large, her lips were crimson and 
 cleft enough to make a man's heart beat quicker a fact of 
 which she did not even seem to be aware. The other women 
 stood round her to say good-bye, as if she were something 
 more to them than merely popular, and Fate, catching sight 
 of the group in a long glass, became suddenly conscious, 
 without any vanity, that there were enough good looks among
 
 I 4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 them to make any nation proud of its women the Middle 
 Class women whose faces are never reproduced at a tilted 
 angle in cheap illustrated papers or magazines. 
 
 " Well, you have done your going away for this year any- 
 how, and I am selfishly glad ! " said Mrs. Rodney, as they 
 shook hands -in that particular circle they were not addicted 
 to kissing. "I am always better pleased when I know that 
 I can get to you in ten minutes on my bicycle ! " 
 
 " Thank you ! " said Fate simply. 
 
 " When are you going to Madeira again, Mrs. Leroy ? " 
 said Mrs. Hilliard, tantalisingly. " I did envy you that trip ! " 
 
 " Oh, we are much too poor to afford it again if a relation 
 of my husband's had not given him the money on condition 
 that he should have at least a few days at sea, we should 
 never have dreamed of it." Mrs. Leroy spoke without dis- 
 content, but there was the shadow of a sigh in her voice. 
 " Rich people do not realise what a wonderful thing it is to 
 see a foreign land," she said quietly. " Eldred and I live on 
 the memory I believe we have an idea that we shall go to 
 Madeira when we die, if we are good and spend very little 
 money here below ! " 
 
 " The sea voyage would be worse than crossing the Styx 
 to me ! " said Mrs. Rodney, with a shudder. " Were you 
 very ill?" 
 
 " Very ! I never came on deck but somehow one forgets 
 all that, and remembers only the wonderful things one saw. 
 We met such nice people too it is strange that you should 
 have mentioned Madeira, for I heard only this morning of a 
 girl I met there and liked so much that we have corresponded 
 ever since. She has come back to England to live with her 
 own people, and it is rather an interesting household I think. 
 They are rolling in money, but oh, I must go ! I have 
 only five minutes ! " and Mrs. Leroy's flying skirts disappeared 
 down the hall without waiting for the temporary little maid 
 to show her out, or heeding her friends' laughter. 
 
 She slipped down the narrow strip of garden, closed the 
 gate behind her with a click, and hurried along the unfinished 
 suburban road, where the dreadful little villas were ranged 
 in rows, and inhabited many of them by her personal 
 friends women as gently bred, as courteous, as those she had 
 just left, whose education directed their eager vitality to pant 
 a little after a wider world than Sunnington, but whose cir-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 15 
 
 cumstances taught and trained them to endurance by the sheer 
 necessity of making a narrow income suffice for husband and 
 children, which absorbed all superfluous energies. There 
 was a certain " house-pride " in those modern women, in- 
 herited from a simpler and more domestic age ; the rigor- 
 ously well-kept air of the little houses, which at least 
 mitigated their hideousness to anyone loving law and order, 
 gave Mrs. Leroy a small pang of sympathy for the decent 
 self-respect it dumbly testified. There was hardly an income 
 in that little road which rose to over five hundred a year, 
 but by a process of selection she had gathered a circle round 
 her which contained no inharmonious element, though some 
 in it were worse and some better off than herself. She was 
 emphatically a woman who made her own world, and from 
 knowing most of the really rich people in the popular suburb 
 she had quietly extricated herself, finding that their wealth 
 had not improved them to her taste. Having no children 
 of her own, she was rather better off than her neighbours in 
 the road she was just leaving, and her husband's salary of 
 seven hundred went far enough in her hands to enable them 
 to live in a more desirable position and to be credited with 
 at least a thousand by people with fatter incomes who would 
 fain have known her. 
 
 The train was not yet in when Mrs. Leroy arrived on the 
 platform, and she drew her quickened breath more easily. 
 Her hurried walk from Mrs. Rodney's house to the station 
 had left her no chance to notice, as she was generally forced 
 to do, that her progress was closely attended by masculine 
 eyes. From her girlhood she was at this time nearly thirty 
 Fate Leroy had been the inevitable object of street atten- 
 tion, which had become such a usual matter to her mind 
 that she could comfortably ignore it save when it became 
 intrusive. Then her fair brown head went a shade higher, 
 her grey eyes were like unto hard stone, and her blood 
 surged along her veins in a secret fury that her almost lifeless 
 exterior never betrayed. A clean woman, too busy with her 
 own life to be beguiled into wandering glances, it seemed to 
 her that the audacity of male admiration was a species of 
 insult when uninvited. She had an instance, on this occasion, 
 and as usual it fretted her to anger. A thick-set man, of an 
 age when womanhood, like wine, must be ripe to appeal, 
 followed Mrs. Leroy's graceful figure up the platform, paused
 
 16 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 when she paused, and suddenly looked hard into her face. 
 Without the least consciousness of expression, she slowly 
 turned a sloping shoulder to him, and kept her easy waiting 
 attitude, not giving an inch of ground. But her heart began 
 a more rapid beating than that engendered by her quick 
 walk, and her breast rose and fell with one long breath of 
 relief as the curve of the down train shot into green distance 
 up the line. Behind her the beast of prey also kept his 
 ground, leaning half an inch nearer to the repellent shoulder, 
 until with a swift movement Mrs. Leroy had shot herself 
 across the intervening platform at the carriage doors, and 
 almost into the arms of two men descending from a first-class 
 smoking compartment, both of whom raised their hats. 
 
 " Hulloa, Babs ! I've brought Vaughan down with me," 
 said the first who had jumped out. Eldred Leroy always 
 addressed his tall wife as if she were but lately out of short 
 frocks. She slipped her hand into his arm, and turned, still 
 panting a little, to meet the keen eyes of the taller man. 
 
 " How are you, Gerald ? " she said cordially. " It is ages 
 since you have been over. How is your sister ? " 
 
 "Much as usual." The keen cold eyes that Vaughan had 
 never removed from her face appeared dissatisfied. " What 
 is the matter ? " he said quietly. " Something upset you 
 before you met us ? " 
 
 " Nothing only a brute of a man who followed me. No, 
 don't look round, Eldred ! Come along, he has gone." 
 
 She almost pushed her husband past the ticket collector, 
 to whom he was too well known to show his Season, for both 
 men had turned with an abrupt " Where ? " " Where is he ? " 
 and their faces threatened trouble. She laughed a little as 
 she stepped between them, and by going forward drew them 
 perforce out of the station to follow her. 
 
 " Nowhere don't make a fuss ! " she said. " There ! I am 
 well escorted." 
 
 She looked from one man to the other, but her glance, 
 which began at Vaughan, forgot him the instant it reached 
 her husband, and her grey eyes were too happy to be cold. 
 She kept her hand in his arm, regardless of the busy road 
 they had to cross to reach their own turning, and went on 
 chatting to both her companions with a facility that threw 
 nob'ody out of the conversation. 
 
 " Eldred, whom do you think I heard from this morning ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 17 
 
 " Can't think my people or yours ? " 
 
 " Neither. Don't throw away your cigarette, Gerald. It 
 is sinful waste ! That girl whom we met in Madeira Miss 
 Mornington. She is in England at last with her own people, 
 and wants to come down and see us." 
 
 "Does she?" said Eldred with new interest. "I should 
 like to see her again they were nice people. I liked Lady 
 Helen she was a dear old soul ! A regular Grande Dame, 
 you know, Gerald, with the most charming manners. I 
 used to go up there to sing for her, and she would sit and 
 listen for an hour, and then offer me old Madeira on account 
 of my throat ! " With an instinct of happy mimicry he re- 
 produced the courteous old voice lingering in his memory, 
 and then laughed boyishly. There was an extraordinary 
 impression of youth and a simplicity of bearing about Eldred 
 Leroy that caused people to think him younger than he really 
 was, an illusion increased by his being clean-shaven. 
 Strangers rarely knew whether he were good looking, and 
 they never thought about his being a gentleman the very 
 lack of ostentation in him made it seem inevitable. He was 
 not much above the middle height, and his wife's head was 
 nearly on a level with his own. 
 
 " Lady Helen adored Eldred ! " said Fate with intentional 
 exaggeration. " They used to flirt disgracefully while I 
 talked to the niece. That was how it was I came to know 
 her better than I might otherwise have done, and she has 
 always seemed to wish to keep up the acquaintance." 
 
 Vaughan raised his eyebrows rather cynically, and thereby 
 dropped the eyeglass that was usually screwed under one of 
 them. 
 
 " You seem very suddenly modest," he remarked in a 
 voice which had a peculiar croak in it and drew people's 
 attention before his face did. " I don't, of course, wish to 
 make you vain, but people have been known who were willing 
 to cultivate you before." 
 
 "Well, never mind that! She interested me, and so I 
 cultivated her. I could not quite make out the situation- 
 she was only connected with Lady Helen, who was her god- 
 mother, and she had a father and mother in England whom 
 she never even visited ! " 
 
 " They were rolling in money," interpolated Eldred. " It 
 was awfully odd altogether. Her father is Mornington,
 
 1 8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 the man who invented the cart-wheel you remember, 
 Vaughan ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I know the name, of course. Is the daughter 
 also a Grande Dame?" 
 
 " Well, she was only a girl but yes ! I think she is 
 rather," said Fate, after consideration. " She has the same 
 manner naturally, always living with Lady Helen, she has 
 caught the ways of the last generation of the aristocracy, of 
 which I think the old lady was a real type. She happens 
 to be of an impressive build too ! " 
 
 Vaughan made a little impatient sound, like the champ 
 of a restive horse. " I know what you mean the sort of 
 girl a coster would call a whopper ! " 
 
 " But I don't mean ! " expostulated Fate, too much in 
 earnest to be careful of her English. " Not in that way, at 
 any rate. Patricia Mornington is not much taller than I am, 
 but she is not so slight either. She will have a magnificent 
 figure some day which of course appeals to you, as a 
 man!" 
 
 Mrs. Leroy was intentionally malicious. The gibe told on 
 Vaughan's temperament, which was as well known to her as 
 her husband's, and perhaps more plastic in her hands. He 
 shifted the glass from his right to his left eye, and glared 
 down upon her apparently unconscious face. 
 
 " May I ask why I am relegated suddenly to mere mascu- 
 linity, with appetites rather than a mind ? " he said irritably. 
 " Your Patricia is an offence to me by reason of all her 
 attributes grossness of body, and grossness of circum- 
 stances. She is too prosperous to please a failure like my- 
 self she will come down here to intrude her prosperity, and 
 patronise you ! " 
 
 " Patronise me? " said Mrs. Leroy with gentle incredulity. 
 " Dear Gerald, you are less understanding than I thought ! 
 Besides which, Patricia Mornington is not gross in mind, 
 body, or estate. She happens to be a well-bred woman with 
 an interesting personality." 
 
 " I detest women who are labelled interesting ! " said 
 Vaughan, in the pettish manner of a spoiled child. 
 
 " She was an awfully nice girl, really ! " remarked Eldred, 
 with literal simplicity of diction. " I never knew anyone 
 who put on less side. And she came of rather good family, 
 I think wasn't her mother Lady Someone, Babs ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 19 
 
 " Lady Vera Blais. I gather that she is rather a loud, 
 smart person, who is fashionably estranged from her husband. 
 Didn't you think so, Eldred? I don't exactly know how we 
 came to that conclusion, for neither Lady Helen nor Patricia 
 ever talked much of their private affairs." 
 
 " A highflyer at fashion, as that delightful soul Mr. Boffin 
 explained it once and for ever! Well, I do not like your 
 Patricia Mornington any the better for the world to which 
 she belongs. Society is simply another name for vulgarity 
 nowadays." 
 
 " Don't be prejudiced, Gerald. If you are, I know you 
 will never see any good in her should you chance to meet, 
 charm she never so wisely." 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " said Vaughan, with his characteristic 
 croak intensified, as he unlatched her own gate for her, and 
 followed both his host and hostess slowly up the little path 
 to a porched doorway. "If I meet your Patricia the evil 
 spirit in me will advise me to suppress her for the good of 
 our two souls I know it will. Eldred, that rose of yours 
 needs pruning." 
 
 " It wants nailing up that's what's the matter with it," 
 said Leroy, standing back to survey his own premises. " I 
 believe I've just time before dinner, Babs. I'll get the steps. 
 Oh, by the way " he waited a moment in the hall as his wife 
 and Vaughan strolled into the drawing-room "you might 
 ask Mary to get them instead. They are in the bicycle-shed." 
 
 Fate turned rather hastily and indicated a silver box lying 
 on a side table. "Will you smoke a cigarette, Gerald? just 
 while I see to Eldred's wants," she said, and without waiting 
 for a reply, passed out into the hall again, and closed the 
 door, carefully shutting Vaughan into the drawing-room and 
 out of sight. 
 
 The minute she had done so, Leroy turned from the stand 
 where he had been elaborately hanging up his hat, and the 
 two seemed to melt into each other's arms by a mutual 
 impulse. There was a slightly guilty air about them as they 
 drew breath after their first long kiss, and half a glance at 
 the closed door. 
 
 " I haven't seen you all day long," whispered Fate, in self- 
 defence, though he had certainly made no accusation. 
 
 " I know ! " he whispered back. " Oh, you foolish Babs ! 
 Did you miss me, sweetheart ? "
 
 20 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Of course I did ! " They looked into each other's eyes 
 and laughed. 
 
 " I didn't really want Mary or the steps ! " said Eldred, 
 framing his wife's cool, sweet face in hands which were 
 faintly reminiscent of tobacco. Fate thought it quite a hate- 
 ful scent if it lingered about other men, but in Eldred's case 
 she found it merely delightful, and nestled her chin into the 
 strong palms. 
 
 " Of course I knew you didn't ! How silly you are to think 
 I shouldn't know. Eldred ! " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " How Gerald would snort if he knew that we were standing 
 just outside that door like this ! " 
 
 " I bet you five to one he guesses ! " said Leroy, his rather 
 shrewd blue eyes set in wrinkles of laughter. 
 
 A sound from the drawing-room a step approaching the 
 door made them fall decorously apart. There was a flutter 
 of skirts as Mrs. Leroy flew down the passage to the kitchen, 
 and the striking of a match as Leroy lit a superfluous 
 cigarette but it is unlikely that Gerald Vaughan was de- 
 ceived, for he had known Eldred and his wife for seven of the 
 eight years during which they had been married, and had 
 found no alteration in their marital attitude. Being a bache- 
 lor, it is probable that he wondered a little ; but being a man 
 it is more probable that it gnawed the flesh of his own 
 discontent. 
 
 Dinner took place under the auspices of wax candles, 
 despite the daylight dying in the little garden outside the 
 open windows. It was a harmonious trio who sat down 
 to four innocuous courses, Vaughan being so often a 
 third in the party that it seemed as if his presence 
 completed rather than added a discordant note to the melody 
 of this household. His seat was facing the windows, and the 
 fading sunset struggled with the lights upon the dinner table 
 to bring out the lines of weariness and disappointment in his 
 face. For he did not bear the record of a satisfied person- 
 ality about him, and perhaps in describing himself as a failure, 
 he struck upon a deeper truth than mere disadvantage of 
 circumstances. The same temperament that made him over- 
 sensitive made him also honourable he saw the pattern of 
 existence too plainly to deceive himself as to its ultimate 
 effects, and he could not shuffle his knowledge of right and
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 21 
 
 wrong, even to himself. If it had not been for a sense of 
 humour, the world would have found him yet more vulner- 
 able. As it was, he counted himself a failure and shrugged 
 his shoulders. He was by profession an electrical engineer, 
 which is very like other professions, only rather more so. 
 For if a man does not like the practice as well as the theory 
 of his work he will never be a success, and Vaughan objected 
 to soiling his hands with the practice. Being by nature con- 
 scientious, and having the hard common sense of the class 
 that works rubbed into him by necessity, he had gone through 
 the shops when an improver with a more rigid attention to 
 detail than many other boys, and had learned his work 
 thoroughly which, however, is quite compatible with finding 
 it uncongenial to the bitter end. When his business day was 
 over, and a welcome five or six o'clock found him out at his 
 own home, or at Sunnington, it was noticeable that he never 
 talked shop as some amongst his friends did ; he was secretly 
 glad to forget his profession as soon as possible. Eldred, 
 by nature a creator and driver of machinery, bored a patient 
 audience far more often with alternators, internal combustion 
 engines, and tubular boilers, than Vaughan, to whom they 
 were prosaically familiar things, but not the medium in which 
 his soul found expression. For a time Vaughan had been 
 connected with a big firm, but it was obvious that he would 
 never rise to the position of chief designer, fussily thorough 
 though his work was. He was a theorist, and lacked the 
 practical man's invaluable uses to his employers. So he be- 
 came a consulting engineer, having a little capital, and made 
 enough to supplement his own small private means and leave 
 him dissatisfied. The failures of this world are not the vie- 
 tims of a cynical Providence so much as of their own natures. 
 
 " We have been staying with one of Eldred's aunts this 
 summer, Gerald," Fate remarked, as the maid brought in 
 their coffee. "We allowed her to invite us for part of our 
 holiday, for economical reasons, but I think we spent more 
 in mental wear and tear than we gained in hard cash." 
 
 " Staying with an aunt, deliberately, meets with my 
 sympathy no more than any other rash crime," said Vaughan, 
 thoughtfully cracking walnuts. "What could you expect? 
 
 " Well, she deceived me. She looks like a bit of old 
 Dresden china. How could I guess that she would go to 
 church seven times on a Sunday ? "
 
 22 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Oh, that was her ailment, was it ! Poor old lady ! I can 
 see her, in my own mind, more depressed each day with 
 Eldred's heathenism. I hope you had the grace, at least, to 
 be silent, Eldred ? " 
 
 " On my honour I never said a word except to refuse to 
 go to church myself. I wouldn't have hurt her feelings for 
 the world. She makes herself happy in her delusion, that is 
 all ! " There was the most sublime pity and kindness in 
 Leroy's tone, as one who favours the game of a child. 
 
 " Yes, and yet I hardly think it is good for her," said Mrs. 
 Leroy musingly. " I never before knew anyone who grew so 
 dissipated with religious observances. She visibly de- 
 teriorated with the indulgence it was quite amusing. Sun- 
 day was a most immoral day with her. I felt afterwards as 
 if I had been somewhere where they had dined too well, and 
 over-eaten and drunk and smoked. I wanted a brisk walk 
 and a cold bath on Mondays to resuscitate. Nevertheless, I 
 hope I may look as charming as she does when I am an old 
 lady." 
 
 " You will be such a pretty old lady ! " said Vaughan, with 
 the shadow of a caress in his voice. " Not a bit like old 
 china more like an ideal Quaker-grandmother, I think. 
 Don't you, Eldred ? " 
 
 Both men looked at her in her blooming youth and health, 
 and their eyes gave her an affectionate trust that whatever 
 age took from her, it would not take their pleasure in con- 
 templating her face. She smiled in a quiet intuitive fashion, 
 that was purely feminine. 
 
 " I think she will be more of a Grande Dame not like 
 Lady Helen, but of that type," said Eldred fondly. 
 
 Again Vaughan made that restive movement that was 
 almost childish. 
 
 " Oh, for heaven's sake do not let us drift back to Patricia 
 Mornington ! " he said, whimsically impatient. " I feel as if 
 she were already the serpent in my pet Eden ! I know she 
 will come wriggling down here in her objectionable affluence 
 to ogle Eldred and poison Fate's tea-cup." 
 
 He was interrupted by a burst of laughter from either end 
 of the table. 
 
 " Patricia ogling anyone is too funny to think about ! " 
 said Fate. " But apart from that, I really believe she loves 
 me far more than she does Eldred. Come and smoke in the
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 23 
 
 porch, Gerald your dinner is disagreeing with you for lack 
 of fresh air." 
 
 There was a quick movement from both men towards the 
 drawing-room, where, through the open doorway, was visible 
 a rustic bamboo chair which was usually carried out on to 
 the front doorsteps for Mrs. Leroy when the trio sat there in 
 the summer evenings. Vaughan was nearer the door and 
 would have reached it first, but for a second he hesitated, 
 seeing that his host had also moved. Leroy did not hesitate 
 for an instant; he passed the other man, lifted the chair and 
 carried it out for his wife as a matter of course, and his un- 
 questioned privilege. Vaughan drew up his tall, spare figure 
 to its fullest height, and stared out to the July night as if 
 nothing had occurred. Mrs. Leroy, whose back had been 
 turned to both men, could hardly have possessed eyes at the 
 back of her head ; yet there might have been a sixth sense 
 the feminine sense in the little rings of hair at the nape of 
 her neck, for she smiled as if a trifle amused. 
 
 " Haven't you any news for us ? " said Vaughan, leaning 
 one flat shoulder against the porch and evidently content to 
 stand beside her. "We have laboured all day in the sweat 
 of our brows, and have eaten far too much dinner, and now 
 we want to be amused." 
 
 " It sounds like the people who waxed fat and kicked ! I 
 don't think I approve your mental attitude, but I will do my 
 best. I called on Mrs. Rodney this afternoon ah ! that 
 reminds me ! " she added, tying a knot carefully in the corner 
 of a small fine handkerchief. 
 
 " You always leave out the interesting points ! " grumbled 
 Vaughan. " I don't want to hear about Mrs. Rodney 
 I can call on her myself any day. And then you tie a 
 knot in a good handkerchief and spoil it and don't tell me 
 why." 
 
 " It is to remind me. I always tie knots in my handker- 
 chiefs to remind me, and sometimes all four corners get 
 knotted up, and then I can't remember what one of them 
 represents. In the present case it is nothing much only a 
 domestic question. Marion wants a maid, and I thought I 
 would go round and ask the Durham girls about one they 
 mentioned. Marion herself is sure not to have time ; she is 
 doing all her own housework, and making pretence with a 
 little " Marchioness " who reaches somewhere up to my waist,
 
 24 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and it is wearing her out. There is nothing so unbecoming 
 as the servant question." 
 
 " Mrs. Rodney is a splendid manager, though," said Eldred, 
 in admiring reminiscence. " D'you remember the night we 
 dined there and their cook got drunk, Babs? Marion Rodney 
 calmly sent her to bed, or left her in a heap on the floor, or 
 something, and tucked up her gown and dished up and 
 brought in the food." 
 
 " Dished up ! " said Mrs. Leroy indignantly. " She cooked 
 it, my dear boy ! And she would not even let me play house- 
 maid and bring in the dishes. She said she was afraid for my 
 gown." 
 
 " Then she sat down and coolly ate the course and carried 
 it out and brought the next," went on Eldred laughing. 
 " She's a good sort, is Marion Rodney." 
 
 " She's a dear ! " said Fate gently. " No one knows how 
 hard she works to make that household run smoothly on next 
 to no money. I sometimes think that marriage is the sternest 
 profession of any." 
 
 " Well, of course, if you expect your wife to be an upper 
 housemaid and cook in general as well as housekeeper ! " 
 Vaughan said in a slightly irritable tone. " That is just what 
 keeps me and other devils like myself out of it. It is not 
 every man who would accept his luck as placidly as Rodney 
 does." 
 
 " Ah ! but he was so much better off when they married, 
 Gerald. That is just where a woman of our class must be 
 ready for ups-and-downs the men have neither capital nor 
 rich relations to fall back upon." 
 
 " I should hate my wife to have to be a kind of white 
 slave," said Vaughan with quiet obstinacy. " Therefore, I 
 should never ask a poor woman to take me. And by the 
 same token I would not marry a rich one, for the simple 
 justice of the thing. I do not think that Gerald Vaughan is 
 such a desirable possession that he is worth rating at a high 
 figure ! Now you understand the escape that somebody has 
 had." 
 
 " I do not wish you to marry in the least," said Mrs. Leroy, 
 with an untruthful assertion of selfishness. " I have had you 
 too long at my beck and call, and a wife would interfere 
 dreadfully. When Eldred is not at hand I always feel that 
 I have you as a subordinate."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 25 
 
 " Unfortunately for me, Eldred always is at hand ! " said 
 Vaughan, lightly. " The selfishness of the modern husband 
 is a scandal no bachelor has a chance to even sample the 
 position by playing escort. Do either of you know it is ten 
 o'clock, and that I have to catch a train to get home ? " 
 
 "I hope your sister will not sit up," said Fate demurely, 
 with a faint spice of wickedness in her tone. " You will 
 catch nothing but the 10.40, so you may as well have a 
 whiskey and soda with Eldred. And don't fall over Phlumpie 
 he is sitting down by the gate. I can see a white blur 
 upon the darkness." 
 
 " He'll get rushed by a dog if he stays there," said Leroy, 
 as he turned back into the hall to fetch the whiskey and soda. 
 He whistled as he did so, and the blur at the gate became 
 detached, and running up the drive resolved itself first into 
 a bundle of white fur that shook as it trotted then into a 
 large white Angora cat. 
 
 " My lamb ! " said Mrs. Leroy, patting him like a dog as he 
 went by. " Did he sit at the gate, and think he was a fierce 
 lion guarding us, then ? " 
 
 But Phlumpie proceeded after his master, and took no 
 heed of her blandishments. He adored Leroy, whom he fol- 
 lowed about like a dog, and if ever there were an expression 
 in his pale, gooseberry eyes that was not quietly contemptuous 
 of humanity, it was when he sat upon Eldred's knee and ate 
 bread daintily from his fingers. 
 
 " Phlumpie is so horridly masculine and indifferent ! " said 
 Mrs. Leroy, complainingly. " He will not take any notice 
 of me." 
 
 " Well really ! " said Vaughan, with a long breath of ex- 
 asperation. "You do say the most outrageous things! Con- 
 sidering that in your case masculinity and indifference are an 
 unknown combination, I think you ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself." 
 
 " But, Gerald, I can't attract a man who doesn't appeal to 
 me in some way, really ! That is just what I complain of 
 Providence might have made me all-conquering. There was 
 that man at Mrs. Rodney's the other night " 
 
 " Hodder ! He walked to the station with me and 
 drivelled about you the whole way. But pray go on." 
 
 " Well, of course I didn't know that ! and he said pretty 
 things about me to Marion Rodney, but then that was to
 
 26 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 please her. If he had really thought them he would have 
 lied, wouldn't he ? " 
 
 Vaughan's usually unresponsive eyes gave a quick, cold 
 flash as they rested on her face ; but her own glance was out 
 in the night, amongst the stars that were beginning to twinkle 
 over the tree tops. The woman who will not see is perchance 
 absolved by her own conscience ; but the woman who really 
 does not see, is, one may suppose, absolved by a higher 
 tribunal still. 
 
 " I hope you cannot always hear what is in people's minds ! " 
 he said rather suddenly. 
 
 "I have no 1 great intuition, really. I was only sup- 
 posing Mr. Hodder the ordinary man, who is a secretive 
 animal." 
 
 " Well, what would you have ? Plain speaking is a luxury 
 which only the very few are fortunate enough to afford. 
 
 And you would be the very first to condemn " He broke 
 
 off with a half vexed, half impatient laugh as Leroy re- 
 appeared with the whiskey and soda. 
 
 " You'll just catch your train if you go at once, Gerald," 
 he said. " Oh, you have time for the whiskey I didn't 
 mean that ! You'll excuse my coming to the station, won't 
 you?" 
 
 " Of course, old man ! " There was a shade of something 
 that might have been remorse, had it been less elusive, in 
 Vaughan's manner. He laid his hand on Eldred's shoulder 
 almost affectionately, and a little dissatisfied look crept into 
 his hard eyes. There was no answering remorse in Mrs. 
 Leroy, possibly because she was perfectly unconscious of any 
 such mental attitude in Vaughan, and had certainly no cor- 
 responding sense of guilt, though never so faint, to match it. 
 She was, in fact, waiting for him to go, and though her soft 
 smile was not in the least impatient as they shook hands, she 
 heard the gate click after him with satisfaction, and the 
 sound of his crisp step along the road dying into distance 
 took the thought of him along with it, out of her mind. 
 
 There was no light in the hall behind herself and Eldred, 
 and it was dark on the doorstep. Overhead a July sky was 
 thickly strewn with stars, but their light was faint and there 
 was no intrusive moon. Why lovers should be proverbially 
 attached to the moon is a mystery. Her light is far too 
 searching to be satisfactory, and she has an embarrassing
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 27 
 
 habit of illuminating dark corners almost as well as electric 
 light. 
 
 Fate drew a long breath of content as she slipped her arm 
 into her husband's and leaned her head back against his 
 shoulder. Her eyes, raised in dreamy satisfaction to the 
 night sky, forgot it the next instant because the face near her 
 was more dearly human to gaze upon. The loveliness of the 
 world was only a scenic background they had each other, 
 and the real universe was there. 
 
 " Tired, Babs ? " he said softly, and the musical voice was 
 utterly tender. 
 
 " No only happy ! " said Mrs. Leroy. " Eldred, is it 
 possible that we have been married eight years ? " 
 " Yes. It doesn't seem so much, does it ? " 
 " It seems only like a very beautiful summer day ! " 
 There was no light in the hall behind them, it is true, but 
 cats do not require light by which to see and to be 
 scandalised. Phlumpie, rubbing a whiskered face round the 
 open door, regarded them with pale, gooseberry eyes that 
 seemed to express an unlimited contempt. If he had spoken, 
 it is probable that he would have said they ought to be 
 ashamed of themselves considering that they had been 
 married eight years ! But Phlumpie was an aristocrat of his 
 species, and nearly thoroughbred. Neither his sympathies 
 nor his understanding were with demonstrative affection be- 
 tween husband and wife.
 
 28 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " She moves about my world, soullessly real, 
 She is most sad in that she is most gay ; 
 Her face is shadowed with my lost ideal, 
 Touched by the tragedy of Every Day." 
 
 The Living Deaa. 
 
 " CHIFFON ! " 
 
 "Nougat!" 
 
 The butler had really retired after announcing Miss Morn- 
 ington, which was good of him, because all Lady Harbinger's 
 household were very interested in their mistress, and every- 
 one of the servants knew of her friendship with Patricia 
 Mornington, besides many other things about that lady 
 which were supposed to be family secrets. Therefore the 
 Harbinger butler deserved an increase in his wages for the 
 prompt manner in which he closed the door and left the 
 two women motionless in the room, looking at each other 
 with instinctive curiosity across the barrier of six years, for 
 the friendship stood practically where it had stood when 
 they left school together. 
 
 Lady Harbinger had been sitting, according to her custom, 
 upon a divan on the further side of the room. All the 
 available cushions had been piled round and behind her 
 small figure, and her pretty fawn toes dangled half a foot 
 above the floor, for she was short and the divan was wide. 
 She was reading the Morning Post and smoking a Dimitrino 
 of a quality which made itself instantly perceptible to the 
 appreciative nostrils of her guest. The Post tumbled on to 
 the floor, and the cigarette fell into the ash-tray, as she 
 came forward with a little rush and then half hesitated. 
 
 On the other hand, Patricia Mornington had advanced some 
 way into the wide room before she also slackened her step, 
 and looked with half quizzical eyes at Lady Harbinger eyes
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 29 
 
 which were somehow as quizzical of herself as of her friend. 
 She was built on a scale as completely large as Lady Har- 
 binger was completely small, and the contrast seemed to 
 strike them both, for they broke into a simultaneous laugh. 
 
 " Nougat, how tall you are ! " said Lady Harbinger with 
 a gasp, and then she finished her interrupted rush forward 
 and put her arms round Miss Mornington and kissed her 
 warmly. 
 
 "I might retort, Chiffon, how small you are!" said Miss 
 Mornington fondly, looking down on the slighter girl after 
 the close, silent embrace. " My dear, I have evidently for- 
 gotten you I expected a mature married woman, and you 
 look much younger than when we left St. Clare's ! " 
 
 " What nonsense ! but I believe I do look young. I am 
 very old really, you know, Nougat. I have been married 
 for the last four years, and my daughter is three years old ! " 
 
 She broke into the heartiest and most charming laugh, 
 and pushed the golden hair out of her dancing eyes. One 
 could as perfectly understand why she had been nicknamed 
 " Chiffon," after the first glance at her, as the suitability of 
 her friend's designation became obvious after a longer 
 acquaintance. At first sight, Patricia Mornington appeared 
 an impossible person to nick-name; no one had ever called 
 her " Pat " or " Pattie," even as a child, and she had no 
 sobriquet of characteristics or adventures. But the knack 
 of the schoolgirl had defied ordinary canons. At the Con- 
 vent of St. Clare, where she had met and loved with Cicily 
 Chilcote, the two girls had, it seemed, evolved their own 
 contractions of "Chiffon" and "Nougat." There was some- 
 thing in the creamy, solid substance of the favourite sweet- 
 meat which quick-witted schoolmates recognised in Patricia's 
 character. She was sweet to taste, but not mawkish; full 
 of delightful surprises, that might be bitter almond or rare 
 pistachio nut ; a trifle slow to masticate, a bon-bon to muse 
 over and suck with gradual enjoyment no sugary fondant 
 or ephemeral candy. Nougat she had been by natural evolu- 
 tion, and Nougat she would always be to the feminine in- 
 tuition that knew her intimately. 
 
 " It seems impossible that all these things can have hap- 
 pened since we parted ! " Patricia said slowly, with a long 
 breath. "You look so absurdly young! Chiffon, isn't it 
 characteristic of the English Social World, that we have both
 
 30 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 been at home for some weeks and have not met to have 
 a talk until now? Beyond catching sight of you the other 
 night at the Havershams, and once in a box at the Opera, 
 we have not met ! " 
 
 " It may be characteristic, but it is an abominable shame ! " 
 said Lady Harbinger energetically. " I have called three 
 times I really have, Nougat ! and once I saw Mr. Morn- 
 ington just going off to his Club, and twice I saw the butler ! 
 But never you. Where have you been?" 
 
 " If you asked where I have not been, I could tell you 
 more easily. I knew nothing of English Society, and so for 
 this first plunge into it I allowed my mother to be my guide. 
 I have not decided yet what my own particular circle is going 
 to be. By and by, I shall weed out my visiting list, I sup- 
 pose, and have my own friends." 
 
 She spoke with an unruffled certainty, that made Chiffon 
 look at her a trifle curiously. Anyone knowing Lady Vera 
 Mornington would have been emphatic in their assertion that 
 her daughter's set would certainly be hers, and that she 
 would lead and direct all their social life at least. And yet 
 Chiffon, looking at her friend's firm lips and quiet con- 
 templative eyes, realised that here was a woman, mature in 
 her tastes and character, and quite full of intention to follow 
 her own bent no malleable schoolgirl for Lady Vera to 
 stamp with her own image and superscription. In a flash 
 she reviewed both characters as she knew them and won- 
 dered. But her knowledge of Lady Vera was much more 
 recent than that of Nougat, and in consequence the older 
 woman impressed her with more sense of power than the 
 younger. 
 
 " I wonder if you will ? " she said musingly. " We must 
 go with the herd a vulgar expression, but one that suggests 
 the influence your connections have upon you. They have 
 already made your world by the time you are grown up, and 
 you step into it. Only, of course, you are older than I 
 was ?" 
 
 " I am much older than you ever will be ! " said Patricia, 
 with a low laugh. "And I am a most opinionated mortal, 
 I assure you. It is partly your own fault that we have not 
 met until the season is practically over, Chiffon you most 
 unfashionably remained out of town jmtiJ the beginning of 
 July."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 31 
 
 " We could not help it Bobby's mother was so ill at 
 Nice. We dragged on there week after week, both longing 
 to come home, and really wishing that she would make up 
 her mind either to die or get better! Well, anyhow, they 
 say people will stop in town into August, on account of the 
 Session, so we shan't be quite deserted. I hope you won't 
 go yet, Nougat ? " 
 
 " I don't quite know what we shall do. We so often motor 
 into the country, either for the day or the inside of a week, 
 that it seems to be quite unnecessary to pack up and 
 make a solemn exodus. You are staying for the present, 
 then?" 
 
 " My dear, I am positively in rags ! I must get some 
 clothes. We did not stop in Paris on our way home, or I 
 could have done everything so satisfactorily. I go to Lady 
 Vera's tailor now ! " 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Don't clothes interest you, Nougat? You said that with 
 such supreme indifference; but everyone knows that your 
 mother is one of the best-dressed women in London ! " 
 
 " Suppose we sit down, and then we can discuss every- 
 thing comfortably from frocks to former loves. (Will you 
 ever forget falling in love with a gendarme, and our disgust 
 when he preferred the cook?) I know, of course, that I ought 
 to wait for you to ask me, but past knowledge of you tells 
 me that we should both be standing here until midnight, if 
 I did not make a move." 
 
 " I never could remember to sit down when I was excited ! " 
 said Lady Harbinger remorsefully. " My feet keep itching 
 to run about! Come and sit on the divan and curl your 
 feet up like a Turk, if you are not too tall. I usually kick 
 my shoes off, and then they get lost and the footman finds 
 them in embarrassing situations ! " 
 
 .She gave a wicked little laugh, and tucked herself up into 
 a corner of the wide seat, settling three cushions into the 
 hollow of her small shoulders, and leaning her head back 
 against a heavy fall of curtain behind her. The spun gold 
 of her hair was delicious, thrown up by the dark blue of 
 the velvet. Patricia looked her all over with fond admiring 
 eyes. 
 
 " You dear little thing ! " she said slowly. " How pretty 
 an Englishwoman can be ! One needs to live abroad for
 
 32 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 years, and get used to uncleanly skins and pert expressions, 
 to appreciate you properly." 
 
 Chiffon opened her eyes a little wider, and laughed with 
 amused surprise. Her skin had the cool, downy quality of 
 a child's, and the fluffy hair and half questioning, half affec- 
 tionate way in which she looked up at larger humanity, made 
 her seem preposterously young. 
 
 " You dear old Nougat ! how silly you are ! " she said 
 with a little gurgle of merriment. " Take the other half of 
 the cushions there! now we can talk. Bobby and I are 
 awfully extravagant over cushions. We say ' Do let us each 
 have enough ! ' and as we both want half a dozen, this room 
 is rather over-run with them." 
 
 " It is a charming room, though ! " said Patricia apprecia- 
 tively. " It looks as if you lived in it, and did not call it 
 anything in particular. I detest the British custom of a 
 set apartment for the diversions of the day it is like locking 
 your life up in sectional cupboards. Now here " she flung 
 out her hand with a regal gesture which seemed natural to 
 her " here one feels that if you called it a library, someone 
 would promptly smoke in it, and if a smoking-room they 
 would at once write letters." 
 
 " It is just that ! " Chiffon nodded. " We keep the draw- 
 ing-rooms for functions, well, I am always there when I 
 want to be stiff to people, too but we sit here when we are 
 alone, and we bring our best friends in. I don't know who 
 that writing-table really belongs to, and we quarrel over its 
 possession; and Bobby says he is afraid to leave his 
 cigarettes about, I use them up so fast. I don't mean him 
 to have any of these though the Duke of London sent 
 them to me, and they are his special brand." She sniffed 
 the Dimitrinos appreciatively. " The bookcase is behind 
 here " knocking her head lightly against the curtain " all 
 our favourite books are on the upper shelves, so it doesn't 
 matter, but if you want them from below, you have to push 
 yourself in behind the divan." 
 
 " I don't think I should like my books hustled out of sight 
 like that ! It seems like being ashamed of old friends." 
 
 " Oh, well, I never have time to read anything unless 
 there's a novel that is really talked about." 
 
 " No, perhaps not ! " said Nougat, her eyes considering 
 the flashing panorama of the past three months, in her
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 33 
 
 memory. "I think you may be right. We don't have time 
 to read anything, do we! We hardly have time to live." 
 
 " I read a good deal in the country during the shooting 
 I do really ! " Chiffon laughed again, nuzzling her fair head 
 into the curtains. " But one never gets a chance to sit down 
 and really get into a book in town. Now do talk, Nougat ! 
 Tell me about yourself do you know I haven't even seen 
 you for four years, and then it was only an unsatisfactory 
 glimpse ! " 
 
 "The last time was in Madrid, wasn't it? When we 
 stumbled across each other in the Plaza Major ? " 
 
 " Yes ; oh I did so enjoy that tour ! I loved Spain. It 
 was much nicer than my honeymoon, because Bobby and I 
 were so strange then that we were afraid of even borrowing 
 a piastre from each other! I do think it is very hard to 
 send two young people right away from all their mutual 
 friends, shaking with nervousness, and as shy as children at 
 a party!" 
 
 " I don't know much about your marriage, Chiffon. Do 
 you remember how we used to talk at St. Clare? It was 
 always I who was to marry for ambition, and you who were 
 to marry for love ! Here you see Fortune is already proving 
 us wrong in detail, for your love-match always pre-supposed a 
 beggar, and you are a Countess ! " 
 
 "The dear old Convent! I shall never quite forgive the 
 French Government for turning out the Sceurs. You know it 
 is all gone, Nougat? We stayed in Paris at Easter, on our 
 way to Nice, and I went to the Faubourg I wish I had not ! " 
 
 " It is always a disappointment to go back somehow. 
 Even if things are just the same, one is altered in oneself. 
 You treated me very badly when you married, by the way. 
 You wrote me the bare fact and told me nothing more." 
 
 " There was nothing to tell really there wasn't." Chiffon 
 shrugged her shoulders. " I met Lord Harbinger at a state 
 ball and he trod on my toes and I hated him ! (Bobby never 
 will learn to dance !) Then we kept on meeting all through 
 that season, and hardly knew the other existed oh, you can 
 see for yourself how it is! Does one ever seem to meet 
 people except in gasps ? But in the autumn I went to stay at 
 Longmead Uncle Harry's place you know. And Bobby 
 came for a week's shooting and stopped a month ! It was 
 disgraceful of him, and I am sure they all wished he would 
 
 3
 
 34 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 go we've often laughed over it since And he asked me 
 to marry him in a turnip field could anything be more 
 prosaic? Oh, Nougat, how badly men do propose, and 
 how stupidly they can make love ! I longed to be a man just 
 for five minutes to show Bobby how to do it ! " 
 
 " Chiffon ! and is that all?" 
 
 " Yes, all except that it is very nice being a Countess ! 
 It really is I don't mind telling you the truth ! " 
 
 The honesty of the blue eyes was irresistible. Patricia 
 laid her hand caressingly on the pretty ankle peeping below 
 the short skirts and the frills that seemed indivisible from 
 Chiffon. 
 
 " I am quite sure it is ! " she said calmly. " In fact I am 
 dying of envy of you can't you see it through my thin dis- 
 guise of pretended rectitude? If the Duke of London were 
 only unmarried ! " 
 
 " The dear old Duke ! Where did you meet him ? " 
 
 " Only the other night, when we had what threatened to 
 be a stupid dinner of people who were all so connected 
 with each other that one could not breathe a name and not 
 be rude. I fixed my eyes upon the menu, and talked 
 agriculture, or cattle farming, or preserving, just as the 
 courses suggested to my mind. It was really the only safe 
 way to steer clear of family ties." 
 
 "Isn't it dreadful! I get Bobby to warn me sometimes 
 when we are dining out. But you know three pages of 
 Burke will give you some idea of the hopeless tangle all 
 the big families are in. I'm sure I don't know who is not 
 a cousin of ours in a distant degree Howards, and Ben- 
 tincks, and Cavendishes and Manners ! But what about the 
 Duke?" 
 
 " I sat next to him by favour of my good genius, and fell 
 madly in love. We liked each other 'right away,' as the 
 Americans say, and on the strength of the inevitable relation- 
 ship I am going to have tea with him some day when he is 
 well enough his chambers are all but next door to us, you 
 know." 
 
 "Poor old darling! he is delightful, isn't he? Somehow" 
 Chiffon wrinkled a pretty forehead " he is quite a different 
 stamp to the younger men, even of his own family. He 
 seems as if he belongs to another race of beings." k 
 
 " He belongs to the old Aristocracy that Aunt Helen knew.*
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 35 
 
 Of course there may be a certain set that keep to such 
 traditions even now, but as my mother does not happen to 
 affect them, they might be inhabitants of Mars for all they 
 enter our circle ! The Duke is the only person I have en- 
 countered who strikes me as being a nobleman because he 
 cannot help it, and feeling it incumbent on him to be a 
 gentleman also under the circumstances. The rest are 
 well, what are they, I wonder?" 
 
 "Lady Vera is a very smart woman you know, Nougat! 
 And she is always in the front of things." 
 
 "Yes." There was neither denial nor assent in the mono- 
 syllable. It would appear that the acknowledged rapidity 
 and advance of Lady Vera Mornington's circle did not 
 interest her daughter. At all events she did not discuss it. 
 She went back quietly to the subject of the Duke. 
 
 " I am so sorry I have not met the Duke until now ! Just 
 think I have been in London nearly three months, and 
 have not had the luck to know him until the other night. 
 I did my best to make up for lost time, certainly ! " 
 
 " I am so sorry for the man who took you in ! It could 
 not of course have been the Duke who was it?" 
 
 "Caryl Lexiter another connection, of course! Do you 
 know him? But no doubt you do. I have not met a single 
 woman yet who did not know him well enough to call him 
 Car!" 
 
 " Yes, I know him ; but I don't call him Car ! " said Lady 
 Harbinger lightly. She was not looking at Patricia now, 
 but was twisting the half hoop of diamonds round and round 
 her finger, and the broad wedding ring that was too loose 
 without a guard. "We were yachting with him last year 
 on Mr. Carberry's yacht. I suppose you see a good deal 
 of Mr. Lexiter?" 
 
 " Indeed we do ! He is like a tame cat about the house. 
 I think I found him purring on the hearthrug from the first 
 day I set foot in it. He does not trouble me at all, in 
 spite of his emphatic bodily presence. Perhaps his adapta- 
 bility is his best quality, but we get on together excellently 
 because neither cares a straw about the other." 
 
 " Even to neglect at the dinner table ! How did the Duke 
 behave? I believe he loathes Mr. Lexiter!" 
 
 " If he does he disguises it admirably. Nothing could be 
 sweeter than his manner."
 
 36 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Oh, his manners are always perfect. But he can say the 
 most bitterly cynical things ! " 
 
 " So I have discovered. But they were the sauce piquante 
 to our conversation. He amused me so admirably that I 
 discovered how bored I had been for the past two months 
 at least. At first the novelty of London disguised its utterly 
 wearisome monotony. By the way, what and where is the 
 Duchess?" 
 
 " Oh, my dear Nougat, she is a fat woman with a devil 
 of energy in her, which finds expression in innumerable 
 charities! She spends almost all her time at Hyde their 
 big place down in Dorsetshire, where the Duke never goes 
 if he can help it. I am afraid that with all his virtues he 
 is not a model landowner ! " 
 
 " He told me that the damp at Hyde nearly killed him 
 he was never out of pain," said Patricia quietly. " One 
 understood. Well ? " 
 
 "Well? Oh, the Duchess. Well, she lives at Hyde 
 practically, and the Duke has his chambers in Piccadilly. 
 They are perfectly friendly, and his courtesy to her is the 
 most charming thing I ever saw! But he always gives me 
 the impression of being immensely relieved when she rushes 
 back to Hyde to get up a Young Woman's Laundry Mission, 
 or a Children's Kindergarten Industry, or something of that 
 sort." 
 
 " She is fat, is she ! " said Patricia thoughtfully. " The 
 Duke said the other night that fat women were like cottages 
 they got in the way and obstructed the view. Don't you 
 know how a cottage may spoil a landscape ? It was old Lady 
 Harley who made him so angry he wanted to point out 
 something to me on the staircase, and she was mounting in 
 front of us. ' That stout lady ' I began. ' That it not a 
 lady it is a cottage ! ' he said disgustedly. And then fol- 
 lowed his explanation." 
 
 "Well, the Duchess is stout enough for two cottages 
 she is a detached villa in her own grounds ! But she gets 
 about wonderfully, in spite of her bulk, and she is quite as 
 active mentally as physically. I cannot fancy her supine. 
 She either likes a thing in earnest or hates it in earnest. 
 There are several things that she hates late suppers, and 
 long skirts, and above all she hates Lord Lowndes ! " 
 
 " He is a friend of the Duke's, I know, but I have only
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 37 
 
 met him at a distance as yet. ' My friend Lowndes says,' was 
 a favourite axiom of the Duke's. When one man uses 
 another as a reference it is a sure sign of intimacy." 
 
 "You haven't met Lord Lowndes? Everyone likes him 
 (except the Duchess) but not so much as they do the Duke, 
 I don't know why the Duchess hates him so, but I think it 
 is because he is so casual, and the Duchess must be serious. 
 Lady Vera calls her the strayed County Councillor, and says 
 she has converted Hyde into an industrial centre ! " 
 
 Patricia smiled politely as one might at a laboured 
 witticism. It was noticeable that it was Chiffon who quoted 
 Lady Vera, and not Lady Vera's daughter. 
 
 "What is your luncheon hour, Chiffon?" she said, and 
 perhaps it was a polite divergence from the subject. " I 
 will stay to luncheon if you ask me; but I have an engage- 
 ment soon after. I told the motor to be here by three." 
 
 " We lunch at any hour we please ! Two for choice, and 
 any other from eleven to four for convenience. Of course 
 you must stay and meet Bobby." She jumped off the divan 
 and rang the bell. " Come up to the nursery and see Rosa- 
 belle while they are getting us a meal. Oh, Williams, I want 
 lunch at once ! Is Lord Harbinger in ? " 
 
 " No, m'lady " the butler always answered Lady Har- 
 binger's bell himself. "His lordship informed me that he 
 would possibly be in at half-past one! " 
 
 "Oh, very well; we won't wait. Williams does love long 
 words ! " she whispered, as she piloted her friend up and 
 down the long London house until they reached the far-off 
 nui series. Such a long way it seemed to Nougat, who 
 wondered if the convenience of being out of earshot of 
 tears or laughter reconciled a woman to banishing her babies 
 to a noiseless distance? Up two flights of stairs, and down 
 a long corridor, and then through swing baize doors, which 
 shut off the prettiest and brightest rooms in the house. 
 Chiffon could not be accused of neglecting her daughter, 
 even if she were precious of her own and her husband's 
 comfort. The wide airy nurseries were rosy and sunny to 
 see and to smell roses on the walls, rosy ribbons looping 
 the dainty white curtains, roses on the carpet, a big bowl 
 of real roses on the table. A white-capped nurse appeared 
 at the rustle of Chiffon's entrance, and came forward smiling. 
 
 "Lady Rosabelle is asleep," she said in a pleasant voice
 
 3 8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 that Patricia liked. There would be no lack of love about 
 a little child with this woman in charge, she judged though 
 it lived at the furthest side of the house from its parents! 
 " We came in from our walk an hour since, and she was so 
 drowsy with the heat that I laid her down to sleep it off 
 before her dinner." 
 
 " Quite right, nurse. Children can't sleep too much, I 
 think ! " Chiffon added to Patricia with a maternal air that 
 suddenly made her friend want to laugh and cry at once. 
 "We won't disturb her; but I must show her to Miss Morn- 
 ington." 
 
 They went softly through an archway leading into a further 
 room, and there in a rosy cot still roses, roses everywhere, 
 for Chiffon's daughter! lay a three-year old baby, the most 
 beautiful thing of all Chiffon's manifold possessions. She 
 was a tiny miniature of Chiffon, this dimpled mite with the 
 closed blue eyes that Patricia took instinctively on trust, and the 
 spun-gold hair flung over the pillow. She bent and kissed the 
 silken rings of hair with a little gasp that betrayed a feeling 
 she could hardly express. Was it fear, or reverence, or 
 perhaps as she glanced at Chiffon disappointment? Yet 
 into the mother's face had crept a tenderness that changed 
 its mischief to a look that was almost as angelic as the child's. 
 
 "Isn't she a darling?" she whispered to Nougat, in an 
 ecstasy. " And you don't know how funny and sweet she is 
 when she is awake! Bobby and I adore the Rosebud I 
 wish I lived in less of a rush, that I could see more of her. 
 But I never seem to have time." She drew her friend away, 
 adding, " Hush ! we mustn't wake her. I never let her sleep 
 be disturbed even when people are here and want to see 
 her, I won't have her brought down. You know Editha 
 Blais Heron always has her poor little girl dressed up and 
 paraded amongst her friends, however tired and cross the 
 child gets. And she lends her to other women to take about 
 with them, and it's ruining Valerie's nerves and making her 
 hatefully precocious." 
 
 " Lends her ! What on earth for ! " 
 
 " Oh, to look picturesque, I suppose, and to attract at- 
 tention. She is a pretty child with red curls, and they are 
 always dressing her up and having her photographed and 
 published in the magazines. She has been bridesmaid half 
 a dozen times already, and presented bouquets to Royalties
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 39 
 
 at the opening of Bazaars, and been paraded until she has 
 learned to try to say funny things for effect, to make people 
 laugh. And she is only seven or eight! Come down now 
 and be introduced to Bobby." 
 
 Lord Harbinger did not appear, however, until luncheon 
 was half through. Patricia's acquaintance with her friend's 
 husband had been a passing view across crowded rooms, and 
 once on the box-seat of his own coach, up to this moment; 
 but if he were a greater shock than the remoteness of 
 Chiffon's nursery, nothing in her very charming manner of 
 greeting could have betrayed it. In appearance, Lord Har- 
 binger was round and ruddy, his face rather like that of a 
 clean pig, with little twinkling eyes and a clean-shaven chin 
 which he had a habit of scratching. He was nearly fifty 
 in years, according to the ruthless pages of Burke, but he 
 looked much younger than that, except at four in the morn- 
 ing, when he looked considerably older. He was rather like 
 a sheepish schoolboy at the first startled glance, an impres- 
 sion deepened by his vocabulary, which appeared to be 
 limited to two words rotten and ripping. He knew no finer 
 degree of description. If a thing were to his taste it was 
 ripping, if not, it was rotten. 
 
 Perhaps a faint, ironical image of the beggar-lover of her 
 school-days lingered in Chiffon's mind, as she made her 
 husband known to her friend the beggar-lover, who was 
 to be so saucily handsome, so quick-witted, a master of 
 adventure and final success ! But there was certainly no 
 reflection of him in Nougat's as she addressed the reality. 
 After five minutes it dawned upon Lady Harbinger that 
 Nougat had no more difficulty in talking to her husband, 
 apparently, than she had had in talking to the Duke of Lon- 
 don, though Lord Harbinger's contribution to the conversa- 
 tion was little more than his creed 
 
 " Rotten ! " 
 
 " Ripping ! " 
 
 After ten minutes, it struck Chiffon that Nougat's manner 
 was something more than merely charming it was a gift of 
 the gods, it was genius. To many women it is granted to 
 make their audience feel that they are delightful; but to 
 Nougat it was given to make other people feel themselves 
 delightful, and Chiffon gasped a little at the revelation of 
 the power in her friend's hands. Why, she could do anything
 
 40 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 she pleased with men and women, by the fascination of that 
 manner! Her face and figure were merely beautiful; other 
 women were more attractive, but her manner was her own. 
 She appeared also to have an extraordinary grip of a range 
 of subjects which were beyond Chiffon's ambition ; but 
 though she was only talking horses, and the shooting season, 
 and the money market, in turn, as a sporting woman might 
 have done, she was endowing them all with a personal bril- 
 liance that made Lord Harbinger's vacant face almost intel- 
 ligently interested. 
 
 "What a godsend if she can talk to Bobby like that, and 
 distract him sometimes when I'm er when I'm busy ! " 
 thought Bobby's wife, seeing her guest rise to depart with 
 real regret. " You dear person ! " she said aloud, standing 
 almost on tiptoe to kiss Miss Mornington's soft cheek. 
 " Why must you hurry ? It's a very early engagement ! " 
 
 " I want to get down to Sunnington," explained Nougat. 
 "And it is past three already. Is the motor here? Ah, 
 thank you ! " for the footman was murmuring its announce- 
 ment. "Lord Harbinger, do you think I shall be there 
 before four ? " 
 
 Lord Harbinger expressed an unwontedly long opinion 
 that she ought to do it in half an hour, if her car had any 
 speed. What was it? A Du Barrie? Yes a Du Barrie, 
 certainly, said Patricia, but she did not drive herself it 
 was a landaurette, and her own carriage. " We have a long- 
 distance car, which my mother drives herself," she explained 
 laughing. "But when it came to my choice, I preferred 
 electricity to petrol, and not to have to make my arms ache 
 with those wretched handles ! The Du Barries are the best 
 for town work, and I have no ambition to rush into distant 
 counties at forty miles an hour on my own account." 
 
 Lord Harbinger gravely agreed as to the desirability of 
 electricity in London he had seen Patricia's type of carriage 
 at the Motor Show, and it was ripping. He would come 
 out and look at it thought of getting a Du Barrie himself, 
 for Chiffon. All others were rotten! Chiffon, waiting to 
 ask a question, grew half desperate, and wished he would go. 
 
 "Where is Sunnington, Nougat? And who do you know 
 there?" 
 
 " Sunnington is a suburb on the river, down below Hamp- 
 ton Court. I made friends with some people I much liked,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 41 
 
 two years ago in Madeira, and have kept in touch with them 
 ever since. I am going down to see them to-day they live 
 in Sunnington." 
 
 " But they must be terribly out of things even though one 
 does fly about a great deal nowadays. So few people motor 
 only to the suburbs they like going long distances." 
 
 " I don't fancy that my friends care to be in things, in 
 that sense, even if they could. They live at Sunnington 
 because Mr. Leroy likes to get into fresh air after his work 
 is done; he is in Somerset House." A little twinkle rose 
 in the cool depths of Patricia's wonderful brown eyes. She 
 seemed really amused at a reminiscence. "They belong to 
 the upper Middle Class according to my mother's descrip- 
 tion," she said drily. ., 
 
 " Oh ! " said Chiffon, a little blankly. " Do you know I 
 always connect the upper Middle Class with the skaters who 
 go to Prince's on Sunday, during the Winter? I could show 
 you plenty of the upper Middle Class there dreadful people, 
 who live in Bayswater, and have a lot of money and don't 
 ever use their brains or know how to spend it ! " 
 
 " In my experience the upper Middle Class are better 
 educated nowadays than any other, as far as I can see," said 
 Nougat, smiling. " Partly, I suppose, because their educa- 
 tion is by personal effort, and goes on long after they leave 
 school, and is, in consequence, cultivation rather than educa- 
 tion. I met plenty of them travelling about Europe with 
 Aunt Helen, which of course you might live for ever in 
 London and never do. They have their own world. I do 
 not think they have really the least ambition towards ours, 
 either, unless they are the lower Middle Class." 
 
 "How funny! " Chiffon said, and then laughed. " I dare- 
 say you are right, Nougat. It sounds to me dreadful to live 
 in a suburb and be out of everything not, even to have a 
 nice house right in the country where people will motor 
 down ! but I daresay there are some very charming people 
 there." Chiffon was always generous. " The worst of it is, 
 one never has time for all the people one would really like 
 to know." 
 
 " That is where we differ, then," said Nougat, serenely, as 
 she shook hands with Lord Harbinger. "I am beginning to 
 find that I have no time for the people I really don't care 
 to know!"
 
 42 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " What do you think of that philosophy, Bobby ? " said 
 Chiffon a trifle drily, as she strolled with her husband into 
 the smoking-room. "I cannot fancy it entering into our 
 lives. Can you ? " 
 
 " Oh, rotten ! " said Lord Harbinger succinctly. 
 
 " And what did you think of Nougat ? To my mind, she 
 is the most beautifully built woman I ever saw I Now isn't 
 she nice?" s^ 
 
 " Oh, ripping ! " said Lord Harbinger.
 
 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Leave one Ideal without speck, 
 
 Grant us one Love that has not stung, 
 A few Faiths, God, saved from the wreck 
 While we are young ! " 
 
 Cry Aloud. 
 
 PHLUMPIE sat at the gate and saw the world go by through 
 safe iron bars, from behind which he blinked with pale, 
 gooseberry eyes at the fiercest dog, and hardly ruffled a single 
 white hair for all their frantic barking. Behind him the path 
 ran up to the little porch where the Leroys liked to sit after 
 dinner, and then, turning to the left, disappeared into the 
 shrubbery, and emerged again to run cunningly round a small 
 plot of grass and a big pear tree that never grew edible pears. 
 It was all one path, for it divided the flower-border from the 
 grass plot, and on it Mrs. Leroy was kneeling, her sleeves 
 rolled up and her gown pinned thriftily away, while she 
 wrestled with the planting out of a sickly geranium and tried 
 in vain to turn the baked earth with a trowel. It was, of 
 course, an absurd time of year for planting out, but she was 
 a young gardener and more earnest than experienced. Leroy 
 and his wife laboured with the strip of ground behind their 
 house as though they meant it to blossom like the proverbial 
 wilderness ; but it rarely did more than provide them with 
 manual exercise and a long bill for seeds. 
 
 Phlumpie had started the afternoon by accompanying his 
 mistress into the garden and saying that he meant to help. 
 But his artful intention was evidently a sun-warmed and 
 earthy bed, for every time that Mrs. Leroy laboriously dug a 
 hole literally by the sweat of her brow he lay down in it
 
 44 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and rolled. After being gently but firmly removed for the fifth 
 time he shook his loose white coat like a discontented dog 
 and betook himself to the gate to sulk. Mrs. Leroy knew 
 that she had offended his dignity, and did not expect him 
 back until his master arrived, when he was sure to come in 
 for his tea (which was milk) ; she was therefore rather sur- 
 prised when he came trotting hurriedly back to her with an 
 air of disturbance which suggested that the trot had been a 
 scamper at first, and that something or somebody had driven 
 him from the gate. She had heard no roll of wheels, and it 
 did not occur to her that a rubber-tyred motor carriage was 
 just as much a monster to Phlumpie as if it had been a noisy 
 one. The first intimation of a visitor that she received was 
 her maid bringing her a card. 
 
 " Patricia Mornington. Where have you shown her, 
 Reynolds ? " Mrs. Leroy asked, turning down her sleeves and 
 unpinning her gown. It was so customary for visitors to seek 
 and find the Leroys in their garden during the summer, that 
 she half expected that the maid was bringing Patricia in her 
 wake. 
 
 " She is in the drawing-room, ma'am." 
 
 It was probably Patricia's gown that had impressed 
 Reynolds with a feeling that she was a guest of ceremony, for 
 though she dressed with simplicity compared to other 
 women with unlimited means, she carried a certain stamp 
 upon her clothes that meant money spent, albeit it was well 
 spent. She was standing at the window when Mrs. Leroy 
 entered the room, looking out at the tangle of the shrubbery, 
 and the first impression she gave her hostess was of the 
 beautiful curve of her hips under the perfectly cut skirt, the 
 poise of her head and shoulders, and the burnished coils of 
 hair that were in actual truth 
 
 " In gloss and hue the chestnut, when the shell 
 Divides threefold to show the fruit within." 
 
 A little thrill of pleasure went through Mrs. Leroy as she 
 locked at her guest the thrill that always gladdened her at 
 sight of a harmonious or beautiful thing, deepened in this 
 case by the pride that added : " She is my countrywoman, 
 and she is ideally English ! " 
 
 Patricia turned quickly before Fate Leroy got out a word
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 45 
 
 of greeting, and came to meet her with a movement that was 
 almost nervous. It seemed impossible that with her figure 
 and carriage she should seem anything but self-possessed, and 
 yet the swift impulsive advance was suggestive of uncer- 
 tainty, and the straight eager look into Fate's face seemed a 
 trifle anxious. Then, to Mrs. Leroy's amazement, she 
 turned very white, and her big brown eyes brimmed with 
 tears. 
 
 " Oh, Fate ! " she said breathlessly, and her voice shook. 
 " I began to be afraid that you would be changed too, or 
 that perhaps my memory was playing me false ! but you are 
 just exactly the same." 
 
 The strange relief, to which she had not the clue, was 
 nevertheless a little piteous in Mrs. Leroy's ears. It made 
 her remember suddenly that the girl before her was still 
 living the sheltered, unmarried life that kept her a girl in 
 spite of her twenty-four years, and told her somehow that the 
 deep frank nature she had so much liked had been grievously 
 mishandled and wounded. She felt a little fierce with some- 
 one or something that she could not name, on account of 
 Patricia, almost as if it were for a younger sister, or her own 
 child. 
 
 " I hope I am not at all changed, dear except that I am 
 two years older ! " she said kindly, still meeting the anxiety 
 in the brown eyes. Patricia's eyes were the same shade as 
 her hair, not opaque like so many dark eyes, but clear and 
 very liquid, with just a shade of red in them the real colour 
 of a horse-chestnut, and not the auburn, or yellow, or brick- 
 dust-shade of a chestnut horse. 
 
 " No, you are not at all altered ! " said Miss Mornington 
 with a breath that was almost a gasp of relief. " Fate, do 
 you know that I have been dreading to meet you, in case 
 even you should have become like an unreality to me ? Since 
 Aunt Helen died I seem to have lived in a bad dream, and 
 perhaps my whole nature is growing warped, but everyone I 
 know seems to me to ring hollow. Yes, that is it, I suppose ! 
 I am warped." 
 
 "You have been in great trouble, and it has jarred your 
 whole universe," said Fate quietly. " A loss such as Lady 
 Helen's death must have meant to you throws one's very 
 nature off its balance, I think. You will find that things 
 right themselves again in time."
 
 46 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " I have lost the best friend I ever had or shall have," 
 said Patricia with some pent-up feeling beginning to stir her 
 voice. " The only friend I had, as I am beginning to realise. 
 In my present world there is no one no, not one person! 
 whom I can call a friend as judged by the touchstone of 
 plain-speaking. I mean there is no one to whom I should 
 dare to tell anything about myself. Unless it is you ? " she 
 added wistfully, the colour coming prettily to her face and 
 making her seem much younger than Mrs. Leroy. 
 
 " Come and sit down and tell me all about it," Fate said 
 quietly, throwing the cushions away from the corners of the 
 wide sofa, and seating herself. " You know I always feared 
 that, being bound up in each other as you and Lady Helen 
 were, you must suffer all the more when she died. You had 
 a fairly large circle of acquaintances, you went about a good 
 deal, you travelled but your world began and ended in each 
 other." 
 
 " She was a good woman ! " Patricia said after a minute's 
 pause, in a strange halting voice. " I know she had faults 
 she was very proud in her own way, and very haughty. 
 She was obstinate, and passionate in temper. But she was, 
 and always will be, my ideal of kindness, and goodness, and 
 honour she was a gentlewoman. There are none like her 
 there are no such women " the voice grew lower and 
 lower " in my present world. It is like a revolution of 
 everything I have ever known or been taught! I am be- 
 wildered I cannot even speak of her, there it is like speak- 
 ing another language. You are the first person to whom I 
 have " 
 
 The voice died away. Instead of it there was a panting 
 sobbing woman with her face buried in her hands, and all 
 the terrible locked-up grief of a year sweeping her with its 
 fury, and making of her self-control an impotent thing, which 
 was terrifying to witness. 
 
 Mrs. Leroy's first glance was at the open door, which she, 
 quietly rising, closed ; her next at the clock, which pointed 
 to ten minutes to four. Eldred would not be home for an 
 hour yet, at least it was all right, there was time for con- 
 fidences. She sat down again beside her guest, and finding 
 that Patricia had flung aside her hat she drew the glossy 
 brown head to her shoulder, and held the girl close to her, 
 restfully, until the storm was past.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 47 
 
 "Thank you," whispered Patricia at last. "I could not 
 help it I felt as if it were killing me ! " 
 
 In her secret heart Mrs. Leroy could not bear to see people 
 lose their self-control, and the experience was due to a side of 
 Patricia's temperament that she had hardly suspicioned and 
 with which she could not have sympathised; but she did 
 appreciate the way in which the younger woman recovered 
 her grip on herself which was training, and not character 
 and kept her arm about Patricia's shoulders after she sat up. 
 
 " I am so glad it happened here if it had to come," Mrs. 
 Leroy said simply. " Tell me about your present life, 
 Patricia, if you feel that you can. What is there wrong 
 about it ? " 
 
 " There is everything wrong about it. But some of that 
 is merely external, and I can alter it." The same certainty 
 of herself and her power over her own destiny which had 
 made Chiffon wonder, was in her manner now; but Mrs. 
 Leroy understood and was attracted by it. " One makes 
 one's own world, of course. But the shock came in finding 
 everything so hideously unlike what I had pictured. You 
 see I had next to no idea of what my own home and family 
 were like it sounds impossible, does it not ? I knew that 
 Aunt Helen did not like my mother, and I thought I knew 
 why after she came to see me a few tunes at St. Clare. We 
 never discussed her it was a sealed subject between us. 
 But of course until one lives with people ' 
 
 " I see," said Mrs. Leroy inclusively. " Have you abso- 
 lutely nothing in common with Lady Vera?" 
 
 " I hope not ! " 
 
 The quick, haughty rejoinder made before Patricia could 
 catch herself up was so much a reflex of Lady Helen Chil- 
 cote that Fate almost smiled. One cannot live for twenty 
 years admiring and almost worshipping a strong personality, 
 imbibing the same tenets, looking at life from the same 
 standpoint, without attaining a certain resemblance. 
 Patricia was not really like her godmother either in mind or 
 character ; but she had grown so to some extent by constant 
 association. 
 
 " Well, what, if you do not mind telling me, makes you say 
 that?" 
 
 " I suppose you think that I ought not to have said it 
 nor ought I, to be in strict good taste. But having said so
 
 48 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 much I will treat you as the friend to whom I can speak 
 plainly, and give you my confidence regardless of good 
 manners. It is because Lady Vera is a very ill-bred woman, 
 in my opinion, and would be so were she twice my mother ! 
 She is self-indulgent, utterly uncontrolled, and she can dis- 
 guise neither her temper nor her appetites though for her 
 own advantage. She is loud, and slangy, and chooses her 
 associates for no reason that I can see except that they dress 
 very extravagantly, and live as no gentlewoman could pos- 
 sibly do. I have allowed her to parade me and rush about 
 with me amongst these people for three months, to make me 
 quite sure before I judged. For the future I shall have 
 little to do with either my mother or her friends, I hope. 
 We have nothing at all in common ! " 
 
 She had begun almost passionately, in her bitterness and 
 disappointment with her life; but the ending of her tirade 
 was characteristic of Patricia Mornington far more than the 
 impetuosity, though it might be an acquired control. " I 
 
 allowed her to parade me for three months to 
 
 make me quite sure before I judged ! " Fate Leroy read 
 the deep slow nature with its tenacious hold on life in this. 
 Patricia was not quick of brain or temper, though her pas- 
 sions once roused might be a violent inheritance ; her worst 
 fault was her slowness to forgive, her long power of resent- 
 ment. She gave temperate, deliberate judgment; but once 
 condemning, she meted out punishment without hope of 
 mercy. " That I might be quite sure ! " she said. 
 
 The most contemptuous note in her voice was struck when 
 she mentioned Lady Vera's lack of self-control, for Patricia 
 had been taught to rule herself from a child, and in learning 
 that most difficult lesson she seemed to have almost lost the 
 capacity to sympathise with a quicker and more fiery nature 
 which did not rule its spirit. 
 
 " I have been finding all this out ever since last November, 
 when Aunt Helen died," she explained. " Indeed, I am not 
 speaking in a hurry. I have never said a word of criticism 
 on them until to-day. To-day " she hesitated and faltered 
 " I had the last shock of disappointment, and I think it 
 broke me down." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " I went to see a school friend who married soon after we 
 left the Convent. I had been clinging to the hope of finding
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 49 
 
 her unchanged of course it was silly of me, after all the 
 rest or at least of finding a companion in her. I looked 
 for the old Chiffon to confide in " 
 
 " And she is changed too ? " 
 
 " She married at nineteen. Before that she was just an 
 undeveloped girl, full of possibilities. Why do they fling 
 us into the marriage market as children, and leave some man 
 of whom they know nothing to finish educating and develop- 
 ing us ? Chiffon had no chance, I suppose." 
 
 " How awfully thankful you must be that you had ! " was 
 Mrs. Leroy's comment. "The Jesuits say that if you will 
 give them the first six years of a child's life you may take 
 him away afterwards and do what you will with him but 
 you will never eradicate their influence. You were saved 
 from bad training as if by a miracle, and you had Lady 
 Helen's clean, well-bred atmosphere about you until you 
 were a woman with a character of your own that could not 
 be remoulded." 
 
 There was a little pause, and then Patricia said : " Poor 
 little Chiffon ! " in a different tone. The scornful hardness 
 had gone out of her voice, and instead of sitting in judgment 
 she was remembering to be grateful for what she felt a de- 
 liverance. " She thinks herself quite an enviable person you 
 know, Fate she has married Lord Harbinger, and that fact 
 has enclosed her existence. She told me several times that 
 she had no time for the things she wanted to do. Can you 
 conceive of such an absurd bondage? If it were a duty in 
 any way one could honour it but they none of them ever 
 pretend that it is that. They just go on living in a certain 
 narrow groove because they found it waiting for them after 
 their presentation. The Society woman as recently intro- 
 duced to me reminds me of nothing so much as a hen 
 don't you know that old trick of laying a hen's beak down 
 on a board and drawing a chalk line from it? The bird 
 really will not stir. I suppose what mind it has is paralysed 
 by the chalk line." 
 
 Mrs. Leroy gave a little soft laugh that was half a 
 sigh. "Do you know you strike me as rather fierce?" she 
 suggested. " After all, your friend Lady Harbinger may 
 find plenty of happiness in her husband and her visiting 
 list." 
 
 " If happiness were everything," said Patricia struggling 
 
 4
 
 50 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 with a conviction too deep to find easy expression, " I should 
 say there was no fear for Chiffon. She is very happy, 1 
 believe, in an entirely surface manner. But you see you 
 
 see we were friends to talk to her now is exactly 
 
 like conversing with a husk. I felt myself catching the in- 
 fection, and taking my colour from her atmosphere. I also 
 was a husk." 
 
 " It seems to me you were chameleon, rather. Has she 
 children ? " 
 
 " One it is three years old. We only saw it asleep, and 
 she prides herself on the fact that she does not lend it out 
 to other women to the detriment of its health, because they 
 like to pose as domestic characters. Picturesque children 
 seem to be a momentary fashion, and are taken about like 
 the last breed of small dogs ! " Patricia spoke briefly, and 
 turned her face a trifle away from Mrs. Leroy. " But I 
 think if Chiffon saw more of her daughter that I should find 
 her just the same, somehow. For a minute, as she looked 
 at the child, I envied her! It must be such a wonderful 
 thing to be a mother." 
 
 " I am afraid I have little or no sympathy with the lauding 
 of the maternal virtue above all others," said Fate decidedly. 
 "Wives, for instance, who will neglect their husbands for 
 their children are simply displaying an animal instinct in 
 which I can see nothing fine. They are cat-women. Any 
 cat will lick its kittens ! " 
 
 " Do you know," said Patricia, opening her brown eyes a 
 little wider, and with a slight hesitation, " I always thought 
 you the most maternal woman I ever met! I do hope you 
 are not offended." 
 
 " So I am in a sense only I lavish it all on my husband. 
 It is not because I have no children that I condemn the ultra 
 maternal woman, really. But the feeling seems to me too in- 
 evitable to admire, and it is generally the excuse for pushing 
 the husband on one side when you are tired of him. The 
 children are newer. Women like new toys ! " 
 
 " Now it is you who are fierce ! " alleged Patricia, with a 
 more natural note in her voice. The hardness had quite 
 gone for the moment, and the tears had dried in her eyes. 
 She was just a beautiful woman, beautifully dressed, and 
 unconscious of herself because quite sure at the root of her 
 being that she fulfilled her own fleshly ideal at least. Mrs.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 51 
 
 Leroy looked at her with open delight. She had a most 
 fastidious dislike of unfeminine ugliness. 
 
 "You seem to have disposed of all the women in your 
 present world," she remarked with her wise smile. " Now, 
 what of the men ? " 
 
 " Well," said Patricia, with a frank laugh, " if they are 
 not gluttons they are generally gamblers, and as they are 
 mostly my relations it would be invidious to say more. It 
 is a narrow world that I have stepped into ! It consists, as 
 far as I can see, of infinite circles which always overlap at 
 one point, the nucleus of each being a house and its connec- 
 tions. One family intermarries with another, and thus one 
 circle overlaps another ; but, in the main, English people are 
 more divided into clans, or tribes, than savages ! The only 
 relief is afforded by a foreign connection, which breaks the 
 insular chain. But no one seems to have been kind enough 
 to have married an American heiress in our family. My 
 mother's visiting list, I suppose, includes some four or five 
 hundred people. At least I believe that when we give 
 parties we invite about that number. But our intimate 
 friends, who over-run the house at all seasons, are about 
 twenty or thirty. I can think of ten or eleven men at the 
 present moment, any of whom may dine or lunch chez nous 
 at any time, and they are all connections of the house of 
 Blais." 
 
 It occurred to Mrs. Leroy that Lady Vera Mornington 
 must have clung very closely to her own family after mating 
 with more common red blood, and that the family had prob- 
 ably profited by the wealthy marriage. But it was a point of 
 view which she did not wish to insist on to Patricia, already 
 goaded out of her habitual reserve by the anger and humilia- 
 tion and disgust of her uncongenial surroundings. 
 
 " And do none of them interest you ? " she said, with a 
 rather amused expression in her very grey eyes. 
 
 "Yes one!" said Patricia quickly. "A tide of red rose 
 over her face and quickened her into glowing vitality. She 
 hesitated a moment, and then spoke hurriedly more hurriedly 
 than even in her passionate protest against the lot she had 
 inherited. " There is only one man who interests me in my 
 present world interests me absorbingly, I mean and that 
 is my father. And he will have none of me! He is as 
 courteous as anyone I meet socially, but I cannot hold his
 
 52 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 interest for five minutes. As a rule I can make men like me, 
 Fate at the worst I can compel their notice. But not my 
 father's. He is so little interested in me that beyond making 
 me an allowance that is simply like wasting money, he has 
 never, as far as I know, asked a question about me, or my 
 pursuits." The flush deepened, and she turned her brown 
 eyes, half pained and half resentful, on Mrs. Leroy, throw- 
 ing up her chin with a curbed movement that was char- 
 acteristic. " Why does he treat me like this ? " she said 
 almost in a whisper. " We are of one blood we could be 
 sympathetic we might be friends. He is the only person 
 in whom I could find a companion in my present life, and 
 that proves our affinity. If he has found my mother and all 
 her circle aliens to himself, which T can understand, he might 
 remember that I have his blood in my veins as well as hers ! 
 I am not at all a Blais I am very much of a Mornington ! " 
 
 Patricia's simple belief in the genuineness of this claim 
 lent a conviction to her statement, and Mrs. Leroy, knowing 
 no better, accepted it. 
 
 " There may be something of which you know nothing that 
 makes you a part of the bitterness," she said. " The very 
 fact of your having been brought up by your godmother 
 suggests a quarrel over you, does it not ? And the old sore 
 may rankle still. Are your father and mother friendly ? " 
 
 " They live at opposite ends of a very large house ; some- 
 times they do not encounter each other for days, and I am 
 sure that neither knows the other's engagements nor wishes 
 to interfere with them in any way. If that is being friendly 
 yes, they are friends." 
 
 " At least they do not quarrel ? " 
 
 " I cannot imagine my father condescending to such a 
 thing. He is rigidly polite to his wife if he treated me like 
 that I think I should be scorched with shame, for it is the 
 very acme of contempt, whether she knows it or not. But 
 as far as I go he is merely supremely indifferent. I really 
 think he hardly realises that I am in the house. When 
 I first arrived I tried by every means in my power to get 
 to know him, and it was exactlv like walking into a wall of 
 ice." 
 
 "'Ice will melt!" remarked Mrs. Leroy significantly. "I 
 can only advise patience. I do not believe that the man 
 exists who can finally combat a woman's determination when
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 53 
 
 she means him to realise her attractions ! Can you not melt 
 the ice?" 
 
 " No, because I should get frozen before I succeeded ! It 
 is a wall of ice a mountain the whole North Pole. Do 
 you know, I think I descended to any mean little subterfuge 
 to gain his attention, for a time? I could not believe my 
 own failure a little humiliating, is it not ? " 
 
 " H'm ! I think it is rather more interesting. Had you 
 ever met before? I mean, of course, since you were a con- 
 scious personality." 
 
 " Not since I was three years old, when he himself took me 
 to Madeira, and placed me with Aunt Helen. My mother 
 came to see me during the few years I was at school in Paris, 
 but he never did. We were utter strangers father and 
 daughter ! when I was introduced to him in his own dining- 
 room." 
 
 "The situation is certainly so unique as to sound im- 
 possible. It must be a most uncomfortable household and 
 yet how interesting ! " All the activity and power of Mrs. 
 Leroy's brain and her vivid womanhood flashed for an instant 
 into her grey eyes. She had never found a situation too 
 difficult for her, and her ingenuity sometimes went hungry 
 for material on which to feed. The next instant the expres- 
 sion of the diplomat or the detective had vanished, swallowed 
 in a purely personal interest, for her trained ears had caught 
 a step coming up the drive, and she glanced instinctively at 
 the clock. 
 
 "Excuse me a moment, Patricia," she said. "I think that 
 may be Eldred. I will tell him we are having tea in here 
 and not in the garden." 
 
 The little excuse for withdrawing had a double motive 
 that Patricia divined to give her guest time to regain her 
 mask of everyday ease, and to greet her husband unobserved. 
 But a minute later she returned with a less elastic step, and 
 sat down to pour out tea as if a trifle disappointed. 
 
 " It was not Eldred," she explained. " It was only a very- 
 intimate friend of ours a man who is constantly here, and 
 drops in in this unexpected way. I have told him to join 
 us. Ah, Gerald ! Come in and have tea. Mr. Vaughan, 
 Miss Mornington." 
 
 There was just the faintest spice of mischief in Fate's mind 
 as she made Vaughan known to his bete noire, but it was a
 
 54 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 joke which she wished that Eldred had been by to share. 
 Miss Mornington, naturally, was blank of any previous im- 
 pression of Vaughan, and too absorbed in her own revelations 
 to Fate Leroy to be very sensitive to outside interests at the 
 moment. She looked up and saw a tall man with square 
 shoulders, and what she thought a keen and rather unsympa- 
 thetic face. His hair had a slight reddish tinge she thought 
 or was it only that his moustache was so ? 
 
 " How much more a single eyeglass strikes you now that 
 they are not general," thought Patricia, and drank her tea in 
 silence, leaving the conversation to her hostess. 
 
 Vaughan sat down on a rickety milk-stool beside the tea 
 table, and curled his long legs fondly round those of his 
 support. There was no hint of anything but social amenity 
 in his perfectly easy manner, save to Fate, who knew him so 
 well that she could feel the hostility in his attitude, and was 
 more and more entertained by it. There was too much mis- 
 chief in Mrs. Leroy for angelhood at present. 
 
 " I have been gardening, Gerald," she said as a little 
 prologue to drawing two unconscious foes together. " And 
 Miss Mornington arrived to find me very dirty and dis- 
 heartened. The geraniums will not disport themseives 
 properly." 
 
 " I should think not at this time of the year ! What on 
 earth induced you to transplant them until next Spring, no 
 one but a daughter of Eve could tell." Vaughan's tone 
 betrayed a smothered aggravation through the characteristic 
 croak. " Feminine nature has always played havoc in a 
 Garden from the days of Eden ! " 
 
 " Well, I felt very virtuous at least. I am sure it is good 
 for me to dig." 
 
 " It would do you much more good to take a walk into the 
 country. If I lived in Sunnington, I should pack my wallet 
 every day and lunch in a field." 
 
 " But, my dear Gerald, I can't go for country walks alone ! 
 I should be terrified. And I might meet a tramp ! " 
 
 " Well, he wouldn't hurt you if you did ! Don't be so 
 feminine. You could say ' Oh fair tramp, I have too much 
 bread and cheese, and this flagon of wine ; but come thou 
 with me and we will sit on the ground and lunch together ! ' 
 His conversation might not be polished, but it would surely 
 be very interesting."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 55 
 
 Patricia suddenly became aware that she was laughing. A 
 vision of Mrs. Leroy in her graceful gown sitting in a field 
 and eating bread and cheese with a tramp was too much for 
 her sense of humour. She looked anew at Vaughan ; but 
 he was not looking at her. Beyond the common courtesy 
 of handing her bread and butter and attending to her teacup, 
 he had directed all his conversation and attention to his 
 hostess, and Patricia's heart suddenly sank. Her large, 
 comprehensive eyes looked covertly from one face to the 
 other, and by the light of all the sordid life they had known 
 of late they feared another lost ideal. There was nothing 
 to see save a fair woman sitting by a tea-table, and a man 
 with a certain charm of personality, who was not her husband, 
 but who watched her. Patricia was surprised at herself for 
 deciding that this unknown man had a charm, but her senses 
 were suddenly sharpened by fear. 
 
 Mrs. Leroy was laughing over the absurdity of the tramp 
 theory. " He would eat all the lunch, and then murder 
 me ! " she protested. " I don't think I was made for country 
 walks." 
 
 " You probably mean that your shoes were not ! " said 
 Vaughan viciously. For all his apparent unconsciousness of 
 Miss Mornington, her presence was acting upon him as 
 sharply as the prick of one of his own electric currents on his 
 skin. As he had said, her prosperity was an offence to him, 
 and he was far too finely balanced an organisation to possess 
 a level judgment. Perhaps there was something to be pleaded 
 against Patricia Mornington also. Never had her charm of 
 manner been less perceptible than at the present moment; 
 she appeared indeed to be stricken dumb, and her contribu- 
 tion to the conversation was at best monosyllables or plati- 
 tudes. Her material beauty was still undeniable, but a 
 mental discomfort was presenting her at a marked disadvan- 
 tage, and it was a curious fact that Mrs. Leroy's companion- 
 ship stole something of maturity from her. She was never 
 so young as in association with Fate, and in general she 
 gained a simplicity that compensated for the loss ; but to-day 
 she was merely a rather dumb young person, perfectly gowned, 
 and perfectly beautiful a well-bred animal in fact, devoid 
 of character. Her home circle would not have recognised 
 her. 
 
 " I really ought to be going home." she said at last, rising
 
 56 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 in quite a leisurely fashion, and apparently only recalled to 
 the necessity by the clock. " I have stayed a quite uncon- 
 scionable time. Will you tell Mr. Leroy how sorry I was 
 not to see him? I do hope to hear him sing again some 
 day." 
 
 " Thank you," said Mrs. Leroy simply. " He will be very 
 pleased, because he loves hearing that people really do like 
 his voice. Will you come down some evening and dine with 
 us and Eldred shall sing to you all the evening. If you 
 could only wait five minutes longer I think he would be 
 home." 
 
 She did not add that the presence of her guests had alone 
 prevented her going to the station as usual, and that her 
 fretted heart was counting the clock and calculating each step 
 homeward. Miss Mornington would not stay anyway she 
 said with a shrug that the chauffeur weighed upon her mind 
 even when she defied his authority, and Mrs. Leroy and 
 Vaughan strolled with her to the gate to see her off. 
 
 " Do look at Phlumpie ! " said Mrs. Leroy with enjoyment, 
 as they found the cat in his old position, looking out between 
 the bars. " He is looking for his master, and pretending to 
 guard the house. 'Am a dog!' he says." 
 
 " Is that your cat ? " said Patricia with interest. " He 
 seems to me a person of immense character I noticed him 
 as we drove up. What a great deal of expression he manages 
 to get into that humped-up back ! " 
 
 " He was probably a hall porter in his last existence," 
 Vaughan condescended to remark. It was the very first 
 speech of Miss Mornington's of which he had taken actual 
 notice. " We were all cats in our last lives. I was an ugly 
 sandy, who meowed hideously, and people threw boots at 
 me. And I know just what Mrs. Leroy was like." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " She was one of those perfectly white cats no, not like 
 Phlumpie, but a much daintier person." There was a subtle 
 change in the curious voice to Patricia's jealous ears. The 
 croak was almost possessive almost caressing. " And she 
 walked upon the housetops, and was most annoyed when her 
 fur became soiled ! " he said. 
 
 But Mrs. Leroy did not hear she had swung open the 
 gate to greet someone outside. "Ah, Eldred, you are just 
 in time. Here is someone whom you know ! " she said.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 57 
 
 Leroy lifted his hat, and smiled sunnily, and shook hands 
 with Miss Mornington, all at once. There was no doubt 
 about their pleasure in meeting each other. He looked 
 younger even than Patricia remembered him, though she 
 never thought of him as boyish, only as a man endowed with 
 a great quality of youth. 
 
 '' I am so sorry I'm just leaving, Mr. Leroy," she said, as 
 he prepared to help her into the motor, noticing, as Vaughan 
 had not cared to do, the beautiful finish of the carriage and 
 one or two new " gadgets," as he framed it to himself, which 
 he would have liked to examine. "I am coming down at a 
 later hour next time, on purpose to hear you sing." 
 
 Eldred laughed as if he were pleased. He tucked the rug 
 round Patricia with a pretty air of taking care of her, and 
 stood a moment with his hand on the door of the dear motor, 
 chatting to its enviable owner, his eyes very blue indeed by 
 the light of the summer evening. 
 
 " Come again soon and see us," he said cordially. " All 
 right ! Good-bye ! " 
 
 He raised his hat again from his closely-cropped head and 
 stood back as the motor swung round, with critical eyes on the 
 starting gear. Patricia tried to keep her own glance upon 
 him, while she was reluctantly conscious of the two other 
 figures at the gate Mrs. Leroy with the white cat sitting at 
 her feet, and the tall, spare man with the eyeglass. 
 
 " I have a warped mind ! " she said to herself bitterly as 
 the roads flashed by and brought her nearer to town and a 
 tainted atmosphere. " Yes, that is it I have lived in such 
 a sordid world that I see harm in everything even there. 
 And yet I wish there had not been a third in my Eden. I 
 wanted to keep just that little ideal corner of the world to 
 myself." Her thoughts rested with infinite relief on the 
 little house and its owners, but the apparition of Vaughan in 
 the charmed circle looked like a glimpse of the serpent. She 
 was unaware that by an irony of Fate he had regarded her in 
 the same character. 
 
 " I am warped ! " said Patricia to herself, angrily. " But I 
 do not like that type of man, anywhere not only at Sunning- 
 ton. He is rather disagreeable in manner I think, though 
 undeniably a gentleman even from Aunt Helen's standpoint. 
 I hope I may not encounter him the next time I go there. 
 What a curious voice he had ! "
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " They called him the Lord of the Tourney, 
 
 For love of the courtly games : 
 And his son takes the unwon title 
 By right of his legal claims, 
 Let us go back to our manhood ! 
 It is better than knightly names." 
 
 The Inheritance. 
 
 MR. MORNINGTON'S house in Piccadilly had such a wide 
 frontage that it had once or twice been mistaken for a club 
 by people who rang at the great double doors, demanded 
 admittance, and were courteously rejected by the butler. By 
 a sense of arrival which never seemed to fail him for the 
 family, this official appeared in the hall just as Patricia 
 walked up her own steps, and flung open the doors to her with 
 a chilly deference. He approved of Patricia because she 
 had never forgotten her manners in his presence, or the fact 
 that he existed and was corporally before her. Lady Vera 
 had done both. But it was really as little within the scope 
 of Patricia's imagination that the butler had the capacity for 
 approval, as that one of the ladies of his own household 
 should lose her temper was within the butler's. All well- 
 trained servants of the new era identify themselves with the 
 family with which they have lived for over six months, to 
 the extent of adopting them as their own selves, and as their 
 womenkind. It reflected upon Mr. Curtice that Lady Vera 
 betrayed herself in his presence ; but he felt that her daughter 
 was a credit to the establishment. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs Patricia paused, and turned her 
 face with careless courtesy. 
 
 "Oh, Curtice," she said, "who is dining here to-night?" 
 She had not spoken to her mother that day, for she had
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 59 
 
 gone to see Chiffon before Lady Vera had made an appear- 
 ance in the public portion of the house ; but she remembered 
 no engagement, and so was tolerably sure that the dinner- 
 table would be garnished with outsiders to avoid a family 
 party. Had Mr. Mornington been out of town they would 
 probably have dined in their own rooms, unless they had 
 been units of a restaurant party; but since his presence de- 
 manded a proper toilette at home it certainly would not be 
 wasted on him only. 
 
 The butler took a written list from his pocket and referred 
 to it with the manner of one who had been the recipient of a 
 confidence. 
 
 " Lady D'Aulnoy, Mr. and Mrs. Blais Heron, and Mr. 
 Lexiter, miss," he said. 
 
 " Bridge ! " said Patricia to herself. " And a family party, 
 of course. Thank you," she said to the butler, and began to 
 saunter upstairs as if she were in no hurry to reach her own 
 rooms. 
 
 They were on the second floor, the two lower ones being 
 absorbed by the reception rooms, and Patricia usually 
 rang for the lift. But it occurred to her that the page-boy 
 who attended to this item in the household comfort was 
 having an indefinite meal at this hour, as she had discovered 
 on former occasions by a furtive munching when she had had 
 him summoned, and to be considerate of animals and other 
 dependents was a part of Patricia's training. She caught up 
 her fawn-coloured skirts and began to slowly ascend with a 
 feeling of intense and echoing loneliness enveloping her, for 
 her father's house always created that impression on her 
 mind. It was so vast as to be like an empty hotel an hotel 
 suddenly struck dead, without its life and noisy machinery, 
 but still working on velvet wheels of routine. The whole of 
 its staircases, and walls, and entrance halls the background 
 and shell of the house indeed were white. The harmonious 
 scheme had probably been chosen in the first case to mitigate 
 the darkness of London, and the gloom of its large spaces, 
 but the effect was one of utter coldness and stillness. The 
 faint pattern on the encrusted wall papers, the faint pattern 
 on the velvet-piled stair carpets, the faint gilding on the 
 pillars, were not sufficient to relieve the pallor of the colour- 
 less place, and the rustle of her own skirts struck Patricia 
 startlingly as she ascended the stairs. The house seemed
 
 60 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 always waiting for something, to her mind not asleep, rather 
 gravely awake always waiting for some stroke of Fate or a 
 crisis. And yet she was not an imaginative woman. 
 
 Lady Vera rather liked the white stair carpets and walls, 
 and had never altered the original appearance of the house 
 for all the years that she had lived in it, save for trifling 
 innovations, so that its appearance had become historical. 
 It made an excellent background for her gowns, and she had 
 long decided that her figure was one to carry plenty of colour. 
 Her rooms themselves continued the white scheme, with a 
 bolder introduction of blue. Blue was Lady Vera's chosen 
 shade " true blue," so appropriate to her name with its 
 significance of truth, she said. Men agreed with her up to 
 forty; women said that the colour of her hair, rather than 
 the appropriateness of her name (which they questioned !) 
 had decided Lady Vera's taste for her chosen colour. 
 
 Patricia dragged her long gown rather listlessly down one 
 broad corridor after another until she stopped at her own 
 section of the house. Swing doors shut it off from the visi- 
 tor's portion (she thought of Chiffon's nursery), for there 
 were sufficient rooms to allow the three members of the family 
 a suite to themselves as though they were royalty, did they 
 so choose. Patricia did so choose, because it is easier to 
 live an individual life inside swing doors than in greater 
 juxtaposition to the rest of the household. Bedroom and 
 anteroom, bathroom, sitting-room and library, comprised 
 her domain, and all the rooms were large enough to enable 
 her to walk up and down like a lioness in her cage, but with- 
 out the same sense of confinement an advantage for which 
 she had found no occasion, as yet. 
 
 There is always pleasure to a woman with any beauty in 
 dressing herself; the mere changing of her dainty clothes, 
 and the sense of fragrance and cleanliness are a delight to a 
 healthy body, while the gradual adornment and increase of 
 charm that the looking-glass reflects is a triumph as great as 
 any after effect upon her fellow creatures. There is no 
 compliment so sincere as the silent homage of a looking- 
 glass. But to-night Patricia watched the massing and dress- 
 ing of her chestnut-brown hair with only half an attention, 
 and saw her maid array her in a satin gown with little appre- 
 ciation of her superb neck and arms against its rich whiteness. 
 Patricia was fond of satin, and knew herself tall enough to
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 61 
 
 wear it. It clung to her figure, and went smoothly over her 
 hips, the sweep of it on the floor looking like polished pearl. 
 It's very lack of adornment made it a simple gown, or she 
 would not have worn it for dinner to-night, and it suited her 
 just so well that a little satisfaction was visible in her maid's 
 eyes when she clasped the opals round the full sweet throat. 
 She felt a kind of reflected pride in Patricia's appearance, 
 just so well that a little satisfaction was visible in her maid's 
 her service to Lady Vera's, though she lost precedence in the 
 life below stairs by so doing. For the etiquette of the ser- 
 vants' hall rules that maid or valet rank according to the 
 status of their employers, and Lady Vera's body servant took 
 precedence of Patricia's by reason of the courtesy title and 
 closer alliance with the Blais family. Nevertheless, the girl 
 openly boasted by her untitled mistress, and honestly thought 
 that her face and figure could not have been improved upon. 
 It was only Patricia herself who was a trifle distrait to-night, 
 as though white satin complimenting chestnut hair were not 
 valuable assets to any woman. 
 
 Perhaps the family dinner weighed on her mind a little. 
 Everyone would use each other's Christian name, and the 
 people of whom they told stories would be related closely 
 enough to be " Bobby " and " Hugh " and " Cecil," though 
 they might also be public characters. The only bright spot 
 in the evening was the presence of Aimee, Lady D'Aulnoy. 
 Aimee was a cousin also, but her cousinship seemed a desir- 
 able thing to Patricia, who liked her. She was a woman of 
 fashion as much as any Blais amongst them, but it was a 
 better-bred fashion, and the oute^ shell of a kindly human life. 
 She was beautiful ; no one ha.d ever breathed a slander 
 against her, and successful even to Royal favour, but her 
 own sex spoke well of her. The cloud upon her was a 
 physical one, and rendered her pathetic, for a heart ailment 
 made it unlikely that her pleasant and harmless existence 
 should continue for many years. To-night Patricia thought 
 bitterly that it seemed an irony of Providence that if anyone 
 in her world were making a tolerable thing of life they should 
 be marked with a cross for early orders to leave it. She 
 could think of but two the Duke of London and Lady 
 D'Aulnoy one racked with pain and crippled with illness, 
 the other doomed by incurable disease. A third figure rose 
 in her memory her father's* But she hardly counted him
 
 62 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 as one of the people whom she criticised. With an inten- 
 tional pride she had already begun to class both him and 
 herself with the workers men into whose lives at least the 
 necessity to work had entered and to divide herself from 
 those she despised by right of her fancied connection with 
 that great Middle Class of whose existence she was just 
 becoming aware as separate from her own. The rude altera- 
 tion of the condition of her life had widened Patricia's mental 
 horizon as nothing else could have done, for had she been 
 transplanted into Mrs. Leroy's sphere she would have found 
 herself far more at home, and far more in Lady Helen's tra- 
 ditional world than she did in her mother's; but the violent 
 change, though it enlarged her sense of the immense differ- 
 ence there is in custom and opinions, had only the effect of 
 making her conscious of more varied circles than the guarded 
 one in which she had lived it had not taught her sympathy 
 or tolerance. Her mood indeed was one of still anger and 
 discontent that her World was not what she had always 
 imagined it would be ; she had looked forward to life in 
 England as the same as Lady Helen's, only with larger in- 
 terests and outlook, and on a more liberal scale altogether. 
 Hitherto she had been a spoiled child of fortune without 
 knowing it, for she had had the surroundings of extreme 
 refinement and cultivation with a sufficiency of money to 
 gratify every wish, and that her desires had never been to- 
 wards extravagance was partly the result of her training, 
 partly of a very simple and almost puritanical inclination. 
 Extravagance was bad taste in Patricia's eyes, and though 
 she did not own it her religion was mainly constituted by 
 those two words, for to her vulgarity was outer darkness, and 
 good breeding the highest perfection at which to aim. In 
 consequence her world wearied her, and she was so dis- 
 appointed with the present phase of existence that she thought 
 herself disillusioned for the whole of it. 
 
 The gong had actually sounded it rang very faintly along 
 the distant corridors, and only the maid caught its echo, and 
 not Patricia before she came deliberately out past the swing 
 doors and down the stairs to the drawing-room floor, where 
 she fell in with the rest of the party, who were just starting 
 for another flight of stairs to the dining-room. Patricia 
 paused and shook hands with Lady D'Aulnoy going down on 
 Mr. Mornington's arm, her smile as friendly as h was careless.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 63 
 
 " We had given you up, Nougat ! " said Lady D'Aulnoy 
 laughing, as she went by. " Your mother said you had gone 
 into the regions beyond Mesopotamia, and been devoured by 
 the Philistines ! " 
 
 There was no need to answer, for the couple had gone on, 
 and Patricia drew back a trifle to allow those following them 
 to pass a lady in rose-colour, and a very tall man in evening- 
 dress. This first was Mrs. Blais Heron, and she was like a 
 very beautifully modelled dark doll. Her skin had the clear 
 even shade of the finest pink wax, her soft hair was so per- 
 fectly arranged as to be too natural for nature, and her 
 widely-opened blue-grey eyes were fringed with curled lashes 
 as the best dolls' are, and were of that peculiar liquidness 
 that one sometimes sees in dolls' eyes, under delicately arched 
 brows. They did not stare at all like glass-eyes they simply 
 looked with an innocent absence of any expression. Mrs. 
 Blais Heron was accounted a very pretty woman, and her 
 smile as she greeted Patricia was an added attraction to 
 most people being a little pensive. Her companion had 
 an even wider reputation for his physical appearance. He 
 was six feet three, and carried a prematurely grey head with 
 a slightly tired insolence, as if his own good looks almost 
 bored him. He was glancing down at Mrs. Blais Heron now 
 with the expression he always kept for pretty women, and 
 with a nearly imperceptible movement Patricia passed him, 
 before he saw her, with a slight nod " How are you, Caryl ? " 
 Lastly came Lady Vera on the arm of Blais Heron himself 
 a middle-aged man without any pretensions to appearance, 
 and a loud, strident voice. He was talking even now at the 
 top of it as they paused by the stair head. 
 
 " Well, of course he's a good man in that post, and the War 
 Office knows it. I saw Teddy yesterday, by the way, in his 
 own office, looking as pompous as the Lord Mayor ! " 
 
 " How amusing ! Think of Teddy as a Big Gun under 
 Government ! " Lady Vera's voice, quite as loud as her 
 kinsman's, rose in a little scream of laughter. Then she 
 turned her eyes and met Patricia's. 
 
 There was something in the very attitude of the two women 
 which suggested a passive antagonism, inherent in their 
 natures. The two pairs of eyes, alike in shape, something 
 of the same colour, but totally differing in expression, 
 measured each other's strength; but while the older woman
 
 64 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 betrayed every emotion in her heart by the swift changes 
 passing over her face, that of the younger was merely a mask 
 of courtesy. There was even a very slight smile on her lips 
 as she faced her mother. 
 
 " Oh, so you have got back from your barbarians, Nougat ! " 
 Lady Vera said in the same loud tones. Her voice was 
 singularly metallic, and seemed in a curious way the outcome 
 of her colouring ; for the hair which was dark chestnut in her 
 daughter was so pale as to be almost tawny in herself; her 
 eyes were tawny too, large and cold and shallow with flying 
 gleams of temper in them, and her skin was a little too white, 
 and her cheeks a little too clear red in their colour to carry 
 conviction. Altogether she was suggestive of many metals 
 bright copper in her hair and eyes, the substance of metal on 
 her powdered skin, while the shine of the sequinned gown she 
 wore heightened the effect. A hard, bright, glittering figure, 
 tall until one saw her near her daughter, beautifully built 
 until Patricia's more perfect lines suggested corsets in the 
 artificial curve of bust and waist under the sequinned gown 
 the advantage was mentally and physically with Patricia. 
 She could afford her little tolerant smile, as, without answer- 
 ing her mother's challenge, she turned and sauntered down to 
 dinner in the wake of the party. 
 
 The dining-room was a relief from the whiteness pervading 
 the shell of the house, being panelled with walnut high over 
 the diners' heads. In the centre of the room stood the round 
 table, where the party sat down with a significant absence of 
 any distinguishing place for host and hostess, the butler 
 mounting guard over the whole business and gently guiding 
 those who seemed to stray from the seat he had designed for 
 them. Patricia heard his confidential tones in her ear 
 "Will you please sit on this side, miss?" and found herself 
 between Caryl Lexiter and Mrs. Blais Heron. 
 
 " I am sorry I could not provide you with a man to your- 
 self, Nougat, but it was so very uncertain whether you would 
 return at all that it seemed a waste of time ! " said Lady Vera, 
 with a laugh that jarred all across the dinner-table. 
 
 "Why, has Nougat been going on a search for hidden 
 treasure, or tested the powers of her new motor on a trip 
 into the Midlands ? " asked Blais Heron in his loud tones. 
 "What's this I hear about your Du Barrie, Nougat? You 
 preferred electricity to petrol ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 65 
 
 " I don't like bad smells," said Patricia nonchalantly. 
 " And when I wish to risk my life behind somebody who seems 
 to be flying from the police, my mother is always most kind 
 in giving me a seat in her own car, which is suitable for long 
 distances. Personally I find the Du Barrie takes me far 
 enough with comfort and electricity." 
 
 "Anyhow, Editha tells me that it is quite perfect," said 
 Blais Heron in a tone of congratulation that seemed to bestow 
 the favour of his approval. But he looked vaguely puzzled, 
 as a child might who had been addressed in longer phrases 
 than it can understand. There was a suggestion of irony 
 lurking in Patricia's explanations that did not seem to him 
 sufficiently serious for such a subject as automobiles. 
 
 Mrs. Blais Heron turned to Nougat with her faint smile. 
 Even enthusiasm could not alter her from a dark doll. " Oh, 
 I saw you driving in it this morning, Nougat, and I'm simply 
 dying of envy! The electric Du Barries are really perfect 
 for town. I'm not going to give Ernie any peace till we 
 have one. Don't you think she's a lucky girl, Vee? It's a 
 dar!" 
 
 " Yes, isn't it a dar ! Nougat and I exchange motors to 
 suit each other's convenience. She lends me the Du Barrie 
 for night work, and I give her a seat on my car when we have 
 a motor party. Giles, you must persuade Ernie to buy a Du 
 Barrie; it was your choice." 
 
 Patricia turned her head a trifle curiously to hear what 
 Giles Mornington would reply. She had been smiling a little 
 drily over Lady Vera's version of borrowing her carriage, and 
 including her in excursions she did not like, as studying her 
 " convenience," but the expression of suppressed boredom on 
 her face brightened for an instant, though she did not try to 
 meet Mornington's eyes or express her intuitive sympathy 
 with him in the midst of these noisy men and women, as she 
 would have done three months ago. The time was past 
 when, as she told Fate Leroy, she had descended to all sorts 
 of subterfuges to establish a mute understanding between 
 them. She had learned by humiliating experience that he 
 would give her as little beyond surface courtesy as he did her 
 mother. 
 
 " The Du Barries are undoubtedly the best in the market, 
 in my opinion if that has any weight with you, Ernie," he 
 said easily, turning his face towards Blais Heron as he might
 
 66 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 have done a mask. What lay behind the mask Patricia knew 
 as little as anyone present. 
 
 " Well, I swear by Napier ! " said Lady Vera, and her voice 
 was the signal for an argumentative chorus of Daimlers, Pan- 
 hards, Clements, Thornycrofts, and Renaults, until it seemed 
 as if the party could never be disentangled from the 
 machinery. Everybody present, except Patricia, was learned 
 upon tyres and air-cooled engines and radiators, just as a few 
 years since they had discussed bearings and gear-cases and 
 free-wheels during the cycle craze. For a fashion is after all 
 only the vehicle for idle forces, driving the human mechanism 
 at more dangerous speed than the most successful " racer " 
 ever built. 
 
 " But tell me," Lady D'Aulnoy interrupted languidly, her 
 voice as raised as anyone's present, but by virtue of a more 
 musical accent appearing less harsh, " what did become of 
 Nougat this afternoon? I saw Chiffon at the Bath Club, 
 and she told me Nougat had lunched with them and then 
 rushed away to some obscure place, district visiting or some- 
 thing." 
 
 Lady Vera gave vent to a high staccato laugh. " No, it 
 wasn't anything so fashionable ! The people one district- 
 visits are, I believe, dirty and rather fascinating. They have 
 no morals, but they have the attraction of savages. Nougat 
 goes to the suburbs to visit people who are deadly respectable 
 and dull. Middle-Class people, not even picturesquely dirty. 
 Nougat likes the Bourgeoisie ! " 
 
 But the shaft passed harmlessly over Nougat, who had 
 turned to her right-hand neighbour and absorbed not only 
 his attention but her own as well. Lady Vera drank her 
 wine almost feverishly, and into her tawny eyes came the 
 look of an angry beast balked of its kill. She was growing 
 to hate this woman who was her rival rather than her daughter 
 who had come into her life with a separate existence too 
 strongly rooted to be bent this way or that as she chose. 
 Nothing she could do or say seemed to affect Nougat, and it 
 always turned to her own disadvantage. There had been 
 one other personality in Lady Vera's life which she could 
 not bend or break by violence, either of temper or passion 
 or sheer weariness of her tantrums. That was Giles Morn- 
 ington, and the sense of her failure stung her afresh whenever 
 her cold light eyes chanced to fall on his implacable face.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 67 
 
 The man she had married, and the daughter she had not 
 borne to him, were both thorns in the flesh to her. They 
 galled her as none other had ever done. 
 
 The talk waxed louder as the dinner advanced, even Lady 
 D'Aulnoy appearing to be speaking to an audience rather 
 than to personal friends within a few yards of her. The 
 women had commenced their dinner to the accompaniment of 
 sherry or hock, then had taken champagne, and with dessert 
 drank port, one or two liqueurs following with the coffee. 
 The wine loosened their tongues, and with the loosening of 
 their tongues came indiscretion. Only once during dinner 
 did Patricia meet Giles Mornington's eyes, and then they 
 regarded each other almost curiously, as those who must 
 need acknowledge an affinity whether they will or no. It was 
 before the servants left the room, the butler still presiding 
 over the sideboard, while four or five silent black figures, 
 his satellites, waited behind the guests' chairs. The servants 
 were so beautifully automatic that they might easily be for- 
 gotten and Lady Vera was telling a tale of a woman she 
 knew, by name. 
 
 "Well, I know that when she was staying at Longmeads 
 last autumn her maid always arranged for her to take her 
 bath last thing before she went to bed and the bath-room 
 was next to his, which made it so easy. The reason it came 
 out was that the housemaid found one of her pin-curls in his 
 bed one morning." 
 
 " Oh, how beasty ! '' said Mrs. Blais Heron at the top of 
 her voice through the general laughter. Lady Vera's " set " 
 had their own fashion in adjectives, which were liable to 
 change as soon as anyone outside their immediate circle 
 heard and adopted them. Just now the letter y was in 
 danger of wearing out with frequent use and unauthorised 
 application. 
 
 Patricia, looking across the table, became suddenly aware 
 of the impassive footman behind her mother. She sat up 
 slightly as if instinctively to draw her attention, with a warn- 
 ing in her eyes. But Lady Vera did not see. She was 
 leaning her elbow on the table with a toothpick in one pretty 
 white hand, and laughing loudly over her own tale in com- 
 pany with Blais Heron who lolled sideways in his chair with 
 his shoulder turned to Aimee D'Aulnoy. Patricia's brown 
 eyes, flying past the latter, met Giles Mornington's, and she 
 
 5*
 
 68 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 saw that he also had remembered the footmen and striven to 
 stem the tide of unsavoury reminiscence. 
 
 For a minute the two looked at each other ; but something 
 like suspicion kept guard in Mornington's secretive face and 
 made Patricia's heart sick. She turned round desperately 
 to Lexiter. 
 
 " Can you do something to remind my mother that the 
 servants are still in the room ? " she said. " It is no great 
 matter save that she is using people's names ! " 
 
 He looked quietly from her to Lady Vera with a glance too 
 subtle to explain. " I will speak to her if you like ? " he said, 
 and bending his handsome grey head a little towards his 
 hostess he said something so unexpected that Patricia's 
 amazement leapt into her face. 
 
 " Vera ! tutackuck cucarurely ! Thuthe mumenun cucanun 
 huhearurly ! " 
 
 Lady Vera shot a glance at him, composed of various 
 emotions some sort of fear, a touch of resentment, awakened 
 caution but she did not continue her reminiscences. On 
 Patricia's other hand arose Mrs. Blais Heron's voice ecstatic- 
 ally. 
 
 " Oh, Car ! how angry that made the Duke of London the 
 night we all dined at the Harbingers. There were only four 
 or five of us who could speak the Lully language, and none 
 of the hubbies knew it ! " Her voice rose higher still in a 
 scream of laughter, in which Lady Vera joined. " Chiffon, 
 and I and you, and Mrs. Dickie Verner, kept it up all the 
 time, and the old Duke grew so cross ! He told Ernie it was 
 damned bad taste quite as bad as speaking French before 
 a class that cannot understand it ! " 
 
 Patricia turned her brilliant amused eyes to Lexiter, with 
 rather the same expression that she might have had for the 
 antics of a performing poodle. "Would you mind explaining 
 to me what has taken you suddenly ? " she said with repressed 
 laughter. " Are you all gone mad, or inspired to speak with 
 tongues ? " 
 
 " The latter, I think," he returned with a nonchalant 
 brevity most women associated with him. Patricia had not 
 as yet endowed him with enough personality to allow for 
 characteristics, and she faintly resented the curtness of his 
 sentences. " It's a language of our own, made by doubling 
 the consonants, adding u and ly. I'll teach you if you like ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 69 
 
 " Thanks, no ! " she responded idly, her glance straying 
 round the table with unconscious contempt. "I agree too 
 entirely with the Duke ! " Her eyes wondered a little at 
 this world of women in which she found herself women who 
 had eaten their food with a coarseness and greediness which 
 would have been hardly tolerated in an Elementary School ; 
 women who lolled in their chairs, and worse still ! allowed 
 their menkind a like liberty ! Women who had silly phrases 
 of their own, and like ill-bred children thought it desirable 
 to have codes, and signals, and secret references, before 
 others who were not in the secret. They seemed to Patricia 
 as far beyond the pale of civilised manners as a savage might 
 have been. She would as soon have thought of arguing with 
 the one as the other. 
 
 " Well," said Lady Vera at last, rising with a flash of her 
 sequinned body which was like the reflected shimmer on a 
 snake's scales, " I suppose we have all done feeding. Shall 
 we trot ? " 
 
 "What's the order of the night? Bridge?" asked Blais 
 Heron, kicking his wife's train out of his way with a freedom 
 he had not shown before dinner. " I suppose you won't play, 
 Giles ? " 
 
 " No, thanks. I have letters to write, and I am going down 
 to the club for billiards." 
 
 " It's such a pity you won't play Bridge now, Giles ! " said 
 Mrs. Blais Heron, as Mornington opened the door for her 
 exit. " You were the best partner I ever had for that one 
 season when you beat us all hollow ! " 
 
 " I tired of it." Mornington smiled with studied courtesy 
 at Aimee, Lady D'Aulnoy, as she reached him and stopped 
 to shake hands. 
 
 " I know I shan't see you again, Giles," she said plaintively. 
 " When you once get into your own part of the house you 
 might be a thousand miles off for inaccessibility. Nougat, 
 come and talk to me. I've been trying to get at you all 
 through dinner." 
 
 Patricia had come abreast of Lady D'Aulnoy in the onward 
 impulse of the dinner party to the hall, for as everyone had 
 smoked together there was no excuse for the men to stay 
 behind ; the older woman passed her arm through that of 
 the younger, but Patricia did not glance in Mornington's 
 direction, or say good-night in her turn. She knew, with a
 
 70 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 dull hopelessness, that she would not see him again until the 
 morrow either perhaps not then, if he could avoid the ladies 
 of his household not too pointedly. Behind the great 
 polished door of his own rooms on the ground floor he might, 
 as Aim6e said, be a thousand miles off for inaccessibility. 
 She rarely knew if he were in or out of the house, and she 
 had never been invited beyond that great door, which to her 
 imagination was always closed. 
 
 " Come on ! " called Lady Vera from the hall, her sinuous 
 metallic figure gleaming towards the dusk of the lift. " Come 
 on, Nougat ! What are you all waiting for ? We're going 
 up, packed like herrings ! " 
 
 " Assus cluclosuselully assus yuyou lulikulely ! " called 
 Lexiter, raising his voice behind Patricia, as he followed 
 her. 
 
 " Yuyou bubeasustut ! " Mrs. Blais Heron called back. 
 
 Patricia gently extricated her arm from Lady D'Aulnoy's. 
 " For the sake of my gown I prefer to walk upstairs," she 
 remarked carelessly. " You mustn't come with me, because 
 it is better for you to ride, Aim6e. I am sorry for you, 
 however ! " 
 
 There was a babel of sound round the lift, beside which 
 waited the page-boy with astonished eyes he vainly tried to 
 keep blank, while Lexiter and Blais Heron facetiously 
 attempted to press the women and themselves into the con- 
 fined space. There was much noise and laughter and a 
 woman's shriek of anger or excitement then Mrs. Blais 
 Heron came flying across the hall to the stairs which Patricia 
 was already mounting, half a yard of rose-coloured ruching 
 in her hand. 
 
 " I'm coming up with you, Nougat ! " she exclaimed breath- 
 lessly. " I've had enough of their beastly fooling. Look 
 what Car did to my gown if he wins to-night I swear I'll 
 make him give me another ! " 
 
 " How careless ! " said Patricia in clear, cold tones. " But 
 I think it would be more crushing if you sent Caryl to 
 Coventry for behaving like a school-boy, rather than allowed 
 him such an easy reparation." 
 
 There was neither irony nor disdain in her manner, and yet 
 Mrs. Blais Heron glanced at her for a moment quickly as if 
 doubting whether she were being warned or taken to task. 
 She put an arm round Nougat's reluctant waist, her clear
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 71 
 
 expressionless eyes looking up with some uncertainty at the 
 beautiful face above her. 
 
 " You are such a dar, Nougat ! " she said effusively. " I 
 always feel you've so much in you, and are really so sympa- 
 thetic if one could get a chance to talk to you. I'm in such 
 a curious crisis in my life I want to tell you all about it ! " 
 
 Patricia raised her brows mentally, but her great brown 
 eyes were merely quietly attentive on the pretty dark doll 
 face so near her own. Had Editha Blais Heron said : " I'm 
 in such a mess ! " she was beginning to realise that it would 
 have meant card debts, or the possibility of revelations that 
 in another sphere of life might have ended in the Divorce 
 Court. But a " curious crisis " in the existence of such women 
 as Editha indicated rather a sentimental attraction which was 
 not yet compromising, or possibly only a new taste for re- 
 ligion, or fortune-telling. 
 
 " Come and have tea with me, and then we can talk. I 
 shall be in to-morrow,' ! she said good-naturedly, with a sigh 
 for the time to be bestowed on Mrs. Blais Heron, which 
 might have been enjoyed with books or music or more con- 
 genial companionship. 
 
 "May I? Thanks! I'm dying to con!" ('fide or 'fess 
 was understood.) " I'll come at five can't before, because 
 I'm seeing Barbuillon about my hair. You are such a dar, 
 Nougat ! " 
 
 " I hope," said Patricia to herself meditatively, as she 
 strolled into the drawing-room, " that she isn't going to alter 
 her hair, at least ! It is the only natural thing about her 
 now." 
 
 She had arrived sooner than the travellers by the lift after 
 all, or than Mrs. Blais Heron, who loitered to join them as 
 they came up in a laughing, protesting group, the women 
 ostentatiously shaking out their gowns with plenty of in- 
 sinuation as to their being crushed by the men's heavier 
 black figures, all of them chattering and chaffing loudly. The 
 sound of their voices heralded them along the corridor to 
 Patricia, where she stood among the white pillars, and brought 
 a deeper listlessness and boredom to her face. The drawing- 
 room was as white as the hall, and had the same stricken 
 look of waiting for something a dead house that had ex- 
 pected the clang of a crisis to wake it to piteous life for over 
 twenty years. Something of the same expression of patient
 
 72 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 expectancy was in Patricia's unconscious figure in its bright 
 satin gown she seemed but as another living pillar, a hardly 
 more lifelike ornament of the vast empty room, when the 
 swish of the women's skirts announced their arrival, and the 
 Bridge players came in at the further door and proceeded all 
 across a desert of polished floor to one of the pair of chimney 
 pieces, beside which Patricia was standing. 
 
 " Ugh ! " said Lady Vera with an exaggerated shrug of her 
 shoulders. " This room strikes chilly even in the middle of 
 summer ! I hate such enormous spaces. It is like a hotel ! " 
 The candour of the remark was equal with its truth. A 
 whole shopful of quaint spindle-legged furniture dotted 
 amongst the white pillars did not make the drawing-room 
 appear habitable unless there were more than a hundred 
 people in it. A Watteau screen had been placed near the 
 Bridge table, somewhat shutting off a section of the room near 
 the long windows which opened out on to the balcony ; but 
 even this failed to satisfy Lady Vera. 
 
 "We will play in my own room another time," she said 
 fretfully, flinging her glittering, sequinned body down on to 
 one of the chairs with a movement that made the tail of her 
 gown quiver like a wicked snake. " I should have gone there 
 to-night, but there is no balcony, and I thought the men 
 beasties would want to smoke outside. Now, good people, 
 draw up! There are too many of us, so somebody must 
 amuse Nougat on the balcony. I suppose you won't play, 
 Nougat ? " It was noticeable that Lady Vera never addressed 
 her daughter by her own baptismal name, but had adopted 
 the sobriquet of her school friends from the moment she first 
 heard it. Without caring to wonder if there were prejudice 
 in this, Patricia had exchanged the pleasant associations with 
 it, of her school days, for a distaste connected with her 
 mother's set, who had all promptly taken example and 
 adopted the nickname probably because it was more sug- 
 gestive of slang. 
 
 " No, thanks," she said. " I should spoil your game. I am 
 still only a beginner, and I find it unnerving when my partner 
 glares at my discards." The house stakes were high in 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 She laid her hand on the bell as she spoke, and sent the 
 footman who answered it to her maid for a wrap, for the 
 friendly night had not yet prepared an obscurity for her white
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 73 
 
 figure. By the time she had disguised herself somewhat in 
 the long soft cape they brought her, the Bridge party was 
 settled in its places, but without waiting to see who, if any- 
 body, preferred the fresh air to watching the game, she 
 stepped on to the balcony, and sat down in one of the loung- 
 ing chairs which stood there. The most natural theory was 
 that Lady D'Aulnoy or Mrs. Blais Heron would join her, 
 and leave the players evenly balanced. She did not turn her 
 head when a large body blocked the window frame a few 
 minutes later, but as soon as it filled the seat by her side she 
 raised her brows very slightly to recognise Caryl Lexiter. 
 
 " Please smoke," was all she said. " I know you for one 
 of the most inveterate ' Bridgers ' in London, and I am sure 
 you require an alternative if you are to share my exile ! " 
 
 " Thanks ! " said Lexiter quietly, his eyes watching her 
 with a steady furtiveness over the match as it blazed up in 
 his handsome face. A long and unsavoury experience of 
 women had not taught him to classify Patricia. The terms 
 of their acquaintance were exactly on the same impersonal, 
 friendly footing as they had been when he met her for the 
 first time on her return from abroad. He had thought her 
 then a singularly easy woman to know, charmingly ready to 
 be amused, and to accept the hall-mark of easy manners ; 
 but he had since found that things had remained where they 
 had begun and to the indefinable barrier which caused it he 
 was a stranger. 
 
 Even now Patricia was not apparently flattered by his 
 having foregone Bridge to sit by her side under the night 
 sky, and look at her grave beauty. Lexiter valued her face 
 and figure generously. He did not admire her person the 
 less because he knew next to nothing of her mind, and the 
 material advantages of chestnut-brown hair and a skin like 
 white curd made him appraise her highly. He had an ex- 
 cellent view of both these good points at the present moment, 
 for Patricia's attention was fixed rather on the road below 
 the balcony than on him. She was leaning forward musingly, 
 her elbow resting on her cloak as a protection from the dingy 
 stone coping, and her brown eyes fathoms deep in a specula- 
 tion he could not divine. Below her was a procession of 
 cabs and carts and the tops of omnibuses passing beneath 
 the balcony a bird's-eye view of common features beneath 
 common hats . . . after all, she acknowledged with a sigh,
 
 74 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 those people in the room behind her, talking such serious gib- 
 berish over their cards, were gifted with a certain quality of 
 voice and refinement of accent, even if they did shout. What 
 would it be like, she wondered, to have to associate with the 
 people who wore cheap hats and rode outside omnibuses ? 
 Patricia had never, as it happened, ridden outside an 
 omnibus. This is not to say that many of her acquaintances 
 had not, for even minor economies are alluring after a run 
 of bad luck at Bridge ; but her own motor being always at 
 her disposal, and plenty of money in her purse, cabs had 
 seemed a happier medium did one want a change. Now 
 it occurred to her that the majority had to ride in omnibuses 
 even Fate Leroy with her well-cut gowns and air of gentle 
 birth ! and it brought a shadow to the face she kept so per- 
 sistently turned to the rattle and jingle below a vibration 
 of implacable traffic that to her mind made conversation 
 unpleasant if not impossible. She did not want to turn 
 round and talk, and yet she knew that she must. She had 
 never taken the mere contemplation of Caryl Lexiter as a 
 physical subject into consideration, but his entertainment, 
 involving as it did a certain amount of attention, bored her. 
 
 Lexiter's position was not entirely satisfactory either. 
 What is the use of being six feet three, with a nearly perfect 
 profile, if the woman to whom you are talking does not seem 
 to be aware of these facts ? His level-lidded eyes rested on 
 the coil of her unresponsive hair, and he idly unbound it in 
 imagination and wondered if it were all real, and whether it 
 would not reach pretty nearly to her knees. An alluring vision 
 haunted his secret fancy of a less unapproachable Patricia, 
 fire-flushed by the light of a cosy bedroom in winter a 
 Patricia in a whiter garment than her dinner satin, with the 
 coils of chestnut hair loose about her, and making her warmly 
 
 feminine It was unlikely that she would marry 
 
 him before the winter, even with a certain influence that he 
 knew was with him to force her into it. But English houses 
 were very cosy in cold weather particularly when the brisk 
 bracing day was shut out behind drawn curtains, and the 
 firelight danced merrily about my lady's chamber 
 
 Inside the drawing-room Mr. Lexiter's defection had met 
 with far more comment than from the object who had drawn 
 him on to the balcony. Mrs. Blais Heron had turned her 
 clear, empty eyes on Lady Vera with a little pensive smile.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 75 
 
 "Poor old Car!" she said. "Is even Bridge a secondary 
 attraction? " 
 
 " Hearts are trumps ! " said Lady Vera with a significance 
 that might or might not be intentional, for it was her declara- 
 tion. 
 
 " What becomes of last year's yachting party ? " said Blais 
 Heron under his breath. "Hearts are trumps, are they? 
 May I play to hearts, partner ? " 
 
 "Yes, please," said Lady D'Aulnoy, something in her face 
 belying her consent to Lady Vera's double meaning, if it 
 existed. The little flicker of the cards as they fell on the 
 table was all that broke the stillness till the round was over, 
 but while Blais Heron argued with his hostess as to her 
 arithmetic, and protested his own score correct, Lady 
 D'Aulnoy turned her head as if half troubled and looked at 
 the open window behind her. 
 
 " Oh, it won't come to anything, in my opinion ! " mur- 
 mured Mrs. Blais Heron, catching the movement. " Nougat 
 and he will not get on." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Car Lexiter has no use for a decent woman ! " said Mrs. 
 Blais Heron, a sudden shrewdness making the expressionless 
 eyes repulsive. Perhaps she was wise to keep them blank 
 as a rule, for the few thoughts that did rise in their clear 
 shallows were not elevating to recognise. 
 
 Outside on the balcony Lexiter was leaning forward also, 
 at last, and making a bid for fortune. His face had altered 
 to the look it had for certain women of his set perhaps the 
 vision of the firelit-room had quickened his blood and his 
 voice was altered too when he spoke. 
 
 " Tell me what you are thinking about, Nougat ! " 
 
 Patricia turned her regal head with a quite unembarrassed 
 surprise, and gave him her whole attention at last in a way 
 that made him drop back into his chair again. It occurred 
 to her then that he was lolling after the manner of his kind ; 
 but she acknowledged that his attitude was somehow bearable, 
 whereas if it had been Blais Heron she would have mildly 
 suggested his sitting more erect. But Lexiter's lounging was 
 a graceful thing, as was any insolence of his. 
 
 " I was looking at that man on the other side of the road," 
 she said with a direct simplicity that discomforted Lexiter's 
 advance as nothing else could have done. " He is only a
 
 76 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 blurred figure from here, but I think he is a very low-class 
 individual indeed. Do look at him ! Why is he hovering 
 round the Park Gates like that ? " 
 
 " Poor devil ! trying to slip in and sleep inside, probably. 
 I often think I should like to get hold of a genuine tramp 
 and hear his experiences ! " said Lexiter, too skilful to betray 
 a change of front, though all the danger had gone out of 
 his voice and eyes. 
 
 Patricia looked at him afresh with a kind of mental shock. 
 She had known poverty far more intimately than Caryl 
 Lexiter in the beggars of Funchal, and in a land where the 
 warmth of the sun is the prerogative of the lowest, and food 
 is fruit, easily obtained, she had not gone beyond a passing 
 pity. But Patricia realised, as no English-bred woman can 
 do, the cruelty of England's climate and the meaning of damp 
 and cold. If it struck through her dainty silks, and de- 
 manded wraps even in the summer, what was it to rags and 
 starvation ? She looked at Caryl Lexiter and saw him as a 
 Type which in broadcloth, from the height of a balcony, 
 would find an interest in exploiting the misery of the gutter. 
 For the minute she hated him not for his circumstances, 
 but for daring to venture into the presence of poverty save 
 with awe and a thanksgiving that his lot was not with these. 
 But there was something else a haunting memory, an annoy- 
 ance that yet reminded her of a laugh. What was it ? 
 
 "Well, it would not hurt you" said a sudden cross voice 
 in her ears, a voice with a little croak in it "You could say 
 'Oh fair tramp! I have too much bread and wine '" 
 
 " You don't realise ! " she said abruptly, wrenching herself 
 back from an association which seemed at the moment miles 
 away. " You don't realise the wretchedness of the tramp, or 
 you would hardly think it a diversion to listen to his ex- 
 periences. You have too much bread and wine I mean, 
 you have never known anything about these people the 
 poor. I have." 
 
 She shut her red lips curtly, and turned a white marbled 
 shoulder to him from which the protecting cloak had slipped. 
 She was vexed with him and with herself. Why had he put 
 her in mind of a man whom she had not even liked, and 
 whose figure had struck her as sinister in juxtaposition with 
 the husband and wife at Sunnington? Was there a likeness 
 between the two men ? Impossible ! She saw the face of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 77 
 
 the afternoon lean, irritable, with eyes that were too keen 
 for sympathy, and a watchful purpose in every line of its 
 steady lips and moulded jaw ; and she saw the face of this 
 evening, though she did not turn her own goodly to look 
 upon, with the advantages and culture of many generations, 
 a type of successful breeding, the more distinguished for the 
 thick silver hair, but full of passions that might be indulged. 
 In the point of refinement the advantage, strangely enough, 
 was with the man who was certainly a gentleman, but who 
 gave no known credentials with his name. Was the Honour- 
 able Caryl Lexiter fallen short of Lady Helen's standard 
 rather than the unhonoured Gerald Vaughan after all? 
 Patricia wondered. 
 
 In the pause, while neither of them spoke, came an echo 
 of material life from the open window behind them, freighted 
 with a modern interest. 
 
 " Pass the score, please. What's the score ? I can't de- 
 clare unless I know the score ! " 
 
 " We are twenty-six below, and eight above ! " 
 
 " Oh ! Diamonds ! " 
 
 Then Blais Heron's loud voice, with an unctuous sense of 
 humour : " We were all taught in the nursery that there is 
 nothing so hopeless as a weak red suit ! " 
 
 " Yes, but one plays by the score ! that's just as old ! " 
 
 Silence, and the flutter of the bright slips of pasteboard 
 falling on green cloth. 
 
 " I suppose Bridge is a scientific game ? " remarked 
 Patricia. " There must be something very brain-sapping in 
 it, don't you think? All our mental energies seem 
 to have been absorbed before we begin to talk of anything 
 else ! " 
 
 " I should call it a common-sense game, rather," said 
 Lexiter, stretching out his long legs to the uncomfortable 
 confines of the balustrade, and suppressing a momentary 
 impulse to yawn. The aggravating part of Patricia's indiffer- 
 ence was that he knew it was not stupidity. Once or 
 twice when she had chosen to exert a certain charm of her 
 own, he had never felt less bored. " But I have no doubt," 
 he went on, " that our shining hours might be better em- 
 ployed than learning to play a no-trumps hand not wisely but 
 too well ! " 
 
 " I am very dull to-night ! " said Patrica, rousing herself
 
 7 8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 with a laugh. " It is reducing even you to platitudes. Sup- 
 pose you give me a cigarette, and tell me something about 
 yourself!" 
 
 Smoking was the only custom of Lady Vera's set to which 
 Patricia had taken kindly possibly because she had learned 
 long ago at school, where she and Chiffon, with a guilty joy, 
 smuggled cigarettes into St. Clare's through the agency of 
 various masculine admirers. 
 
 " Oh ! is that your idea of entire consolation ? You have a 
 high idea of men, Nougat ! " 
 
 " On the contrary, you merely misunderstand my selfish- 
 ness. When people are so unfortunate as to interest me, I 
 always make them talk about themselves ! " 
 
 It was his turn to laugh, and his laugh was charming. 
 Without being any less loud than Blais Heron's, it had the 
 heartiness of a boy's and the cheerfulness of a philosopher's 
 something of its irony too. 
 
 He stretched out a hand and drew Patricia's cloak over 
 her shoulder again, caressingly. 
 
 " You are a thorough fraud ! " he said. " You are not 
 in the least interested in me. All you want is to avoid 
 telling me of what you were really thinking when I spoke 
 to you." 
 
 " I have always observed that if one does tell the truth 
 one is sure to be disbelieved ! I told you the strict truth. 
 I was thinking of the relative positions of that that tramp 
 across the road and ourselves, and wondering why he should 
 have to hover at park gates while we sat on balconies. A 
 purely radical and abstract speculation, you see ! Probably 
 not nearly so interesting as your own thoughts. What were 
 you thinking at the moment ? " 
 
 " I wonder if I dare tell you ? " said Lexiter in open amuse- 
 ment. Then with an accentuation of the graceful insolence 
 " I was wondering how long your hair was when it was 
 down ! " he said. 
 
 " How very impertinent ! Only, I do not believe it for an 
 instant. You were wondering if it were all my own ! " 
 
 " Perhaps I was ! My experience of most women is that 
 hair is one of the subjects on which they think it righteous 
 to tell a lie. It's an awful shock when you find out ! " he 
 added suddenly, with an evil reminiscence running through 
 the amusement of his tone.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 79 
 
 Patricia relapsed into one of her serene silences. She had 
 a way of mentally closing the shutters over her intelligence 
 at anything like a hint of indecency that made the real barrier 
 to any further intimacy with her from Lexiter's point of view. 
 But that he had not realised. All he knew was that he 
 seemed to have lost her attention again without any reason, 
 for she was certainly listening to the Bridge players rather 
 than to him. 
 
 "Aim6e, what on earth made you lead through the 
 strength ? " 
 
 " My dear, I had nothing in my hand. It was ' rotten,' as 
 Bobby Harbinger says. How many honours on the table, 
 Ernie?" 
 
 " Two. Simple to us. I say, Vee, your luck has stood 
 you out to-night ! " 
 
 " My partner had the sense to leave the declarations to 
 me ! " said Lady Vera brusquely. " You are like all men 
 you are too fond of your own judgment. If I had been 
 Aimee I should have ragged you. Twice you've lost a no- 
 trump hand by sticking to your own diamonds." 
 
 "I can't play a no-trump hand with nothing in my own to 
 win," said Blais Heron sulkily. " It wants practice." 
 
 " It wants pluck ! " said Lady Vera with a hard laugh. 
 " As the old Duchess said when the Harbinger baby came : 
 ' Chiffon, my dear, remember that the Lord made you a 
 Yardleigh, and ask Him for courage it's their perquisite ! ' ' 
 
 There was a louder laugh. 
 
 " Poor little woman ! She needed all her perquisites I 
 should think," said Lady D'Aulnoy. " She had an awfully 
 bad time. Bobby walked up and down Park Lane with a 
 golf-cap hindside before and a distracted air until three in 
 the morning, and my husband found him at last being 
 shadowed by two policemen, and took him home and merci- 
 fully made him drunk so he says." 
 
 " They say she'll never have another ! " 
 
 " Bobby's awfully fond of her ! " 
 
 " So are other people ! " remarked Blais Heron with a 
 glance at the open window, and a not particularly lowered 
 tone. He dealt the cards skilfully round with lightning ease, 
 ran his eye over his own hand, and said " Spades ! " all in 
 one breath. 
 
 " I hope I am not too prejudiced," said Patricia thought-
 
 8o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 fully, her anger so controlled that Lexiter hardly suspected 
 it, " but there are times when I feel I should like to send 
 Ernest Blais Heron back to school ! " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I think he was not kicked often or hard enough while 
 there ! " 
 
 " What on earth are you laughing at like that, Car ? " Lady 
 Vera called through the window, a touch of suspicion in her 
 hard voice. Like all people whose wit is always at the ex- 
 pense of others, she mistrusted her friends' humour in her 
 turn. 
 
 " Oh, nothing a new education scheme of Nougat's ! " he 
 called back. " Poor fellow ! " he added to Patricia, his 
 broad shoulders still shaking, " what has he done to rouse 
 you to such vindictiveness ? " 
 
 " I object to bad manners ! " said Patricia curtly. " Give 
 me a light, please. This thing has gone out." 
 
 As he struck the match he looked at her through the 
 momentary blaze, and deliberately laid his hand holding it 
 against the one which she had stretched out with the 
 cigarette. Patricia's large brown eyes met his for a moment 
 with cold curiosity. Then the hand that was holding the 
 cigarette dropped quietly to her lap. 
 
 " Will you kindly give me the box of matches ? " she said 
 composedly. "And another time please do not make 
 mistakes." 
 
 " Hulloa, you two ! " said Mrs. Blais Heron, stepping sud- 
 denly out of the window behind Lexiter. " What are you 
 doing ? Holding each other's hands in the dark ? Don't get 
 up, Car." 
 
 " I don't know where you are to sit unless I do ! " said 
 Lexiter with his usual impertinence. " The edge of the 
 balcony or my knee is the only alternative ! " 
 
 " Bubeasustut ! Bubeasustut ! " said Mrs. Blais Heron, 
 raising her pretty dark doll face for a light to the cigarette 
 he mutely offered, and not shrinking at all from the hand 
 that touched hers or the face bent nearly to her own. " Isn't 
 he a beast, Nougat?" 
 
 " Certainly if you think so ! " said Patricia indifferently. 
 " I should not care to own to such an experience of him, how- 
 ever!" 
 
 "Why?"
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 81 
 
 " I think it is generally one's own fault if a man is anything 
 but what one wishes him to be." 
 
 The minute the words were out of her mouth she feared 
 that she might hurt the woman in striking at the man; but 
 she need not have troubled. Mrs. Blais Heron laughed an 
 uncomprehending little laugh and dropped into the seat 
 Lexiter had vacated. 
 
 " Oh, Nougat ! " she exclaimed. " You are such a dar ! 
 but you don't understand women, nowadays ! They like men 
 to be beasts it's so much easier to get on with them ! "
 
 82 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " And he said, ' I will take this honour 
 
 For my life and its single span ; 
 And the peerage your Liege has given 
 
 I will bear it as subject can 
 But God gave the first great title 
 When he called me simply a Man ! ' " 
 
 The Inheritance. 
 
 "A LONG experience of chimney sweeps," remarked Mrs. 
 Leroy, pensively, " induces in me the belief that they have 
 no morals ! " 
 
 " I don't see what you could expect," said Vaughan, cross- 
 ing one leg over the other and fixing the eyeglass yet more 
 firmly in his left eye. " The only people who have morals 
 are those who are never proved to have none. A chimney 
 sweep's trade betrays him the very instant he kisses your 
 housemaid whom I presume brought the hot water with a 
 smudge on her cheek this morning ? " 
 
 " Phaugh ! " said Mrs. Leroy lightly. " Do you think I 
 should be so foolish as to trouble my head over the bad 
 taste of my servant? If she liked to dirty her face by kiss- 
 ing a soiled man. I am sorry for her, that is all. It is a dis- 
 gusting idea, by the way, isn't it? But I should only suppose, 
 out loud, that she had blacked her face in doing the grates, 
 and advise her to clean it." 
 
 " Even your virtues are only the result of good taste ! " 
 said Vaughan accusingly. " I have always remarked it in 
 you. What was the sweep's crime in your immoral point 
 of view ? " 
 
 " He promised faithfully to come on Tuesday, at six 
 o'clock. The servants put even-thing ready for him, but he
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 83 
 
 did not come. Then I went and wailed at his door, and 
 he said that he had lost his dog, and had had to look for 
 it or else his wife was dead," added Fate in her pretty soft 
 voice, musingly. " I forget which it was. As if 7 cared 
 if he had lost a dozen dogs ! " 
 
 "I have never," said Vaughan in an exasperated tone, 
 " known any one so long in coming to the crux of a story ! 
 We have been walking round the universe with your sweep 
 for twenty minutes. Do pull yourself together and explain 
 what it really was that he did." 
 
 " I am telling you as fast as possible ! Don't hurry me 
 over my preliminaries they are my strong point. No one 
 tells a story with more enjoyment of their own humour than 
 I ! The sweep came this morning at nine at nine, you 
 understand ! " 
 
 " Well, I suppose Eldred had just set off for the City, 
 and so the parting on the doorstep was not disturbed," said 
 Vaughan with due consideration, and the faintest shadow 
 of a discomfort which he was ashamed to call envy. "Very 
 considerate of the sweep, on the whole ! " 
 
 " He would have been much more considerate if he had 
 come at six as I told him ! I was going for a ride with one 
 of the Durhams Saydie, the second girl and wanted to 
 get out before the heat, and so I had to leave the maids to 
 manage him and get straight, because I had people to lunch." 
 
 "Saydie is the girl with a flattened face, isn't she?" said 
 Gerald musingly. He looked appreciatively across the little 
 tea-table at Mrs. Leroy, sitting under the pear-tree in the 
 narrow back garden that stood for Eden as well as the largest 
 in England. From the bicycle shed at a little distance came 
 the whirr of chains and the sound of someone groping about, 
 which indicated Eldred cleaning his Rudge-Whitworth. 
 Gerald Vaughan, picturing Saydie Durham, gazed in the 
 meantime at Fate Leroy whose face was not flattened. 
 
 " Saydie is supposed to be the best-looking of the family," 
 remarked Fate idly. "Don't you think her pretty?" 
 
 " Of course not. Her mother sat on her and spoilt her ! " 
 
 They both laughed, and Fate settled herself a trifle more 
 comfortably in her seat. Vaughan's wits were of a kind 
 that appealed to her, though her circle was incomplete at 
 the present moment because of Eldred's material energies 
 keeping him in the cycle shed. 
 
 6
 
 84 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 "Eldred!" she called suddenly, across the grass. "Do 
 come and have tea your hands will be so dirty, dear ! " 
 
 A muffled voice answered cheerily that they need not wait 
 in three seconds only the bearings ! screw loose wash 
 them first ! 
 
 " My husband's hands are always disgraceful ! " said Fate, 
 with such obvious fondness and indulgence that the man at 
 her side laughed a little vexedly and then sighed. "When 
 they are not stained with tobacco they are with bicycle oil. 
 But he enjoys himself quite beautifully taking things to 
 pieces and putting them together again. Sometimes I think 
 he would really like me to be mechanical. He could find out 
 how I worked, so much better ! " 
 
 " No man can find out how a woman works she is a 
 patent known only to her Creator! " said Vaughan grimly. 
 " Who lunched with you beside Miss Durham ? " 
 " Mrs. Rodney and Patricia Mornington." 
 " Again ! " 
 
 " She looked perfectly beautiful ! " said Fate with kindly 
 enthusiasm and no notice of his nasty tone. " I simply sat 
 and looked at her in pure delight, though she made all of 
 us insignificant in contrast to herself. When she comes into 
 a room I want to gasp, and then I sit down and revel 
 merely in her looks." 
 
 " It sounds as if her conversation hardly equalled them. 
 I cannot say that I thought it did, on the occasion when I 
 met her here. She struck me as having a maid who dressed 
 hair very well, and wearing a fifty-guinea gown. She is 
 the kind of woman I frankly detest!" 
 
 "That is absurd, Gerald, and simply because you do not 
 know her. On the day you met her she was very absent 
 because we had been discussing things that touched her 
 intimately, and she hardly roused herself to more than the 
 conventional attention one gives to any stranger. She is 
 not at all a happy woman ! " 
 
 Vaughan raised his brows. " She will have about a million 
 and a half, if not more, one day," he said cynically. " Hap- 
 piness is of course a relative quality, but I could purchase a 
 fair amount with her thousands, myself." 
 
 "You do not know. And even if that is so, I doubt if 
 her wealth, when it makes her independent, will compensate 
 her for spending the best years of her life in totally uncon-
 
 AS YE; HAVE SOWN. 85 
 
 genial surroundings. There is such a change in her from 
 the girl we knew in Madeira that it says more for her present 
 associations than anything she could tell me. Every time 
 she comes down to see me I find her a little harder, a little 
 more mature, a little more cynically indifferent. I think 
 she is so disillusioned that she will drift into a disastrous 
 marriage.'' 
 
 " I do Miss Mornington all injustice," said Vaughan slowly, 
 "for I do not like her. (Prejudice, no doubt but I don't.) 
 But even I am quite sure that I shall never see her name 
 in the Divorce Court. She is not of that kind." 
 
 " Oh, I did not mean that ! That would be an obvious 
 kind of crash that might have the elements of salvation in 
 it. Patricia is far too proud and far too much mistress of 
 herself to deign to such a thing. She might feel an utter 
 contempt for her husband ; but she certainly would not lower 
 her own standard sufficiently to feel an utter contempt for 
 herself as a divorced woman ! " 
 
 " You speak in enigmas, and the day is too hot to guess 
 riddles. What is the real crumpled rose leaf in the lot of 
 this Princess of fortune ? " 
 
 " Poor Princess ! with not a single subject worthy to do 
 her honour! Patricia has been brought up in all the tradi- 
 tions of the old aristocracy, and she is now plunged into 
 the cheap smartness of one of the fastest sets in town, that 
 is all." 
 
 " The ' Smart Set ' in fact, whatever that mysterious thing 
 may be ! " 
 
 " I didn't think it existed ! " said Mrs. Leroy serenely. " I 
 always regarded it as a bogey set up by a Middle-Class Press 
 to flatter a Middle-Class Public! Of course one little group 
 of people related to each other, or intimately acquainted, 
 may be fast and vulgar in their own peculiar way there are 
 probably plenty of such circles amongst the mass of London 
 society, and they may or may not know each other. All the 
 outcry of late against the ' Smart Set ' has almost materialised 
 it, but I don't believe that it has any foundation beyond a 
 few silly women here and there who want to be notorieties 
 and have no other way of compassing it! The people in 
 Lady Vera's circle, for instance, are simply self-indulgent; 
 she herself may be called fast, but it is because she wants 
 to do as she pleases, and not because it is the fashion."
 
 86 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " I cannot quite see why to do as she pleases should be a 
 tendency to bad manners ! " 
 
 "Nor can I, but unfortunately it appears to be the case. 
 Anyhow it is having a very bad effect on Patricia. She is 
 so sore at having her most sacred beliefs outraged, that she 
 is not even just to her own class, now." 
 
 " No ; nor should I be, save to give them justice without 
 mercy. The ' class ' of which you speak is one I utterly and 
 totally abominate. The present aristocracy of England so- 
 called with every advantage on their side, have hardly a 
 virtue to their credit. I am not particularising the ' Smart ' 
 people whom you have just demolished. I am speaking 
 more sweepingly still, of what remains of the great families 
 as well as the ' mushrooms ' of the last century. It is not 
 their moaals that I quarrel with, but their manners not 
 their wealth, buP-riiathey have done with it! " 
 
 Fate clasped her pretty hands round her knee and stared 
 with exquisite unwinking grey eyes into the middle distance. 
 When she was feasting her brain upon a problem, and about 
 to pronounce judgment, Vaughan found her most astonish- 
 ing, for he had never really recognised her as a clever 
 woman, but had been better content with her mental adroit- 
 ness as fitted to his own irritability. A man is pleased to 
 grant a woman brains so long as they are applied to his 
 own necessity, and Vaughan was only inclined to look upon 
 Fate Leroy with indulgent tenderness when she began to 
 exhibit a power of reason he could not deny. She was 
 certainly able to assert an opinion upon politics as well as 
 upon hairpins, and he was on the whole rather proud of her, 
 innocently conceiving his own acknowledgment as having 
 discovered her capability. 
 
 " It is so unfair," Mrs. Leroy began suddenly, following 
 her own train of thought, " to judge the Upper Classes, as we 
 call them, by the same standard as that of the Middle Class. 
 For generations we have been breeding our Aristocracy as 
 undeniably as we do our horses and with far less good 
 results, because we will not honestly say even that we hope 
 to improve the stock. Yet we make unwritten laws for them, 
 which are now such a tradition that they are ashamed to 
 break them. The first commandment we ever gave them 
 is ' Thou shalt not work ! ' and they have kept it only too 
 religiously. At the root of all the sturdy pride of the
 
 PAS YE HAVE SOWN. 87 
 
 Bourgeoisie of England the Middle Class, to which we 
 ought to be proud to belong ! is an irradicable awe and 
 admiration for. the Aristocracy. It is a kind of religion with 
 us we would rather hear about their vices, in reality, than 
 our own healthy virtues. The result is that we have 
 gradually demanded nothing of them save that they should 
 be like pampered pets, kept for our recreation ! " 
 
 Vaughan's face, throughout her tirade, had been growing 
 more and more restive. His nervous fingers had twice 
 screwed the eye-glass a little further into his eye, and he 
 was obviously going to contradict. His reply began with 
 such a well-worn formula that Fate laughed in spite of her 
 earnestness. She knew it well he always used it when he 
 did not agree. 
 
 " Pardon me, but that is not at all so ! In the Middle 
 Class, if you like to range yourself with shopkeepers " 
 
 " But, Gerald, it is such a vast term ! The Middle Class 
 reaches from the small ambitious tradesmen, dragging him- 
 self out of poverty, to the professional and official classes 
 now yes, and hardly excludes small county magnates ! " 
 
 " Well, the Middle Class, if you will ! We are not such 
 snobs as to respect anything with a handle to its name, or 
 
 a certain rent-roll. I protest " 
 
 "No! no! You don't understand me. We are not 
 snobs, but idealists. We look at these people through a 
 certain glamour, and we cannot really bear to think of them 
 as anything but magnificent and luxurious. We boast by 
 our Aristocracy yes, even by their sins! And it is all our 
 fault that they are what they are. We have tacitly said that 
 we will have a nobility in England which is kept in glass cases, 
 like householders proud of the exotics in their hothouses. 
 That we can afford to support our reigning House is a 
 National cry, and we point to our stupid, self-indulgent 
 Peerage as a proof of the best type of Englishman ! " 
 
 " I differ from you entirely," said Vaughan with irritable 
 energy. "If we acknowledge that our constitution and 
 national character necessitates a semi-feudal state of society 
 still, at least we expect decency and an example from our 
 Upper Classes." (He bit the last words as if still a little 
 distasteful.) 
 
 " But how in the world can we expect them to live decently, 
 according to our own standard? For generations these
 
 88 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 people have been over-feeding, and over-training, according 
 to certain traditions, and heating their blood, while our men 
 have had to work with brains if not body, and have inherited 
 temperance as their natural right. We breed our Aristocracy 
 as we do our racehorses, as I said before. Do you expect 
 morality from a racehorse ? " 
 
 Gerald's face underwent some sort of a momentary shock, 
 as though he found Fate's power of reason and argument 
 leading them into speculations incompatible with his feminine 
 ideals. The expression went out of his eyes and left 
 them blank. He was so obviously going to close the ques- 
 tion as one not to be discussed with her that she was 
 roused into saying what she had to say in spite of his tacit 
 resistance. 
 
 " It is not just to make this sudden outcry against the 
 present immorality in Society," she said earnestly. "Nor 
 is it even true from the majority of people. We are not 
 really shocked we are glad to have a chance of discussing 
 circles of which we know nothing, more outspokenly than 
 before. We go to plays which exaggerate the chimerical 
 ' Smart Set,' and talk and talk about them with a keen 
 relish, and we read silly books by people who know as little 
 as we do, and plume ourselves on our own virtues, while we 
 secretly admire these supposed vices. There has never been 
 so much irresponsible wealth as at the present time in Eng- 
 land property is not represented by land, which gave the 
 owners a stake in the soil, and responsibilities; it is all 
 stocks and shares nowadays, 'invested money' producing 
 an income from dividends without any counterbalance of 
 personal effort, beyond watching the markets ! The rich have 
 nothing to do except spend their money, and get into mis- 
 chief. And then we hold up our hands in horror, and say 
 that Society is rotten. If it is, we need not blame the victims 
 of which it is composed. They are just as much injured as 
 ourselves." 
 
 " Eldred ! " called Vaughan, raising his characteristic voice 
 with the croak intensified, "come and have tea now; there's 
 a good fellow ! You really must ! " 
 
 Fate subsided in a sudden ripple of laughter. " Never 
 mind! You have not heard the last of my theories even 
 yet ! " she said. Then as a figure slowly emerged from the 
 cycle shed, brushing dust off its sleeves and shaking itself
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 89 
 
 into a recently-acquired coat, she began to busy herself at 
 the tea-table with an entirely feminine air of absorption. 
 
 " May I ask if you made all those astounding assertions 
 to Miss Mornington at luncheon?" asked Vaughan abruptly. 
 
 " Not at luncheon afterwards, out here under the trees," 
 corrected Fate quietly. " I said all that and more. I hope 
 Patricia has something new to think about, at least. She 
 made me a little angry by the aloofness of her mental atti- 
 tude. She is rather narrow in her point of view, owing to 
 her education, and instead of making her own world she is 
 simply drawing back into herself and looking on at the one 
 made for her in passive disgust. With her position and 
 beauty what would I not do ! " said Fate with a sudden 
 restless stir of all her figure, as if her energies awoke. " I 
 would influence these empty, idle men and women so that 
 they should unconsciously become what I wanted, or else 
 drop out of my life. Anyhow I would not be a cipher!" 
 Her eyes, full of cold intelligence, suddenly fell upon her 
 husband advancing over the grass with a guilty consciousness 
 of his stained hands, and all the remote ambition died out 
 of her face, before a most beautiful glow of undisguisable 
 happiness. She looked up at him and laughed, as if at a 
 child. 
 
 " Darling, do look at your hands ! " she said. " And your 
 coat!" 
 
 " I know, Babs I must, go and wash and brush myself. 
 Just pour out my tea, will you? Shan't be a minute, 
 Gerald ! " 
 
 " You will never be a woman without influence ! " said 
 Gerald Vaughan slowly, as Leroy swung off across the grass 
 towards the house. " You will always have a circle to rule, 
 where you will be a queen ! " 
 
 " Ah, but you misjudge my influence ! " Fate exclaimed 
 with a sudden and most becoming flush of excitement in her 
 cheeks. You think, because you see me a little better 
 dressed (according to what happens to be your taste!) than 
 other women about here whom you have met, that an obvious 
 superiority is all that I want. You are quite wrong! I 
 have perhaps a little more leisure than they, and a little 
 more money to spend, because T have no children, and so 
 I can indulge myself and make a better effect. But the 
 reason you think me superior is because you like those women
 
 90 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 so much, and yet find me a little better still. Don't you 
 realise that it is there that my real power lies ? I have made 
 my world, even in this small corner of it called Sunnington. 
 That girl to-day Patricia Mornington told me quite simply 
 that if my circle were the Upper Middle Class it was in- 
 finitely better bred and better educated than the one where 
 she unwillingly finds herself. But dear me! it is simply 
 because I have gathered the nice women round me, and left 
 out the dull and stupid people ! " 
 
 She paused, almost breathless, laughing a little and half 
 ashamed of her own acknowledgment too pretty withal for 
 any man to quarrel with her for her frankness. Besides 
 which Vaughan knew that it was true. 
 
 "There are dull and hopeless beasts in all classes of 
 society," he said. " But to confess myself a snob I must 
 own to a hankering after the class above me! They have 
 at least the opportunities I have always lacked." 
 
 " Oh, if you mean a certain inheritance of good taste, 
 
 and money to carry it through ! But you do not 
 
 realise Patricia's desolation. Her ' set ' are carefully bred 
 swine excellent of their class. Well, one knows that the 
 breeding of pigs is a hobby with some landowners, and the 
 carefully nurtured, well-selected pig makes better bacon than 
 the wild hog ! " Her dainty disgust suddenly altered from 
 mockery to earnestness. " Oh, Gerald, the panacea for all 
 ills is Work! You rail against it because it has hampered 
 your inclinations, and made you feel the long years tedious. 
 But it has really curbed and controlled you, and moulded 
 you to a man. Do you notice that the younger sons of good 
 families are generally the best of them? Don't you see that 
 is because they have had to make their way to do some- 
 thing to develop the original grit? I admit the grit (yes! 
 I believe in the breeding of bone and muscle and blood 
 and brains !), but the man who takes the title, or the wealth, 
 or the position, is not really such a good fellow as his younger 
 brother." 
 
 " Who generally goes to the deuce, and proves the worst 
 blackguard of the lot ! " added Vaughan cynically. " Given 
 a man brought up in imitation of his more fortunate elder, 
 with the same tastes, and the same appetites, is it likely that 
 just because of a twist of fortune he should rise to his 
 obligations and become a model of hard work and self-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 91 
 
 denial? Not a bit of it! He grumbles at fate in his heart, 
 feels how hard his lines are, and as a compensation spends 
 the money he might have inherited, and ruins his family ! " 
 She laughed a vexed little laugh. " I am an idealist 
 that is what you are going to say ! Yet I stili believe in our 
 English ' stock ' in spite of the disapproval of my expres- 
 sions which I see in your underlip! I have one ally in 
 Patricia Mornington's world, Gerald one I shall probably 
 never meet. But he is proving the text of all my sermons 
 to her, and is an incontrovertible example of a younger 
 son who proved his mettle, and when he came into an 
 unexpected title was the truer nobleman for his hard work ! " 
 "And this paragon ?" Vaughan's eye-glass looked in- 
 credulity. 
 
 " It is the Duke of London. He is the only person among 
 her acquaintances over whom Patricia softens. She speaks 
 of him in a different tone from that she uses for her mother's 
 friends, and just now he means her hope of salvation to 
 her ! " 
 
 " He is an elderly man, isn't he ? He owns half Ballington, 
 the great South Suburb where so many engineering works 
 are. I know of him in consequence, by hearsay. He is a 
 good landlord." 
 
 " He is not only an elderly man, but he is hopelessly 
 crippled by rheumatism. When he was a younger son he 
 went out to East Africa and lived in a swamp and grew rice. 
 The rice prospered, but the poor cultivator did not. He 
 laid up trouble for himself in the future. Then his elder 
 brother died, and another brother was shot by accident in 
 stalking deer, and the present Duke was sent for home in 
 a hurry to wear strawberry leaves. He belongs to the old 
 type of aristocracy, like Lady Helen, and Patricia believes 
 that when she goes to Heaven she will find him there, enter- 
 taining a select house party consisting of no one at all whom 
 she knows just now ! " 
 
 " How very charming ! She must be a most delightful 
 member of any circle, mustn't she? Having damned them 
 all beforehand ! The Duke, by the way, is a poor man for 
 his position, I doubt if he has thirty thousand a year. Here 
 comes Eldred, sweet with soap, but no cleaner ! Do we ride 
 after tea, Eldred?" 
 
 " Babs and I will see you home, lest you should wander
 
 92 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 on your little fairy feet ! " said Leroy gaily, sitting down by 
 his wife's side, and wrinkling up his face in answer to her 
 laughter. 
 
 " His little fairy wheels, you mean dear silly person ! " 
 she said, and two delicious dimples mocked the serene grey 
 eyes above them. " I have been trying to convert Gerald to 
 Patricia Mornington, and he still hates her, Eldred. Don't 
 let us mention her name any more it is casting pearls before 
 swine ! " 
 
 " No, but by Jove ! she is a nice girl ! " said Eldred with 
 sunny appreciation. " She dined with us the other night, 
 and helped Babs water the ferns afterwards without the 
 least hesitation. She never puts on side. She just pinned 
 up her gown, and said she was going to help. And then 
 she came into the drawing-room and sat there for two hours, 
 and made me sing. I thought she would be awfully bored 
 at last ! " 
 
 "Oh, of course, if she flattered you with unlimited atten- 
 tion, I don't wonder that you thought her a nice girl," said 
 Vaughan, in his cross, soft voice. " I will have another 
 cup of tea, please, Fate." 
 
 " No, you will not ! " said Fate perversely. " It is very 
 bad for you just before riding. I am going to change my 
 skirt, Eldred. Don't eat too many buttered cakes, darling, 
 because I should so hate you to be fat. Oh, that reminds 
 me ! " She drew the fine lawn handkerchief from the waist- 
 band where she had tucked it, and tied the customary knot 
 in the corner with an absent expression. Vaughan watched 
 her, his face half aggravated, half resentfully fond of her 
 very characteristics. 
 
 "What is it for this time?" he demanded. "Another 
 sweep, or somebody's new nursemaid, or the ubiquitous 
 Miss Mornington?" 
 
 "None of them it is my own personal house-pride. I 
 am going up to town to buy table linen in the Sales, and 
 endure all their horrors, just for the sake of saving twopence 
 halfpenny! No one can deny that I am a good wife after 
 that. I hate Sales, because you have to watch six women 
 scratching each other for the possession of a piece of dirty 
 silk, and feel one with them. And even if the shopwalker 
 digs you in the ribs you can't give him in charge at such a 
 time. I sometimes wonder if the economies I practise are
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 93 
 
 equal to the frayed ends of my temper which result from 
 them. I always meant to marry a duke but of course as 
 Eldred declined to be a duke I have to shop with scratching 
 women ! " 
 
 "Eldred being inevitable ?" remarked Vaughan drily. 
 
 She did not answer in words, but she slipped^ an arm 
 round her husband's broad shoulders, laughed a lightning- 
 flash of defiance at Vaughan, and went swiftly and lightly 
 towards the house. Mrs. Leroy never dragged her feet, or 
 appeared to keep a poise save with the ease of perfect health. 
 
 Eldred's mental gaze was still upon Patricia's lifted face 
 as he sang, and his next words proved it. " She is a nice girl 
 all round, you know ! " he said, for Patricia had been quite 
 simple in her enjoyment, and her brown eyes had touched 
 him a little by their utter sadness. " She is a dear girl, to 
 anyone who knows her ! " 
 
 " Yes," echoed Vaughan absently. " A dear girl .... 
 to anyone who knows her ! " and his eyes lit as by chance 
 on the house, where, outside Fate's window, Phlumpie sat 
 sunning himself, his face a little turned to the raised sash, 
 as if someone talked with him from within, even while she 
 changed her skirt. 
 
 Fate was not at the moment thinking very much about 
 Vaughan, or Phlumpie, or even Eldred. She cajoled 
 Phlumpie because it was her custom to use her art on any 
 masculine animal, even when a little absent-minded. But 
 she did not really notice when he only blinked his gooseberry 
 eyes and began to pull out the longer hair of his tail in his 
 effort to clean it conscientiously. Her active brain had 
 harked back to the subject that fed it best at the moment, 
 and she thought of Patricia Mornington and the problem 
 of her existence. For there had been something subtly new 
 about Patricia's mental attitude, though she had hardly be- 
 trayed it save by a slightly added hardness. She was, as 
 Fate had said, a trifle more mature each time they en- 
 countered each other; she was also a trifle more philoso- 
 phical, or perhaps was weary of kicking against the pricks. 
 All Fate's vitality took hold of the difficulty which the other 
 woman seemed fain to lay down : but she did not find the 
 remedy in marriage, though, with reasonless intuition, she 
 felt that there was an unnamed figure in Patricia's life which 
 might account for the change in her. She had never spoken
 
 94 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 of marriage to Fate as a possible escape, and she named one 
 man no more than another. Yet Fate presaged a gradual 
 tendency towards some such solving of the riddle, and felt 
 that it might be still more unsatisfactory than the present 
 state of things. 
 
 " I must wait till she tells me," said Mrs. Leroy, frowning 
 at her own fair face in the looking-glass. " If she will only 
 not do it first and tell me afterwards! Marriage is either 
 the key of the universe to a woman, or its ultra confusion." 
 For the joy of her own wifehood did not blind her to what 
 its opposite might be, perhaps indeed it helped her to judge 
 by contrast. 
 
 There was no figure, not even a shadowy outline, that 
 Mrs. Leroy knew of in Patricia's existence, whereby she could 
 weigh the chances of her happiness or its reverse. Yet if 
 Fortune were not so fond of a game of irony, Mrs. Leroy 
 might have found data by which to judge a personality in 
 her friend's present life through a very small incident of the 
 next few days. 
 
 The knot in the handkerchief served to remind her of 
 her visit to town, and without enthusiasm she took a hot 
 journey and did a fair amount of purchasing in crowded 
 shops. She felt jaded and rather tired when she shook 
 herself finally free of business at Piccadilly Circus, and was 
 haunted by a misgiving that there might be a smut on her 
 nose. Eldred was to meet her in Pall Mall, and she did 
 not care to appear smudged in his eyes. With a furtive 
 eye upon the plate glass she sought a reflection of herself 
 and was reassured. Whatever the bustling, perspiring crowd 
 might be, after scratching each other in the struggle for 
 bargains, and being nudged by over-zealous shopwalkers, 
 Mrs. Leroy had kept the freshness of Sunnington upon her- 
 self and her clothes. She gave a little shake to her fine 
 black skirts, picked them up out of the July dust, and turned 
 to cross the road. 
 
 The refuge which saves life every day at Piccadilly Circus 
 was for the moment so crowded that Mrs. Leroy was blocked 
 in there and had to wait the patience of the policeman in 
 the road with several other people. At least, however, she 
 was not splashed, for there was no mud, and when the 
 traffic was held up on the further side she proceeded on 
 foer way, crossing the pa.vem.ent Aiad proceeding down to
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 95 
 
 Waterloo Place without a glance round her. Therefore she 
 did not for the moment catch sight of a gentleman who had 
 lingered to look in Drew's windows, and then, turning to 
 the kerb facing the roadway, had picked out Mrs. Leroy's 
 tall and distinctive figure amongst those on the refuge. 
 Between the passing cabs and omnibuses he saw her 
 pause, then cross, and pass him, her eyes too absorbed to 
 be attracted even by the long steady gaze of his own. Yet 
 had she been less taken up with the way she was going she 
 could hardly have failed to give him a passing glance, for 
 he was as noticeable in his way as she was in hers a very 
 tall man, who carried himself a little languidly, and whose 
 thick hair was quite grey, almost silver in fact. Beneath 
 insolently drooped lids his eyes followed Fate Leroy as she 
 walked down towards Waterloo Place, and he turned, as if 
 hardly decided, from the Circus .... 
 
 At the end of what is really Regent Street, where Waterloo 
 Place connects it with Pall Mall, Mrs. Leroy experienced 
 a sudden and unmerciful shock. She was accustomed, 
 though not inured, to platform admiration when she 
 travelled by train; and experience warned her not to loiter 
 through the streets, but to walk as if with an object, by 
 which means she avoided the more obvious annoyances of 
 a World whose danger signal is Sex. Now it began to dawn 
 upon her that she was being followed. Something a 
 shadow on the pavement behind as she paused to cross into 
 Pall Mall the quiet persistence of footsteps always echoing 
 her own, made her heart leap before it settled down into 
 the old steady throb of anger. The very real rage which 
 always surged up over Fate at any incident of this sort, was 
 her best aid; for otherwise she was such a guarded woman 
 that a hint of being threatened, with no protector at hand, 
 made her panic-stricken. 
 
 She crossed the wide stretch of Waterloo Place deliberately, 
 no least disturbance in her manner to flatter the enemy, and 
 proceeded along Pall Mall. Once she glanced to the left, 
 as if attracted by a shop window and saw, with frightened 
 eyes, the blurred outline of the horror that pursued her. 
 It was undoubtedly upon her track, and loomed large and 
 sinister in her imagination. Surely, too, it was nearer than 
 before ! She shrank mentally from the attempt to accost 
 her which she expected.
 
 96 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 It was not the mere fact of a man following her through 
 a London street or so (misled by her being alone, and a 
 noticeably pretty woman) that paralysed Mrs. Leroy. If he 
 would not be warned, if he even went so far as to speak to 
 her, he was easily driven away, or what were policemen for, 
 or shops in which to take refuge ? It was the actual fact of 
 an implied liberty a suggested insult that outraged her. 
 She was in all senses a woman who sheathed herself in 
 womanhood, and demanded masculine homage the reverent 
 protection of true homage. The very idea of having to fight 
 for herself in such a case as that which menaced her, made 
 her frightened and indignant. She shrank from the dreaded 
 effort, and thought desperately that if her husband were not 
 first at their rendezvous she could not bear it. The mere 
 contemplation of standing still to wait for him, and letting 
 this thing that she feared come upon her, was terrifying. 
 
 Where the street sweeps past the Carlton, she curbed her 
 haste with difficulty. She was a little short-sighted, and 
 with despair she sought in vain for the familiar figure she 
 wanted amongst those coming and going round the hotel. 
 The hesitation in her step had not reached a pause, but she 
 felt the one behind her unslackened, and it seemed to her 
 that something almost brushed her shoulder; then the street 
 corner turned her friend, unfolding itself to disentangle 
 Eldred from the advancing pedestrians. He walked into her 
 sight, bringing safety with him round the corner of the Hay- 
 market, and she need stay her hurrying feet no longer. 
 
 "Well, Babs, got all the shopping done?" he said fondly, 
 taking the minute parcel which was all she would carry. 
 (Fate said gravely that no woman who respected herself or 
 her gowns could behave like the proverbial pannier-donkey.) 
 
 "Have you been waiting long?" was all she contrived to 
 say. _ Indeed her breath was gone, and she stood quite close 
 to his shoulder in the excusing crowd, wishing that she 
 might put her hand out and actually touch him to regain the 
 sense of confidence. 
 
 But the _ little instinctive movement was enough the 
 obvious position of a woman whose ownership was no more 
 doubtful, and she herself consequently unattainable. A very 
 tall man with a handsome greyed head turned and sauntered 
 into the Carlton as if the lounge had been his destination 
 all along. Inside the glass doors he nearly fell over a
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 97 
 
 younger frock coat surmounted by a shining face, just 
 issuing forth. 
 
 " Hulloa, Bobby ! " he said easily. " What on earth are 
 you doing here? I saw Lowndes at the Club, he told me 
 you were staying at Ragby to decide on the chances of the 
 Winchester colt. What's his form ? " 
 
 " Rotten ! " said Lord Harbinger. 
 
 " Well, if you've nothing to do, stay and dine. We can 
 go into the Grill, and do something afterwards. That suit 
 you?" 
 
 "Ripping!" 
 
 Fate Leroy was going down to Sunnington with her 
 husband, unknowing that she had been shown the vague 
 personality she had felt dawn in Patricia's life the man 
 whom she might marry! in the hero of an unsavoury in- 
 cident.
 
 9 8 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " All her face was his to treasure, 
 
 Hold and hoard in vain ; 
 Slow, sweet smiles that came at leisure, 
 
 Lips that drooped again, 
 Grey eyes, half awake with pleasure, 
 Half asleep with pain." 
 
 Valerie. 
 
 " ALL the same, I think you have treated me very badly ! " 
 said Patricia. 
 
 Fate laughed, standing with one hand on the door of the 
 motor carriage, the sunlight warming a dainty grey gown that 
 suggested visits of ceremony. 
 
 " First," said Patricia accusingly, " you came up to town 
 after telling me solemnly that you never did so you spent 
 hours in shops and none with me ; you did not even accept 
 my general invitation to lunch, given you weeks ago. And 
 then, when I discover these crimes, and come down to Sun- 
 nington to exterminate you, you put on a grey gown to soften 
 my heart, and are plainly going out the moment I arrive at 
 your gate. I am really disappointed, Fate ! " she added 
 frankly. 
 
 " But I have implored you to come in, if only for half a 
 minute ! " Mrs. Leroy expostulated, still half laughing. " If 
 it were anyone else whom I was going to see, I would have 
 given it up you do not know how much rather I would stay 
 and talk to you ! But she is one of those people, whom, not 
 liking, I would not for the world treat with affectionate 
 rudeness ! " 
 
 "I see." Patricia's brown eyes caught the meaning. "You 
 do not pay her the compliment of knowing that she would 
 understand and sympathise."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 99 
 
 " I do not pay her any compliments ! " said Fate discon- 
 tentedly. " She is a woman with a sallow skin, and she wears 
 white fur. You can gauge her sense of the fitness of things 
 from that." 
 
 " I am not fond of white fur wraps, myself, for anything 
 over twenty," said Patricia. A mental vision of Lady Vera, 
 one cold day in the spring, rushing up before her Lady Vera 
 with sharpened features and much white albatross to frame 
 them. From the pavements of Piccadilly she had probably 
 looked well and wintry, as she whirled by ; but Patricia had 
 sat by her side in the carriage 
 
 " The least you can do," she said, turning from the 
 reminiscence, " in fact the only thing you can do, if you have 
 a sense of justice, is to let me take you to the white fur 
 woman, whom I hope lives afar off." 
 
 " Six miles," said Mrs. Leroy, still hesitating in the road. 
 " I was going by train. But are you sure it will not hinder 
 you from going somewhere else ? " 
 
 " I hope so, I am sure ! " said Patricia serenely. " I 
 escaped from a motoring party which my mother was taking 
 out in her own car this afternoon (thirty or forty miles into 
 the country, and they hope to do it within the hour !), and I 
 fled into the wilderness by myself as far as my people know. 
 I thought of safety and you, but they thought of unknown 
 wilds ! Please get in, and tell Staunton where you wish to 
 SO." 
 
 " But I am not veiled for motoring," said Mrs. Leroy 
 honestly. " Shall I arrive with red eyes and frowsy hair ? " 
 
 " It is possible to drive a motor as slowly as a horse," said 
 Patricia mildly. " There is no need to go there at forty miles 
 an hour. The longer we are on the road the better I shall 
 be pleased." 
 
 She opened the door herself and drew the rug aside for 
 Fate's grey skirts, for there was no servant with her beside 
 the chauffeur. " Now, where is Staunton to go ? " she said, 
 as Mrs. Leroy settled herself. 
 
 "The house is called Ashingham it is at Urden on the 
 river. If your man will take us to the Hampton Court Road 
 there, I will point it out. The lady of the white fur is a 
 step-sister of a man you have met at my house once or twice," 
 she explained, as Patricia gave the order, and they rolled 
 gently over the roads and out of the Sunnington fields. " I 
 
 7*
 
 ioo AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 have to call upon her occasionally, and she returns it in the 
 same spirit. I always class a call at Ashingham with one at 
 my dentist's, or the hairdresser's, when I go there just to be 
 looked over. It does not follow that anything unpleasant 
 will happen ! " she added significantly. 
 
 " A man I have met at your house ! " said Patricia, frankly 
 interested as she would not have been in anyone in Mr. 
 Mornington's. " I can only remember a Mr. Vaughan. I 
 have met him several times," she added with unconscious 
 resentment. 
 
 " Yes, it is Gerald Vaughan whom I mean. We know 
 him very well indeed, and we know his step-sister by necessity 
 to be honest. He is not such a very elevated type," said 
 Fate slowly, " yet the fact that he lives with his step-sister and 
 preserves peace should count in his favour if there is justice 
 with judgment. It must be very like wearing a perpetual 
 mustard plaster of which the mustard never loses its freshness 
 and power ! " 
 
 A faint gleam of instinctive sympathy dawned in the liquid 
 depths of Patricia's eyes. It seemed to her that, unsympa- 
 thetic though they undoubtedly were, Providence had bound 
 similar burdens upon her own shoulders and Gerald 
 Vaughan's. He also, it appeared, was afflicted with a relative 
 who wore white fur past an appropriate youth ; and as for the 
 mustard plaster, she felt the prick of it on her skin still. 
 
 " I am afraid I can appreciate Mr. Vaughan's trial," she 
 said reluctantly. " I almost forgive him his irritability ! " 
 
 " I am sorry it is so obvious poor Gerald ! I suppose 
 we are so fond of him that we hardly recognise it now." 
 She used the plural pronoun as if from custom, yet Patricia 
 still fretted in her heart. 
 
 " Tell me what you have been doing," she said, " irrespec- 
 tively of Mr. Vaughan, whom I regard as a deadly rival to 
 myself in your interest, by the way. What did you do when 
 you were in town and basely forbore to lunch with me ? " 
 
 " You need not dwell on it," said Fate penitently. " I was 
 punished enough by a bad meal in Regent Street, and a most 
 disagreeable incident to end the excursion. Ugh ! " she 
 shuddered a little with a reminiscence, and felt the tall per- 
 sonality at her shoulder again before Eldred rose into sight 
 round the Carlton. "How I hate London, and its streets 
 and smells and vices ! " said Mrs. Leroy impatiently. " I
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 101 
 
 bought household gear that would not interest you. There 
 seems to be always something wanted in a house. I have 
 told Phlumpie quite seriously that he must not eat so much, 
 or we shall be unable to have new dusters ! Tell me about 
 yourself, rather. What have you done or left undone lately?" 
 
 " We went to the Earl's Court Exhibition last night," said 
 Patricia in a tone impossible to describe. " It was so hot a 
 night that it was decided we could not stay in our own large 
 cool rooms, so we dined at a hot, crowded restaurant, and 
 then went amongst a number of people who, being packed 
 into a certain area, had used up what oxygen there might 
 have been in the gardens." 
 
 " Poor Patricia ! But why on earth did you go ? " 
 
 "We went in hansoms," went on Patricia in a tone of 
 reminiscence that had a faint ironical humour. "When we 
 hated each other very much we went three in a hansom, that 
 there might be no escape from each other's nearness and 
 dearness. It was rather hard on our gowns." 
 
 " But why did you go ? " 
 
 "It was a theatre party," explained Patricia in a paren- 
 thesis. " At least I thought it was a theatre party until I 
 found that we were going in for ' a good old rowd.' You do 
 not know what that means, nor did I, until we arrived and 
 began to elbow our way with women in soiled gowns and men 
 who appeared to speak to whom they pleased. Then we 
 went on the Switchback Railway the whole party of us." 
 
 " Who then shall be saved ? " murmured Mrs. Leroy in fits 
 of laughter. " I went on the Switchback Railway once with 
 my husband and Mr. Vaughan. They formed a guard of 
 honour round me, but there was a fat man in front who 
 hooted, and I heard Gerald saying ' Vulgar beast ! ' at in- 
 tervals, and I was afraid Eldred was going to make trouble 
 because the people pushed me going through the barrier. 
 And, altogether, it was the most unnerving thing I ever did 
 in my life." 
 
 " We could hardly complain of that in our party, because 
 we were the aggressors. We all pushed, and stamped, and 
 shouted to each other. Then we filled a whole sleigh, and 
 waved our hats and yelled as we set off. I think we yelled 
 most of the way. I know our sleigh went faster than the 
 others, because we had two very heavy men in front who 
 helped to push off, or guide, or something of that sort."
 
 102 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 "But why did you go?" asked Mrs. Leroy, varying the 
 form of her question in despair. 
 
 Over Patricia's beautiful face there crept a look " too 
 subtle to unravel," and yet which added to its beauty. The 
 clear cold irony of a minute before left her eyes, and only an 
 expression of wonder such as one sees in the eyes of a child 
 remained there. The motor was soberly slipping past huge 
 elms and sleepy meadows, beyond which was a glint of the 
 blue river winding past Urden. Patricia had been looking at 
 the river while she recounted last night's experiences with a 
 soft self-scom. Now she turned her lambent eyes on Fate 
 and smiled half apologetically. 
 
 " I went because you told me to ! " she said. 
 
 " I ! ! ! " 
 
 Mrs. Leroy gazed back at her, gasping all the hauteur 
 which had left Patricia's eyes gathered in her own stoney- 
 grey ones. "7 told you to sacrifice yourself to men and 
 women who behave like silly ill-bred children ? I never said 
 anything of the kind." 
 
 " Indeed you did. You talked to me the last time I was 
 with you about the Upper Classes (as they are called) now 
 in England, and the reasons of the things at which I was 
 carping and cavilling. Oh, yes, you did! You advised me 
 to set up my own standard, and influence these people, rather 
 than condemn them from a distance. I have been thinking 
 of it ever since. It was so true. ' For generations,' you 
 said, ' our Aristocracy, as we call it, have been over-breeding, 
 and over-feeding, and over-heating themselves with luxury. 
 They have the same instincts as racehorses. Will you de- 
 mand morality from a racehorse? Know them a little more 
 intimately, and you will find them the same stock as your- 
 self it is just the training that decides if that inheritance of 
 over-refinement shall be a thing to admire or utterly disdain.' 
 It is all quite true. I have been demanding the past position 
 of affairs, which Aunt Helen knew, from a circle that has 
 become detached from, her traditions. I have not even 
 judged save at a distance. It is I who have been hard." 
 
 Fate drew a long breath, with the bewildered feeling of 
 Frankenstein when he found himself too successful a creator. 
 
 " I really did not mean to suggest that you were in the 
 wrong," she said almost feebly. " My sympathies are en- 
 tirely with you, in every way! I hope you understood that?
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 103 
 
 Only T am so apt to grow enthusiastic over social questions, 
 and when my brain begins to work my tongue runs away with 
 me. I said all that and more than I said to you to Mr. 
 Vaughan afterwards, and he flatly contradicted me ! " 
 
 " How very rude of him ! " said Patricia with rather a sad 
 smile. " Do you know it is exactly what I should have ex- 
 pected of him ? I hope he will never be moved to contradict 
 me. I feel that I should be so angry." She looked at Mrs. 
 Leroy's fair, unconscious face with a pang at her heart. If 
 Fate thought her uncomprehending with regard to the men 
 and women round her, she in her turn almost thought Fate 
 blind to a danger in her own life the danger of an alien 
 personality. The amount of intimacy implied by a contra- 
 diction seemed to her ominous. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Leroy with an odd little laugh, " I cer- 
 tainly did not think that the result of my tirade would be that 
 you would sacrifice your taste and go upon the Switchback 
 Railway ! " 
 
 " I wanted to find out if there were even a childish pleasure 
 in doing these things, but I must own that I did not expect 
 anything quite so bad. The men lost their heads a little, 
 and one or two of my mother's friends became rather hysteri- 
 cal," said Patricia apologetically. A vision of Mrs. Blais 
 Heron in front of her with an arm that certainly did not be- 
 long to her husband clasping her waist, rose before her mind's 
 eye. As they had descended the second hill Patricia had 
 heard her shriek, and had been aware that Caryl Lexiter, in 
 the front seat, was shouting at the top of his voice. It had 
 been a revealing moment, when all but fundamental nature 
 had gone down on the wind that they made with their forward 
 rush. Caryl's voice was still mellow and sweet even in a 
 roar. Mrs. Blais Heron looked a lady-like Bacchante when, 
 with hat awry and loosened hair, she took her seat for the 
 second journey, and tried to smoothe herself before the down- 
 ward plunge again ; otherwise Patricia found that excitement 
 acted upon the family of Blais and on Lord Queensleigh's son 
 very much as it did on the Smiths and Joneses in the following 
 sleighs. " Do you expect racehorses to be moral ? " she had 
 reminded herself. " Will you look for dignity or control 
 from those who for generations past have been endeavouring 
 to excite and amuse themselves by every form of self- 
 indulgence ? "
 
 104 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " There is always something to like in people, as well as 
 something to excuse," said Mrs. Leroy even as the motor 
 slackened its decorous speed and came to a standstill outside 
 the low wooden gate of Ashingham. " If only we are not too 
 self-righteous ! That is my great fault. You are going to 
 see it exemplified now, and to be a witness to my humiliation 
 at the hands of my hostess." 
 
 Patricia laughed as she threw the rug aside, and moved 
 to allow her companion to alight. " I shall be spared that, 
 for I am not coming in, of course," she said composedly. 
 " If you will not be very long I will go on for a further drive 
 and pick you up on my way back." 
 
 But Mrs. Leroy did not answer, and turning to see the 
 cause Patricia became aware that coincidences were not in 
 her favour, and that she was once more face to face with an 
 antagonistic personality. Mrs. Leroy was shaking hands with 
 someone even now arrived at his own gate as she left the car- 
 riage that spare figure and the square shoulders, the lean 
 face and the eye-glass, could only belong to Vaughan. 
 Patricia experienced a momentary perverse impulse to tell 
 Staunton to drive on before the situation could be explained 
 even as he turned with Fate and came back to the motor 
 she told herself that she need not sacrifice her inclination 
 and become an unwilling guest in this man's house at least. 
 
 " How do you do ? " said Vaughan in a charming croak, 
 lifting his hat from his smooth, flattened hair. " Of course 
 you are coming in with Mrs. Leroy? You must, or I shall 
 think you have some suspicion of my hospitality." 
 
 Patricia had been vaguely groping for this man's attrac- 
 tion to Fate Leroy; it was revealed to her now. Hitherto 
 he had shown her only the difficult side of his nature, because 
 he had felt the advantage a little with her, if anything, in 
 their meetings, and he was not a generous man. Here, in 
 his character of host, the positions were reversed. He could 
 afford to be at his best. She looked at him a little curiously 
 there were revelations here, she thought and quietly got 
 out of the motor with a brief order to the chauffeur to wait. 
 The house stood a fair way back from the road, to which, 
 however, it was plainly visible by reason of a treeless garden, 
 and revealed itself as a long low building of no particular 
 date or style, with small paned windows and two rather pic- 
 turesque gables. If there were no trees in front of it, however,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 105 
 
 there were plenty of flowers. Patricia idled up the path a 
 little in the wake of her host and Mrs. Leroy, the man leading 
 the way and the woman he knew best immediately behind 
 him. They were close enough to talk, though not side by 
 side, and Patricia was near enough to listen, though her full 
 brown gaze seemed more engrossed with the riotous standard 
 roses and the sweet-scented peonies than with things human. 
 On either side of the garden walk were beds of stocks, pure 
 white and breathing fragrance. Patricia had not known 
 until that hour how sweet an English garden could be. 
 
 " You are more successful than I over your flowers, Gerald," 
 said Fate with just the touch of capricious discontent in her 
 tone which her husband and Vaughan secretly encouraged. 
 It made her subtly feminine, and suggested to their minds a 
 dear, unreasoning thing to be indulged because of their 
 higher standpoint. 
 
 " I do not plant geraniums in a mid-day sun at the wrong 
 time of the year ! " said Vaughan with mild irony. " Look 
 at that stock doesn't it bring the heart of the country and 
 its cottages to your mind ? " 
 
 " Yes how Phlumpie would love it ! He spoils all mine. 
 He would roll in the very midst of that white mass, and you 
 would hardly distinguish him from it." 
 
 " Pardon me," said Vaughan in a slightly incensed tone, 
 " but he would certainly not roll in my flower beds ! That is 
 one reason why your gardening is not a success animals are 
 always destructive, and no gardener should keep pets." 
 
 "But, Gerald," said Fate, opening her grey eyes, "if you 
 had a Phlumpie of course he would roll in the stocks ! " 
 
 Patricia, sauntering through the white borders, found her- 
 self smiling while she hardly knew why. Fate was so charm- 
 ing in her absurdities and she found that Vaughan's charac- 
 teristic " Pardon me ! " was becoming an attribute of his in 
 her memory of him. He always used the expression when 
 he meant to contradict flatly, but he avoided being absolutely 
 rude as by a miracle. 
 
 " I am afraid your sister has visitors already ! " said Fate 
 in soft dismay, as they entered the square hall. There were 
 two sunshades on the oak settle under the window gay blots 
 of colour that rather complemented the severely simple style 
 of furnishing. For the house was at least an expression of 
 taste in its lack of pretension. Patricia thought of the great
 
 io6 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 white pillars and the heavy richness in Piccadilly 
 
 The very size of her own surroundings seemed to make life 
 more complicated than here. 
 
 " It is some local beast and his squaws, I expect," said 
 Vaughan, lowering his voice to a whisper. " Heaven send 
 they have been here some time, and will not stay. This is 
 our 'parlour,' Miss Mornington we boast no drawing-room, 
 because my sister and I share it, and my proclivities to un- 
 tidiness veto her conception of a real drawing-room." 
 
 " Ah ! how pretty ! " Patricia said with frank pleasure as he 
 opened the door and ushered them in. The low golden light 
 of the afternoon was shining straight in at the open lattice of 
 the windows, and the irregular, unconventional apartment 
 reminded her a little of the pretty rooms in Lady Helen's 
 Quinta dear Summer rooms that were still a pang in her 
 memory. It was not, as Vaughan had explained, a drawing- 
 room, for the dwarf bookcases running round it made it more 
 like a library ; but, as he had not explained, the furniture was 
 the result of two antagonistic tastes, so that his own love of 
 severe simplicity was modified by his sister's more florid 
 choice. Miss Vaughan had a sincere admiration for the 
 methods of Maple, and hankered after " Cosy Corners," or 
 imitation Chippendale, with what she would have described 
 as a " scheme of colour" in her draperies. Vaughan on the 
 other hand would have nothing but the plainest dark wood, 
 and hardly admitted a curtain, if there was no one to protest. 
 The war between them found expression in the fact that 
 most of the chairs were harmless basket-work and the book- 
 cases painted white, but there was no "scheme of colour," 
 though a certain lack of it, and the floor was covered with 
 Indian matting that looked delightfully cool this Summer day. 
 
 Patricia was taken up with the room as she entered, and 
 did not immediately see Miss Vaughan, who was sitting by 
 the tea-table on the furthest side of the room with the owners 
 of the parasols. She rose and came forward to greet Mrs. 
 Leroy, and even while she did so her appraising glance was 
 taking in the fashion of Patricia's gown, for she was a type 
 of woman who cannot keep her eyes from betraying her. 
 However well trained the rest of the body, they failed to 
 partake of its good manners, and were invariably ill-bred. 
 As Patricia shook hands in her turn she perceived that 
 Vaughan's step-sister was a thin woman with fat cheeks, suf-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 107 
 
 ficiently well groomed in her appearance, but hardly attrac- 
 tive. A glance at her sallow skin reminded her of Fate's 
 objection to the white fur, and her smile was quite genuine. 
 
 "You will have some tea, of course," Miss Vaughan said, 
 in a staccato tone as different from Vaughan's croak as her 
 face from his. " Gerald, please ring the bell. There are 
 some friends of yours, Mrs. Leroy." 
 
 Fate had, however, already crossed the room, and was 
 shaking hands with a pretty dark woman whom Patricia had 
 met at her house. The other caller was a girl with a fresh 
 complexion and round eyes. She had been pretty with the 
 prettiness of youth and health before Patricia came near 
 enough to her for contrast, when she immediately sank into 
 an insignificance that was a trifle commonplace. 
 
 " I saw you cycle past my house this morning, Fate," said 
 Mrs. Carr, the dark woman. " How do you do, Miss Morn- 
 ington. Did you motor down? It must be perfect this 
 weather." 
 
 " She brought me over in the lap of luxury ! " said Fate 
 gaily. " Motoring is so nice that I shall never be so happy 
 on my bicycle again. Where did you see me, Mrs. Carr?" 
 
 " Just a few yards down the road. I was taking baby for 
 an airing." 
 
 " Is your nurse too busy to take the children out ? " said 
 Miss Vaughan with intended sympathy. " What a trial 
 they are ! That is one thing I should insist on their doing, 
 even though everything else had to slide, if I were a mother. 
 I know I could not be bothered to trot beside my own 
 children." 
 
 But Mrs. Carr only smiled. " I have spent some of the 
 happiest hours of my life behind my own perambulator ! " she 
 said frankly. " I would much rather take the children out 
 than turn to and cook the dinner as poor Marion Rodney has 
 been doing of late." 
 
 " Hasn't she a maid yet ? " said Fate sympathetically. " I 
 thought you sent her one, Saydie." 
 
 "Yes, we did, Mrs. Leroy, but I don't know if she will 
 stop," said the round-eyed girl. " She is rather unsatisfac- 
 tory, and Mrs. Rodney is such a good housekeeper, you see." 
 
 " It is becoming more trouble to get servants than to do 
 the wo'rk oneself," said Mrs. Carr laughing. " In the time 
 I have spent at Registry Offices, I could have got through
 
 io8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 many a day's work ! Come, Saydie, we must be going if we 
 are to catch that train." 
 
 Patricia looked at the speaker as she stood up a tall, 
 graceful woman, far better looking than most of Lady Vera's 
 set, and as well dressed as many of them. For the Middle 
 Class woman of limited means has one gown where her richer 
 sister has many, but that is the principal difference. As to 
 cut and material, and the many expensive details that finish 
 a woman's appearance, Patricia found no fault with them. 
 And this was the woman who so openly said that she had 
 spent the happiest hours of her life pushing her own babies 
 in their perambulators ! Patricia rose suddenly, as if in the 
 presence of a dignity greater than her own, and shook hands 
 with her cordially. 
 
 "Will you make use of the motor to take you to the 
 station ? " she said. " I wish you would. Mr. Vaughan, will 
 you tell the chauffeur to take Mrs. Carr to the station and 
 then come back for us here ? " 
 
 Vaughan was waiting to see the visitors out. He stood at 
 the door, his personality contained for the moment in a tall 
 spare figure and a keen face, but his expression as he looked 
 at Patricia was less antagonistic than usual. 
 
 "With pleasure. But will he take his orders from me, 
 Miss Mornington ? " he said in his usual half ironical manner. 
 " Won't he regard me as a blatant person making free with 
 someone else's property ? " 
 
 " Oh, no please say that I sent the message. He is quite 
 tame ! And I do not want to leave my tea even to come to 
 the gate," said Patricia composedly, some reluctance she 
 could not explain making her loath to go with him without 
 Fate. 
 
 " Poor thing ! How dreadful to have to push one's own 
 perambulator ! I always pity Mrs. Carr," said Miss Vaughan 
 as the door closed on her visitors. In some subtle way her 
 tone cheapened the pretty dark-eyed mother who had not 
 been ashamed of her maternity ; and Patricia, turning grave 
 eyes upon her hostess, inwardly concurred in Vaughan's 
 canonization for living in peace with her. She was so sure 
 that Miss Vaughan could not understand that she attempted 
 no defence, and was a little amused to see the temper in 
 Fate's expressive eyebrows as she rose to the occasion. 
 
 " I really don't think that Mrs. Carr particularly wants
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 109 
 
 one's pity," she remarked drily. " It is a little superfluous, 
 as she is perfectly contented in her home life." 
 
 " Yes, but with such sordid details ! " said Vaughan's sister 
 in her jarring voice there was an artificial quality about it, 
 particularly when she laughed. " To live in a little poky 
 house, with hardly a soul she cares to speak to, in that dread- 
 ful road, and to drudge over her household ! She is quite 
 good-looking, too." Miss Vaughan thought herself generous 
 to other women. 
 
 "I do not agree with you," said Fate with soft-toned de- 
 cision. "After all, it is the life she chose, and she finds com- 
 pensation for the drawbacks. Her whole life is absorbed 
 in the interest she finds in her husband and children she is 
 rather ambitious for them, and they hope to be better off 
 some day. I see nothing to pity in the woman who is 
 happily married. As to her surroundings, I know several 
 women who live in that road, quite as nice as Mrs. Carr ! " 
 
 Patricia's eyes, full of a rather comical amusement, hap- 
 pened to catch Fate's at the "woman who is happily mar- 
 ried" clause, and she nearly laughed, remembering Mrs. 
 Leroy's assertion that Miss Vaughan always made her self- 
 righteous. She saw, too, that the hint at the spinster's posi- 
 tion being more pitiable had gone home, and to avert more 
 moral bloodshed she opened a ladies' paper lying on the 
 table in company with some obviously masculine books, and 
 made a remark upon it to her hostess. 
 
 " Yes, it is about the best of them," said Miss Vaughan, 
 trying to rally from her tacit defeat, and disguise her discom- 
 fort. " But there is a Summer Number there that has some 
 really pretty gowns. What has become of it ? " She turned 
 over a newspaper and flung two of the books on to the sofa 
 with a spiteful movement of temper that betrayed her. 
 " Gerald's books are all over the place. He is disgustingly 
 untidy ! " she said, just as her brother entered the room. 
 
 Whether he heard or no Patricia could not tell, for she 
 was not looking at him ; but she knew, without looking, that 
 Fate had made room for him at her side, and was petting him 
 mentally as a consolation for his sister's speech. 
 
 "We were speaking of Mrs. Cart's ambitions for her 
 children," she said. " Have you seen her boy lately ? He is 
 growing such a tall strip of a lad ! And she dotes on him." 
 
 " The education of mothers has been neglected," said
 
 i io AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Vaughan. " Someone ought to start a crusade against their 
 ' doting.' It is ruinous for the object." 
 
 " Nonsense, Gerald ! All women ought to dote on their 
 menfolk. I always doted on Eldred even when he would 
 not propose to me ! " 
 
 " I know. That is just what I complain of ! The effect 
 of doting is even more disastrous on sons than on husbands, 
 though. Look at the modern boy. He has grown tame. 
 He no longer wishes to go to sea, and be a pirate and kill 
 people, or other virtuous things of that kind. The boy Carr 
 is probably an instance." 
 
 Fate looked at him with sudden dangerous interest. All 
 the woman in her seemed to be picturing the boy in him, and 
 loving it. Certainly the effect upon her of Miss Vaughan's 
 infelicities was not a good one in its results. 
 
 " Did you want to be a pirate? " she said. 
 
 His cold quick eyes darkened a little with pain, or dis- 
 appointment ; but it was the tone of his voice which re- 
 sponded to her rather than his glance. Vaughan's voice was 
 far more flexible than his face. 
 
 " I have never had what I want ! " he said. " I don't sup- 
 pose I ever shall. It is the lot of some poor devils to have 
 desires which, like rock plants, would have to grow crookedly 
 to reach the sunshine ! " 
 
 " There might be a little sunshine that strayed the way of 
 your desires ? " said Fate wistfully. 
 
 " Was a man ever satisfied with a little ? He is a poor 
 thing if so! If I had a little sunshine I should probably 
 want the sun ! " 
 
 " We most of us cry for the moon at some period in our 
 lives. It is no worse, I suppose, to want the sun." 
 
 " Cry ! " said Vaughan savagely. " I shouldn't cry ! I 
 should try to snatch my happiness, and you know the fate of 
 all rash Phaetons ? " 
 
 She hesitated, and for the first time in all their frank 
 intercourse she came near to speaking a veiled truth to him. 
 " I wish," she said on impulse, " that you could be satisfied 
 with a little sunshine ! " 
 
 He did not raise his eyes, but his long characteristic fingers 
 turned the pages of one of his books which he had picked 
 up when his sister flung it down, and the restlessness of his 
 heart spoke through the fluttering leaves.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. in 
 
 "I shall never be satisfied but I shall appear 
 
 resigned ! " he said. 
 
 Fate's red lips suddenly sobered. She turned away from 
 him as if a little afraid, or a little ashamed, and looked over 
 Patricia's shoulder. Miss Vaughan had been animatedly 
 discussing fashion plates with Patricia, who had been so re- 
 sponsive and intelligent as to restore her hostess's entire good 
 humour. And considering that Miss Mornington had all the 
 while been keenly alive to a strain of dangerous reality in the 
 air a guarded conversation near her that she could not hear, 
 and that Miss Vaughan must not hear it says much for her 
 repose of manner that her hostess found nothing wanting in 
 her courteous attention. At the moment that Fate looked 
 over the paper, however, expecting blouses, she had reached 
 a page where a large portrait of the Countess of Harbinger 
 proved triumphantly the art of the photographer Chiffon 
 in her name-sake material, with white shoulders slipping from 
 a fluff of frills, regarding an appreciative public with a smile 
 in her eyes that she would hardly have dared to give a 
 personal admirer. There were two professional beauties 
 of the Stage on the next page, but they were hardly as 
 much on sale for sixpence as Chiffon appeared by her 
 portrait. 
 
 " That is a pretty face," said Fate Leroy mechanically. 
 
 " Who is it ? " Miss Vaughan leaned over also to see. 
 " Oh, Lady Harbinger. She looks lovely there." 
 
 " She is more spontaneous in real life,' said Patricia 
 calmly. " I dislike that man's photographs he always makes 
 his people look as if they had posed before a looking-glass 
 for weeks." 
 
 " Do you know her ? " Miss Vaughan's ill-bred eyes 
 snapped the question before her lips. 
 
 " We were at school in Paris together," Patricia explained 
 quietly. " She is a very old friend of mine." 
 
 Miss Vaughan glanced at Patricia's gown mentally at her 
 motor and grasped the situation. She was not an obtrusive 
 snob, and her manner did not alter in warmth from that 
 minute, but a distinct little glow of satisfaction made hei 
 think to herself that that was why she had found Miss Morn- 
 ington so charming she always liked the best class of people 
 by instinct. Of course it was no credit to her it was in- 
 grain; and she really believed in her own self-glorification.
 
 ii2 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 There is nothing so misleading as the wisdom that comes 
 after the event. 
 
 Two minutes later Fate rose, and Patricia laid aside the 
 paper, closing the pages gently over the portrait of Chiffon 
 as though she were glad to shut the sweet, alluring face out of 
 sight the head that was half turned as though she called to 
 someone over her own white shoulder ! Vaughan rose also, 
 the book still in his hand, and the sentence he had last read 
 still in his brain. 
 
 " Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing 
 
 as ultimate forgetting a thousand accidents may 
 
 and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness 
 
 and the secret inscriptions on the mind but, whether 
 
 veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever." 
 
 It was De Quincey's " Opium Eater " that he laid on the 
 table to open the door for Fate Leroy and her friend, and 
 the sensations of moral opium eating were still upon him as 
 he, rather silently, handed them into the patient motor, and 
 stood bare-headed to see them roll away in the sunshine. 
 
 "Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such 
 thing as ultimate forgetting " 
 
 He turned back to the house, which had suddenly become 
 haunted by a woman's fair face and her wistful tone. " There 
 might be a little sunshine that strayed the way of your 
 desires ? " 
 
 Not for him not without dishonour for ever guarded 
 against, and disloyalty to two friends for the woman who 
 had tempted had done so very purely, and so faintly, that he 
 could hardly accuse her. She had only failed, as women do, 
 through her very capacity for tenderness and pity. If for a 
 minute she turned from her husband's side to cast a thought 
 to one who walked apart and in their shadow, it was but the 
 momentary generous desire to give a little of her sunshine to 
 him who longed for it. No coarser thought could have 
 entered into his conception of her; for had she had one 
 moment's impulse towards him material enough for guilt she 
 would not have been the woman he could have loved had 
 she been unwed. 
 
 Vaughan's was by no means a happy nature. As he had 
 said, he had always wanted the things he could not obtain, lack 
 of means, and circumstances, moulding his life in opposition 
 to his tastes. By profession he was an electrical engineer;
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 113 
 
 by instinct he was an amateur of art, in the best sense of that 
 maligned word. He fancied that had he been independent 
 and free to follow his own bent that he would have accom- 
 plished something, his tastes being very fastidiously literary. 
 But it is probable that his very fineness of perception would 
 have made him dilettante. There is a certain coarse strength 
 in the creator a certain dulness to anything but his central 
 aim, and a narrow outlook that sees but one thing and that 
 perfectly. Vaughan was a critic rather than an artist a 
 finer type of brain in reality, for the true critic is required to 
 comprehend rather than merely to follow a blind instinct of 
 action. His natural tendencies found no scope save in the 
 amassing of books, and the surrounding himself with a har- 
 monious background that was constantly jarred upon by his 
 step-sister. Apart from his mental hobbies he loved the out- 
 side world, and spent much of his leisure in the fresh air. 
 gardening, and cycling ; but the man of moderate means is 
 fretted by the bounds of his income at all points, and Gerald 
 Vaughan rode a bicycle while all his instincts led to horse- 
 manship. It was certainly a pity that his tastes were expen- 
 sive in the country in which he lived, for had he been a back- 
 woodsman they would have been regarded as modest and 
 natural. He was an excellent shot, through having been 
 trained in the preserves of a rich connection when he was a 
 boy; but the connection having died, the annual invitation 
 to make one of the shooting-party ceased, and Vaughan's 
 life drifted into more usual channels for the Middle Class 
 man, who takes a seaside holiday, or goes on the Continent 
 cheaply, rather than to a friend's coverts. He had learned to 
 ride when he learned to shoot ; but there was no hunting for 
 him in his daily grind of hard work, and scarcely a week-end 
 to be obtained when he was really busy. He had not even 
 the consolation of having renounced " sport," as being beyond 
 his means, for marriage, his home having been thrust upon 
 him with his half-sister, whose income added to his made 
 their joint establishment very comfortable, but who would 
 have been even more restricted than he if they had separated, 
 since she belonged to the non-earning portion of the com- 
 munity. An irritable temper and uncertain health had added 
 the last touch of discomfort to Gerald Vaughan's existence. 
 If there was much to be forgiven in him, he had at least 
 much to forgive Providence. 
 
 8
 
 ii4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 When he re-entered the sitting-room after seeing the motor 
 vanish down the shady green road, the sunlight was still 
 slanting through the open windows in a good-night kiss from 
 the west. His step-sister had moved her position, and all 
 the chairs so lately occupied were empty. But in one of 
 them had sat a woman in a grey gown, whose bright hair had 
 been touched into gold by an errant sunbeam. He had not 
 consciously noticed it at the time, but now, as in a photo- 
 graph on his brain, he saw her kind face turned to him, and 
 her figure such a natural one in his home that he could hardly 
 believe her gone. The scent of her presence, that was as 
 
 little artificial as the roses, seemed still in the air 
 
 his friend's wife ! 
 
 He walked restlessly about the room, throwing aside the 
 illustrated papers as his sister had done the books, to find his 
 own possessions, haunted still by that dangerous sweet ghost of 
 a woman whom he dared not let remain here, even as a ghost. 
 He had forgotten that his home owned a very tangible 
 mistress already, until her voice grated on his uneasy mood. 
 
 " I wish you would sit down and settle to something, 
 Gerald. You fidget me walking about like that. Why can't 
 you smoke or read or talk? I wonder where Fate Leroy got 
 to know Miss Mornington ! She comes of the right people, 
 you can see it at once. One always knows ! " the complacent 
 voice went on, while Vaughan drew his breath through his 
 thin nostrils. 
 
 " Oh, I meant to tell you, Gerald, the housemaid broke 
 that old blue china cup of yours this morning. She was 
 terribly upset, and I scolded her, of course but you shouldn't 
 have had it out on the smoking-room mantelpiece. A cabinet 
 is the proper place for that sort of thing, if you think it so 
 valuable. But after all, that Nankin blue is only delf ! " 
 
 The broken piece an old Caudle Cup, double-handled, 
 and a pleasure to Vaughan's eyes many a time suddenly 
 became a votive offering to the gods, who thus granted relief 
 to one over-charged heart : 
 
 " Damn ! " said Vaughan huskily, and swung out of the 
 room. 
 
 There had been a momentary silence also in the motor as 
 Mrs. Leroy and Miss Mornington drove away. Then 
 Patricia said drily : " I understand what you mean by the 
 mustard plaster, Fate ! "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 115 
 
 " Yes ! isn't it Lenten ? " said Fate, rousing herself. " She 
 has an evil influence on me, that woman and yet I am 
 humiliated by being influenced by her." 
 
 The delicacy of a good woman's conscience is agitated by 
 the least whisper of accusation within herself. Fate could 
 not have put a name to it, but she was dissatisfied with some- 
 thing in her own conduct during the last half hour. It did 
 not mend matters, to Fate, to charge it on a woman whom 
 she did not admire. 
 
 " Did you notice Miss Durham ? " she said almost abruptly, 
 shaking herself free of the mental pinch. 
 " Was that the girl with Mrs. Carr ? " 
 "Yes, I think her rather pretty; but I said so to Mr. 
 Vaughan once, and he protested that her mother had sat on 
 her and spoilt her ! " 
 
 Patricia laughed genuinely. " How very exact Mr. 
 Vaughan is, even when he is a trifle pettish in his comments ! " 
 she said. " I should immensely enjoy hearing him describe 
 some of the people I know. There is one woman an in- 
 timate of my mother's, and a connection (but that goes with- 
 out saying), who reminds me of a dark doll. She is quite a 
 pretty doll, you understand, and most expensively made ; but 
 she is utterly unreal as compared with Mrs. Carr, for 
 instance." 
 
 "You might not find Mrs. Carr a particularly intelligent 
 woman if you talked with her," said Fate quickly, for her 
 mood was a trifle perverse. 
 
 " But I should find her a woman not a doll ! " said 
 Patricia quietly. 
 
 " Yes, you would," Fate agreed, and for a moment silence 
 fell between them. 
 
 "Why should the women whom my mother knows think 
 and speak and possibly act as they profess to do?" Patricia 
 burst out suddenly. " I have tried to be charitable accord- 
 ing to your advice, Fate ; but though I can forgive the results 
 of self-indulgence and luxury, even though it runs to the 
 breaking of social laws, I find it very hard to forgive the ill- 
 manners and ill-breeding which such lapses include. Can 
 you fancy any of your friends not only having a lover as well 
 as a husband, but actually parading the fact, in dumb show 
 at least?" 
 
 " The Middle Class woman has less time and no oppor- 
 
 8*
 
 ii6 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 tunity for such amusements," Mrs. Leroy said, speaking 
 more slowly. " If her own husband is in town or at work all 
 day, all her friends' husbands are the same. She has no 
 chance to play the fool. Sometimes I think that work is our 
 salvation. Women and men like myself and my husband 
 have too much to occupy them to look round for mischief. 
 Work, as I once told Gerald, is the panacea for all ills ! " 
 
 "I do not think, even with opportunity, that the women I 
 have met at your house would cheapen themselves, Fate. 
 And besides, if a woman wants to get into mischief she makes 
 her opportunity, whatever her circumstances." 
 
 "Yes, that may be true. The women I know have been 
 very differently trained and taught from their youth up from 
 those of whom you are thinking. Traditions have lingered 
 amongst the Middle Classes that the Aristocracy seem to 
 have lost traditions and obligations. There is a certain 
 self-respect amongst us which takes the clothing of different 
 expressions. The Middle Class wife would not break the 
 Seventh Commandment because she would say ' I should lose 
 my self-respect,' or ' I should be afraid to say my prayers if I 
 did,' apart from any feeling for her husband. We express 
 it differently, according to our temperaments, but we mean 
 the same thing." 
 
 " I suppose it is because I come of a race that have worked 
 and kept their womankind sacred that I feel your point of 
 view so intensely," said Patricia. " On one side at least I 
 belong to the Middle Class the great Middle Class ! " she 
 repeated half wonderingly. "You know, my grandfather 
 was little better than a working man when he first started to 
 run his own patent. Of course he had beerm-educated, but 
 he actually went out to the States and made his way by his 
 own efforts." 
 
 " And you are verv proud of the fact ! " said Fate with her 
 kindest smile, looking at the unusual flush on Patricia's face. 
 There was no suggestion of the hard experience of labour in 
 this supposed descendant of a working man. at least the fine, 
 rather scornful features, the splendid carriage, the regal droop 
 of the eyes, surelv proclaimed Patricia a Blais rather than a 
 Mornington. Neither of them, of course, saw the sad irony 
 of th? girl's claim to the Middle Classes and their sturdy 
 virtues. 
 
 " Here we are at your door already ! " said Patricia with a
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 117 
 
 sigh, as the motor stopped. " Staunton must have been 
 determined to show what the motor could do. It seems five 
 minutes since we left Urden, and I had much more that I 
 could have said." 
 
 " Will you come in and dine and say it later ? " 
 
 " I wish I could. I have to dine instead at yet another 
 restaurant our own cook being as good as heart could 
 desire ! and go to a theatre afterwards. I believe we are 
 to drop in at a card party, and have supper somewhere in the 
 small hours, later on." 
 
 " You will want all your health to stand you in good stead 
 under such a strain as that ! " said Fate as she got out at 
 her own gate. " I am honestly thankful that I can live 
 quietly and need not turn night into day. I have too much 
 respect for my own complexion for one thing, and I should 
 be afraid of growing old for another." 
 
 " You can look for the grey hairs next time you see me I 
 am coming down again soon," said Patricia. "-^Home, 
 Staunton." 
 
 She leaned back almost as if weary already, as the motor 
 cleared the pretty suburb and threaded its way to the river, 
 across the Albert Bridge, up the wide turnings of modern 
 Chelsea, across the King's Road with its dust and heat and 
 toiling traffic, until suddenly the tyred wheels felt better 
 roads beneath them, and Patricia was bowling smoothly 
 northward, up through the quiet, self-possessed atmosphere 
 of South Kensington. As she leaned back on the cushions, 
 and looked up at the streets, and terraces, and squares of 
 large comfort-speaking houses, she began to realise what all 
 this meant, for here in its greatest expression of power, 
 perhaps, she saw the region of the Upper Middle Class, that 
 class that lives its own life in its own world without ostenta- 
 tion, without any of the restlessness and love of excitement 
 which was the very motive power of Lady Vera and her 
 friends. Patricia looked at the great solid blocks of build- 
 ing, and recognised the great solid blocks of wealth and 
 stability that they represented, until she left as if the volume 
 of such an enormous majority crushed her. Here and there, 
 sprinkled amongst the respectably unknown it might be, was 
 some householder belonging to the " great world " a name 
 so familiar to Burke and Lodge and Debrett that it was known 
 even from the Court circle down to the most suburban unit
 
 ii8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 just emerging from the working population; but apart from 
 these, and overwhelming them, was the great Middle Class 
 that went its own way, and knew its own fractional circle of 
 that huge body, and was quite content to be unknown to 
 such as Lady Vera. The Great Middle Class! Patricia 
 repeated the words to herself over and over, looking up at 
 the stolid respectable houses that resented an intrusion on 
 their privacy as much as their owners would have done a 
 suspicion cast upon their womenkind. She thrilled a little 
 with the fancy that she also belonged to these, the solid 
 strength of the nation, the enormous bulk of population that 
 was nobody in itself and everybody collectively. Not a house 
 for acres of property round that did not represent at least 
 two or three thousand a year to keep it up ; not a house- 
 holder that did not mean bigoted, stiff-necked prosperity, in 
 that neighbourhood ! The average Briton, whose brains 
 and energies have gone to bring him this, is a dull fellow 
 perhaps ; but with the bitter taste of recent experiences on 
 her tongue, Patricia was almost inclined to echo Fate Leroy's 
 assertion : 
 
 " Work is the panacea for all our ills ! " 
 
 As the butler admitted her to her own home, it chanced 
 that some late visitors of her mother's were just leaving it. 
 They stopped to shake hands with Lady Vera's daughter, 
 and Patricia noticed with vague pity that the oldest of the 
 group a handsome woman over forty looked worn and 
 harassed. She wondered in her own mind whether it were 
 Bridge debts or something more serious, as she went slowly 
 up to her own floor by the lift. As she was passing her 
 mother's rooms, which were level with her own, Lady Vera 
 stepped out into the passage, a trace of excited interest in her 
 manner. 
 
 " Nougat, did you meet Emma Harbutt going out ? " she 
 said. 
 
 "Yes, with her sister and Captain Blais. She looked to 
 me rather tired." 
 
 " Tired ! My dear, there has been the most awful row ! 
 Her husband has read some letter to her from Windersley." 
 
 " From Lord Windersley? " 
 
 " Yes oh, for Heaven's sake do be a little intelligent ! 
 Of course Windersley has been her friend for years every- 
 one knew it. Only unhappily he wrote her a silly letter and
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 119 
 
 Richard Harbutt hadn't guessed. She really doesn't know 
 what will happen now ! " 
 
 " I should suppose not," said Patricia curtly, turning to 
 her own domains. Across the disgust brought upon her by 
 Lady Vera's outspoken scandal fell the memory of Fate 
 Leroy's honest confession : 
 
 " Some of us would say we could not do such things, be- 
 cause it would lower our own characters. And some would 
 tell you that they would be afraid to say their prayers if they 
 did them. We express it in different ways but we all mean 
 the same thing."
 
 I2O 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ' ' We asked men proven in harness 
 
 For themselves and the Age's needs ; 
 They have given us Kings by tradition, 
 
 And Peers by their father s deeds ! 
 Let us go back to our manhood, 
 Forgetting their empty creeds." 
 
 The Inheritance, 
 
 IN spite of being the poorest Duke in the peerage, and an 
 invalid, his Grace of London was popular enough to draw 
 feminine attention that would have soothed the vanity of 
 many younger and stronger men. It cannot be said to have 
 been gained by cajolery of any sort either, for the Duchess 
 had flatly told him that a more brutally outspoken person 
 she had never known. 
 
 " James never flattered anybody in his life," she said, with 
 open surprise that he should be popular to the extent he 
 was. "Not that I like flattery I consider that it is treat- 
 ing people like fools to lie to them. But the rest of the 
 world will rarely stomach a truth-teller, and James always 
 tells people the truth the utterly unvarnished, brazen truth, 
 about themselves, too ! " 
 
 A faint resentment mingled with the Duchess's surprise, 
 for she told people the truth, herself and was very genuinely 
 hated. What the Duke's secret was she had never divined ; 
 but their very natures and all their tastes were so at variance 
 that it was not wonderful that her husband should be a closed 
 book to her not sealed, but one whose covers she had, 
 perhaps, never cared to open. 
 
 The Duke professed himself afraid of women, and pleaded
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 121 
 
 invalidism to excuse him from fresh introductions. Never- 
 theless, those women who did know him, very sincerely loved 
 him, and would put other social engagements aside for the 
 pleasure of visiting him, all the more when his illness kept 
 him a prisoner in his own chambers. It was on record that 
 once, coming co enquire for his old friend, Lord Lowndes 
 had found him the centre of a group of the most beautiful 
 women in London, all seeming very much content and en- 
 tertained though their host was the only man present. The 
 assembly was a purely informal one, the Duke having been 
 ailing for a week or so, and each woman present having 
 chanced to call to see how he was bearing his solitude. 
 As to his male acquaintances, he would sometimes give 
 Maunders testy orders to say that he was not at home, their 
 capacity for dropping in on him at all hours being, he said, 
 a perfect nuisance. 
 
 " They don't come to see me they come for what they 
 can get ! " he asserted cynically. " It's the whisky and soda 
 and my cigars that attract them. They don't have to pay 
 here, and they would at their Clubs ! " 
 
 The Duke had a way of ascribing the basest motives to 
 humanity in the sweetest voice, that nobody seemed to mind 
 at all. But perhaps it had this much effect, that if their 
 motives were self-interested his frank and fearless accusations 
 made them ashamed. As the Duchess said, the Duke was 
 terribly truthful. 
 
 Patricia lunched with Chiffon the day after her visit to 
 Ashingham, and learned from her that the east wind had 
 given the Duke a bad turn, and she was going round there 
 that afternoon to see him if possible, and if not at least to 
 enquire. 
 
 " I will go with you, if I may," said Patricia. " I feel that 
 I need some refreshment after a morning spent with Editha 
 Blais Heron. She arrived at ten, and talked about her last 
 affinity, a High-Church Curate, until twelve for two good 
 solid hours! Then I pleaded an engagement with you and 
 escaped." 
 
 " Gracious ! Ten o'clock ! I wonder you were up." 
 
 " I wasn't. But that was nothing to Editha. She sat at 
 the end of my bed and watched each stage of my toilet that 
 I did not deny to her. And she commented between the 
 gaps of Curate-reminiscences. ' Don't you wear pin-curls,
 
 122 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Nougat? What are you going to do next? Is that a new 
 lotion for the skin ? Do let me see how you use it ! ' She 
 chaperoned all I did, until I implored her to go into another 
 room." 
 
 " What about the Curate ? " said Chiffon, laughing. 
 
 Nougat's face darkened. " Oh, she wanted me to persuade 
 her to persuade herself to meet him under the rose. As I 
 have not the least sympathy with a love affair that cannot 
 be carried on in broad daylight I could not advise her as 
 she wished. How can a woman demean herself by such 
 assignations and tell lies to compass them! It would make 
 me feel like a housemaid." 
 
 Chiffon looked a little curiously at the pride in the face 
 opposite. Patricia had a way of drawing back her chin like 
 a horse tightly curbed. 
 
 " I would sooner feel like a housemaid than not meet the 
 man I loved ! " said Lady Harbinger suddenly, her little fair 
 face flushing with, an impulse of truth and vitality. 
 
 The revelation of the statement seemed to strike Patricia 
 dumb a revelation not so much of Chiffon's character as 
 her own. With a flash of self-knowledge she saw that even 
 the decency of her reserve had its drawbacks. She was not 
 capable of considering the reverse side of the picture; in 
 her self-absorption she had forgotten love's selflessness, even 
 in degradation. 
 
 "Oh, Chiffon," she said in a low voice, "you are more 
 generous than I ! " 
 
 " I am a fool ! " said Chiffon almost bitterly, dashing 
 the tears out of her angelic blue eyes. And not another 
 word passed on the subject then. But it was to come back 
 to Patricia Mornington re-read by the charity of her own 
 humiliation. 
 
 The footman who answered the door when Lady Harbinger 
 rang the Duke of London's bell, informed her ladyship that 
 his Grace was very poorly and could see no one; but Chiffon, 
 catching sight of a quiet, black-coated figure crossing the hall, 
 passed the footman with scant ceremony and made a further 
 appeal. 
 
 " Oh, there's Maunders, I will ask him ! " she said. " Good- 
 afternoon, Maunders. Is the Duke really too ill to see me? " 
 
 " Oh, no, my lady. I think he would be very pleased. 
 Lady D'Aulnoy is sitting with him now."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 123 
 
 " There ! And I was nearly turned away ! I should have 
 been cross if Aimee D'Aulnoy had been let in and I hadn't. 
 Come along, Nougat." 
 
 When the last two visitors entered the Duke's own sitting- 
 room they found rivals to his attention already in possession. 
 Lady D'Aulnoy was sitting by his great invalid-chair, Lord 
 Lowndes stood on the hearthrug in a square attitude 
 characteristic of him, and another woman with red hair was 
 writing a note at the table. Chiffon seized a low stool in 
 preference to the chair Lord Lowndes was going to bring 
 for her and sat down literally at the Duke's feet. 
 
 "No, I like this better! " she protested, turning her charm- 
 ing, laughing face to him. " If I sit in a chair I shall be 
 miles off, and Aimee will have it all her own way, I can 
 dispute her every effort to engross your notice, here." 
 
 " Well, but you will be so uncomfortable ! " said the Duke, 
 his courtesy so outraged that he made an instinctive move- 
 ment to rise and winced with pain. " And Miss Mornington 
 wants a seat, too. Lowndes, you might bestir yourself and 
 get her a chair! You know," he added, turning his kindly 
 eyes on Patricia with a humorous twinkle, " I am perpetually 
 having to remind Lowndes of the manners he hasn't got. 
 They never paid the extra penny for him at that Grammar 
 School from which he was very early kicked out ! " 
 
 " I did offer Lady Harbinger a decorous chair, but she 
 wanted to be nearer to you, you old ruffian ! " retorted Lord 
 Lowndes, swinging another seat round for Patricia, who was 
 standing by, openly amused. It crossed her mind that every 
 face present seemed to wear its best expression, the very 
 atmosphere of the room being one she could breathe with 
 ease like the open air after an overheated glass-house 
 and her eyes were the more tender as they rested on the 
 Duke. He was so effortless a gentleman that the men and 
 women round him forgot to be unnatural or vicious, and all 
 the virtue that was in their breeding rose and overweighted 
 the vulgarity of their social training. 
 
 " How is the Duchess ? " said Chiffon, with an affectionate 
 look in her blue eyes that was quite as much a caress as if 
 she had laid her hand on his knee. " Still running the parish 
 of Hyde?" 
 
 " Oh, dear, yes ! " said the Duke, drily. " She likes it, 
 you know, and I shouldn't be any use down there a cripple
 
 i2. AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 like me ! so I leave it all to her. See what I mean ? " His 
 tone was almost appealing. 
 
 " Of course not," the red-haired woman joined in, turning 
 round from the table. " Besides, one really can't spare you ! 
 My husband says you are the only virtue to which I cling. 
 If you were not here I should be altogether given over to 
 cards and scandal." 
 
 "You don't know my niece, Mrs. St. James? " said the Duke 
 to Patricia, and the red-haired woman bowed and smiled. 
 
 " You have the most rippin' motor in town, I hear, Miss 
 Mornington ! " she said. " But you don't drive yourself. 
 Frightened ? " 
 
 "I don't think so," said Patricia, rather entertained by 
 the notion. " But I prefer a landauette for town work, and 
 electricity carries me as far as I ever want to go. My mother 
 has a petrol car for longer distances." 
 
 " Oh, I see. Then you do drive that sometimes ? " 
 
 " No, I do not. I think it very dull driving an engine after 
 horses. I am very fond of horses, and am accustomed to 
 driving them. I suppose that is at the root of the matter." 
 
 " Hateful beasts ! " said the Duke, " I detest horses. They 
 always either kick or bite me. The last time I was at Hyde 
 we went for a drive, and the pair they put into the carriage 
 were too fresh. I believe my wife and I were both nearly 
 killed." 
 
 "Poor Duchess! and she is so nervous over anything like 
 that ! " laughed Lady D'Aulnoy. " Did she scream ? " 
 
 " Oh, like a peacock ! " said the Duke disgustedly. " Yes, 
 and the worst of it was that Lowndes had persuaded me 
 to buy those horses. Of course my wife put the whole 
 thing down to him ! She said it was a judgment on me for 
 trusting to his." 
 
 " She would have made me a scapegoat anyhow," said Lord 
 Lowndes grimly. "I am her pet vice. Does she never 
 come to town now, Pic ? I haven't set eyes on her for years, 
 but I hear she has grown stout." 
 
 " Oh, she is immense ! " said the Duke with great candour 
 and impersonality. "There is a kind of balloon of skirts, 
 and you are always having to dodge round her in order to 
 see anything the other side ! " 
 
 " In fact she is a ' cottage,' as you described Lady Harley ! " 
 suggested Patricia.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 125 
 
 " Yes, only Alicia is more than a cottage, don't you know; 
 she is almost a villa now ! " 
 
 In the midst of her laughter Patricia saw Maunders enter 
 the room with a telegram which he brought to his master, 
 standing like an inscrutable image at the Duke's elbow while 
 he settled his glasses and broke the envelope. 
 
 "Talk of an angel!" he ejaculated. "This is from 
 Alicia." 
 
 "No bad news I hope, Duke?" said Lady D'Aulnoy. 
 
 But the telegram, though enigmatic, was evidently not of 
 an alarming nature. 
 
 " What does she mean ? " said the poor Duke blankly, 
 staring at the form. " ' Send fifty pink monkeys and White- 
 ley's cat at once ! ' Good God ! what on earth is the mean- 
 ing?" 
 
 Maunders face twitched, but it was impossible to make 
 himself heard for a moment, from the genuine laughter in 
 the room. Lady D'Aulnoy leaned over the Duke's shoulder 
 and re-read the cryptic message: 
 
 " ' Send fifty pink monkeys and Whiteley's cat ' yes, there's 
 no getting away from it. Can you make anything else out 
 of it, Lord Lowndes?" 
 
 Lord Lowndes took the paper and read it judicially. 
 "Gone stark staring mad, I should say," he remarked cheer- 
 fully. "A little bit above herself, eh, Pic? Unless it's a 
 mistake of the Post Office." 
 
 " Yes, but you can't get anything else out of ' pink 
 monkeys,'" said Chiffon, wrinkling her pretty eyebrows. 
 " And fifty is such an obvious word stay ! does she contract 
 her words, Duke?" 
 
 "Oh, good Lord!" said the exasperated Duke, "I dare- 
 say she does. She is capable of anything if she sends me 
 that sort of telegram." 
 
 "Then 'cat' is catalogue!" said Chiffon triumphantly, 
 "and the monkeys are toys for a school treat, depend upon 
 it. She has seen them in a price list, and she wants fiftv 
 and the full catalogue to look out more wild beasts and tell 
 you to send them ! " 
 
 "Chiffon, you are really brilliant!" said Mrs. St. James. 
 "(I've finished mv note. May I give it to Maunders, Uncle 
 Tames?) But why on earth didn't she write direct to 
 Whiteley?"
 
 126 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " She never does," said Lord Lowndes with huge enjoy- 
 ment. " She expects Pic to go and choose all the details for 
 her charities. Last year she sent him a list of woollen 
 things for the people at his own almshouses, and each com- 
 forter was to be specially chosen for old John Smith and 
 Molly Snooks. I believe Pic gave it to Maunders eh, 
 Maunders ? " 
 
 " Yes, my lord ! " said Maunders, unmoved, but with re- 
 miniscence in his eye of the Duchess's wild commissions. 
 "Shall I send the order to Whiteley, your Grace?" 
 
 "Yes, I suppose so," said the Bute despairingly. " Though 
 they will think we are all mad. Did you ever see such a 
 thing?" he added to Lady D'Aulnoy, "'Send fifty pink 
 monkeys and Whiteley's cat ! ' How on earth was I to know 
 what she meant ! " 
 
 " If Chiffon hadn't been here we should have had to wire 
 back : ' Your signals not understood,' like the ships in the 
 Naval manoeuvres," said Lady D'Aulnoy. " Would you like 
 me to go to Whiteley's and choose the monkeys for you, 
 personally ? " 
 
 " No ! " said the Duke with a wrinkle of his fine nose, " I 
 won't have you take such trouble. Maunders can go, and 
 see the things packed if necessary. A pink monkey! How 
 on earth do they expect school children to learn natural 
 history if they give them such abortions ! " 
 
 "It was too bad to try to send you out in such weather, 
 anyway ! " said his niece, joining the group. " The wind is 
 east to-day, and it's as cold as Christmas." 
 
 " Yes, and Lowndes wanted me to go out ! " said the Duke 
 resentfully. " He tried to persuade me to walk to the Club 
 with him. I told him I knew there was a gale my body is 
 all crooked to-day." 
 
 "Well, you are not a lobster," said Lord Lowndes con- 
 templatively, from behind his cigar. " If you put a lobster 
 in the wind it dies in about five minutes. I suppose you 
 think the same thing would happen to you." 
 
 "I should like it to happen to me in such weather as 
 this fifteen degrees between to-day and last Thursday! A 
 walk does me good as a rule, but eh ! eh ! eh ! eh ! " ejacu- 
 lated the invalid rather quaintly, as he turned in his chair. 
 " The wind is so rude ! " 
 
 The Duke had a feeling that winds were ill-bred in buffet-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 127 
 
 ing him. The east wind in particular was not a gentleman 
 it was probably due to the lamentable fact that it had 
 never been to Eton, or even Harrow, to say nothing of 
 Oxford. The manners of a gale distinctly resembled, to 
 his mind, those of the crowd who jostled past and hurt him 
 if he walked on crowded pavements. And yet he had an 
 objection to perpetual red cloth. 
 
 " I am so looking forward to the winter," said Patricia, 
 musingly. " I have never seen one in England." 
 There was a chorus of exclamations. 
 " You may be only too thankful ! It's perfectly awful ! " 
 " Half of it is fog, and the rest dirty darkness ! " 
 " There is no bright sunshine or skating at least in town, 
 you know. That is why Princes' exists." 
 
 " But you won't see the English winter, Nougat," said 
 Chiffon with sudden remembrance. " Because Lady Vera 
 always goes abroad in October. She says she hates England 
 between that month and May. And, really, I agree with 
 her!" 
 
 " Do you ? " said Patricia serenely. " Then I am sure I 
 hope you will both go abroad. I will tell you how I liked 
 the fogs here, however, when we meet next season." 
 
 As if by common consent all the eyes in the room turned 
 on the speaker, a trifle curiously. It was so evident that 
 the woman with more than Lady Vera's beauty had also 
 as much, if not more, of her strength of will. The 
 Duke chuckled a little to himself as if enjoying the 
 situation. 
 
 " I hope you will come and see me during the fogs and 
 the darkness, then, Nougat," he said, "I at least am always 
 in town, don't you know." 
 
 " If anything could have increased my determination to 
 stay, that would have decided it ! " said Patricia complacently. 
 " I hope that everyone else will go away, and then I shall 
 have you all to myself." 
 
 " I shan't go now ! " said Chiffon gravely. " I see that 
 Nougat has laid a deep and crafty plan. By next season, 
 when the fog lifts, we should find that under cover of the 
 darkness she had cut us all out ! " 
 
 The Duke laughed delightedly. He was as honestly 
 pleased at his popularity amongst people he liked as he was 
 indifferent to the opinion of those he despised and they
 
 128 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 were many. He fitted a cigarette for Chiffon into one of 
 his own amber holders and put it gently into her pretty mouth. 
 " I know you are dying to smoke ! " he said. " Harbinger keeps 
 you half starved for tobacco, I believe. What are you going 
 to do this year for a holiday?" 
 
 " We are booked for half a dozen shooting parties, and 
 then we may go to Cairo," said Chiffon. " I mean to be back 
 in town for April, however so Nougat won't have it all her 
 own way ! I lost half this season, but it's impossible that 
 Bobby's relations can take to dying two years running, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "You are not going yachting this year, then?" said Mrs. 
 St. James, looking casually at Chiffon beneath half-lowered 
 lids. She had crossed her knees and was leaning sideways in 
 her chair, the effect being that of an insolent French sketch, 
 for she was a woman of a long build. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Mr. Carberry will be in despair ! " 
 
 " I am tired of Americans." 
 
 Something in the innocent questions and the brief answers 
 made Nougat turn her eyes from one to the other with a 
 sudden panic fear she could not have told why. She had 
 met Mr. Carberry, and thought him rather a mannerless 
 man; but his social blunders were apparently forgiven on 
 account of his yacht and his obliging indifference as to the 
 people he asked to go cruising with him. Without even 
 asking herself what Mrs. St. James meant, or why Chiffon's 
 brevity had shocked her, she rushed suddenly into speech, 
 addressing the Duke, between them. 
 
 " House-parties seem to be rather stupid things nowadays. 
 Aunt Helen used to tell me that they were the recognised 
 change from London life years ago, but then there were only 
 about thirty families to visit, and one went to them as a 
 matter of course. All my ideas are derived from her ex- 
 perience, and I find them so totally out of date that I am 
 rather in the position of Rip Van Winkle." 
 
 " The whole of Society has changed so much since Helen 
 Chilcote's day and mine, that I daresay you would," said the 
 Duke. "When I was young, for instance, landowners lived 
 a good part of the year on their land, and an estate meant 
 something to them." 
 
 ("So it does now," Mrs. St. James interpolated drily.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 129 
 
 " Rents, preserving, and a retreat in the day of unavoidable 
 retrenchment ! ") 
 
 "In a big house," went on the Duke musingly, " there was 
 always a corner for the younger son, even when his elder 
 brother came into the title and married. I remember in 
 my father's house we each had our room, called after us 
 ' Lord Cecil's room,' ' Lord James's room,' ' Lord Arthur's 
 room.' That isn't the case now. The younger sons of good 
 families are put on to the Stock Exchange, or into some 
 wholesale business, to sink or swim, and there they become 
 mere agents to introduce their friends at so much commis- 
 sion to themselves." 
 
 " But, Duke," said Lady D'Aulnoy, " it was surely a bad 
 plan to encourage a younger son to live idly on his father, 
 or to feel that he could do so ? " 
 
 "I don't mean that he was supposed to live at home 
 each of my brothers and myself had a certain sum of money, 
 ;io,ooo generally, and were supposed to make our way 
 with that capital. But we could always come home on an 
 emergency. The modern method turns the younger son into 
 a mere shark, living on the acquaintances he has made in 
 Society. It has not made him any more independent 
 you can see for yourself." 
 
 " That is true," said Lady D'Aulnoy, thoughtfully. " You 
 were a younger son, yourself were you not? What became 
 of you?" 
 
 "You had better ask what became of the ^10,000, 
 rather!" said Lord Lowndes with intention. "Pic says that 
 he went out to the Colonies with virtuous aspirations, and 
 lost most of it growing cereals. The majority of his friends, 
 however, believe that it went in riotous living!" 
 
 " Lowndes is jealous," said the Duke, grinning in his turn. 
 "You can see it in every word he says. He never had a 
 penny to call his own in his minority, and he was brought 
 up in a stable. That is why he talks horsey slang instead 
 of decent English to this day ! " 
 
 "I learned to ride and had decent hands, instead of 
 giving my mount a sore mouth like you, you grain thief ! I 
 know exactly how Pic grew rice he got hold of some 
 wretched broken-down Kaffir and beat him until he did the 
 work for him! Of course in those days such atrocities 
 never came to light."
 
 1 3 o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " It sounds more like the last Duke than the present ! " 
 put in Mrs. St. James. " Oh, how frightened I used to be 
 of your father, Uncle James! I remember seeing him once 
 or twice when I was quite a small child he was a terrible 
 old man with eagle eyes, who, in my memory, always wore 
 riding breeches and gaiters." 
 
 "He generally did," acknowledged the Duke. "He 
 hunted six days a week, up to the time he was seventy, and 
 he was quite a character in Dorset. He had a favourite ser- 
 vant to whom he was supposed to be much attached, and 
 the poor fellow went off his head and committed suicide. 
 They hardly dared to tell my father at first, but finally some- 
 one ventured to go to his door and rouse him up it was 
 late one night when it happened. ' Your Grace ! your Grace ! 
 Poor Rogers has drowned himself ! ' they shouted through 
 the keyhole. There was a long pause, and then my father, 
 who was in bed, turned over and growled out: 'More damned 
 fool he ! ' " 
 
 " What a shock for the person communicating the news ! " 
 said Chiffon with a bubble of mirth. "Your family have 
 evidently no sympathy with suicides ! " 
 
 " We have no sympathy with fools ! " said the Duke. 
 " Maunders is a fool I told him so yesterday, and he cried. 
 I hate men servants. They all cry." 
 
 " You say such beastly withering things to them ! " ex- 
 postulated Lord Lowndes with a suppressed chuckle. " Your 
 remarks are worth hearing. What was it you told Maunders 
 the other day? That he had softening of the brain, eh?" 
 
 "So he has all servants have more or less," said his 
 Grace with inhuman disgust. "That's Maunders now 
 knocking at the door when he knows that I particularly don't 
 wish to be disturbed. Come in ! " 
 
 Maunders opened the door and stepped aside to admit a 
 last visitor, with an inimitable reservation in his manner. 
 If he had said outright : " I-know-that-this-is-an-unwelcome- 
 surprise -and- that-his-Grace-would-rather-that- 1 -announced- the- 
 Devil-or-even-the-Duchess," he could not have expressed it 
 more perfectly than in his discreetly lowered eyes and the 
 utterance of three words: 
 
 " Lady Vera Mornington ! " 
 
 There was a flicker of skirts and the inevitable gleam of 
 sequins, for it was a spangled year, and Lady Vera liked
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 131 
 
 spangles. Her tall, corseted figure generally resembled an 
 artificial snake, the appearance being that of some falsely 
 developed body tightly bound in a snake's skin. Her tawny 
 eyes flashed round the room as she entered and took in 
 everybody in it long before she reached the Duke with a 
 loud greeting, but the noise of her entrance was not due 
 entirely to herself, for she was not alone. By her side, or 
 rather in front of her, walked a little girl of some eight 
 years, with an assurance far excelling that of any woman in 
 the room. She was a delicate, pretty child, but such a 
 miniature of Editha Blais Heron that Patricia, though she 
 had never chanced to see Valerie, knew that this must be 
 the child who was " lent " to provide a domestic atmosphere. 
 Half way across the room she broke into a little run, and 
 flung herself upon Mrs. St. James, with an unreal laugh, 
 while Lady Vera spoke to the Duke. 
 
 " Ah, James ! I supposed I should find you like a Grand 
 Turk in your harem ! If I lose my women friends I know 
 where to look for them the Duke of London's rooms are 
 sure to be full, no matter who else is deserted. It will be 
 a notorious scandal, James." 
 
 " Yes, in your hands ! " muttered Mrs. St. James, a little 
 unwisely, for the child was still clinging about her, and a 
 horrible intelligence came into the fair little face as she 
 caught the words. 
 
 " / think the Duke's very naughty, but I love him all the 
 same! Don't you, Chiffon dear?" she said in raised tones, 
 and as Lady Harbinger shook her head at her and laughed, 
 she turned and kissed her hand affectedly towards the invalid 
 chair. But his Grace was apparently engrossed with Lady 
 Vera. 
 
 "Ah ! now this is very kind of you, to look me up, Vera ! " 
 he said, shaking hands with her as kindly as if he did not 
 wish her at least in the uttermost parts of the earth. His 
 manners were perfect, even though he told terrible home 
 truths. "Won't you have that chair? Lowndes will ring 
 for some more tea for you, and for the child." 
 
 " Thanks, but I would rather have a cigarette if Valerie 
 may have some milk and something to eat, that will do," 
 said Lady Vera with a quick cold smile for Lord Lowndes. 
 She was the only person who knew them both and preferred 
 Lord Lowndes to the Duke of London, her preference being 
 
 9*
 
 132 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 based on the fact that years ago he had admired her figure 
 and someone had kindly repeated his remark to her. Lady 
 Vera still saw Lord Lowndes as a man who admired her 
 figure, though he had long ceased to look her way. He rang 
 the bell at once, and Maunders was sent for milk and what- 
 ever sweetstuff could be procured, Valerie eating and drink- 
 ing, with the same lack of manners that she saw round her 
 every day, as soon as it appeared. 
 
 But there was a sense of discomfort and constraint fallen 
 upon the happy little party with these latest additions. 
 Chiffon joined with Lady Vera and the Duke, Lord Lowndes 
 chatted to Lady D'Aulnoy, and Mrs. St. James still talked 
 to Patricia in desultory asides, interrupted by the child, who 
 was evidently unaccustomed to being checked in anything 
 she chose to say, and looked up expectant of the laughter 
 that did not come, after each unnatural speech for which 
 she evidently cudgelled her poor little brain. Of all the 
 nightmares which she had found the strangeness of her life 
 to resemble, Patricia had thought none so monstrous as this 
 modern phase of childhood. Valerie's mental pose was 
 hideous, and as she sat between Mrs. St. James and her- 
 self, Patricia looked at the pretty mouth with the unwiped 
 milk hanging round it, as if the child's loquacity had stricken 
 her dumb. When Mrs. St. James asked her if she were 
 ever shy, and Valerie answered " Rather not ! " she felt as 
 if the assurance were a tragic thing because so painfully 
 unnecessary. 
 
 The harmony of the room was gone, and the vague scent 
 which seemed to emanate from the glittering folds of Lady 
 Vera's gown might have been a poisonous essence from its 
 effect on the atmosphere. Her hard bright personality was 
 so utterly unsympathetic with suffering that her daughter 
 had a vague discomfort in seeing her seated so near the 
 invalid chair. It was a ridiculous impulse, but she longed 
 to get between her and the Duke, as if her own more 
 splendid strength might keep the cruelty of the other woman 
 at bay. 
 
 " I have been to see The Broken Tie it's simply killing ! " 
 said Lady Vera, as the Duke politely supplied her with a 
 cigarette. " I took Valerie to see what she would say to it, 
 and she remarked that the erring wife and her lover looked 
 just like Lady Harbutt and Lord Windersley, but she hoped
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 133 
 
 it wouldn't come to that! Of course she only repeats that 
 kind of speech like a parrot she doesn't know what she 
 says. But I screamed more at her than at the piece. Isn't 
 she a duck in that white bonnet and her red curls! She 
 looks so innocent, and she says such awful things ! The man 
 sitting next to her wanted to give her some tea, after flirting 
 with her between the acts, but theatre tea is so filthy I 
 thought I would come on here. I would much rather smoke 
 than drink tea, anyway. What are you doing to-night, 
 Chiffon? I want a fourth for Bridge." 
 
 " I daren't play any more this week ! " said Chiffon, with a 
 reckless little laugh. " I lost erer so much last night ! " 
 
 " Never mind come and win it back. Or we will play 
 Wall Street, and have a good old rowd. We tried the other 
 night, with a pool. Car cheated, I know, but you can't get 
 at the truth when everyone is yelling." 
 
 " I hope Caryl will not, play if he is going to make as much 
 noise as last time ! " said Patricia, turning from Mrs. St. 
 James, with a shrug of her shoulders, and a relief that sur- 
 prised herself at the change in the conversation. For Lady 
 Vera's remarks about Valerie had been perfectly audible to 
 the child herself on the other side of the room, and were 
 about equal in their folly and probable effect. " He could 
 be heard as far as the Marble Arch." 
 
 " Nougat was disgusted ! " said Lady Vera with her metallic 
 laugh. "Her attitude is generally that of the Pharisee." 
 
 " It is indeed," said Nougat, quite unmoved by the accusa- 
 tion. " I daily thank my God that I am ' not as this man ' 
 if that means Caryl Lexiter when he screams ! " 
 
 "I haven't played Wall Street," said Chiffon, with some 
 sort of an effort. " Is it such a noisy game ? " 
 
 " It depends on the players a good deal, I should think ! " 
 said Patricia, drily, ignoring an assertion in Valerie's clear 
 voice that she had played Wall Street and won ten shillings, 
 " Don't you think we ought to be going home ? " she added, 
 turning easily to Lady Vera, but with the manner of a 
 pleasant acquaintance. Patricia had an air of accepting Lady 
 Vera as one might the inevitable circumstances arranged by 
 Providence but by no means one's own choice. " I think, 
 if you remember, we dine half an hour earlier to-night." 
 
 "Do we?" said Lady Vera carelessly, "I have quite for- 
 gotten, if we do. How on earth did you remember? Oh,
 
 I 3 4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 yes, of course " her whole face altered in a curious fashion, 
 the hard look deepening into an indefinite resentment " Giles 
 has some Company Meeting on to-night, I believe. A private 
 conclave of shareholders, or some such solemnity. I can't 
 think why he could not dine at his Club ! " she remarked dis- 
 contentedly to the company in general. 
 
 " I wish my husband were on boards and controlled com- 
 pany meetings with the same genius ! " sighed Lady D'Aulnoy. 
 " I never look at Giles and remember what an extraordinary 
 power his name has in finance, but I feel actually withered. 
 I wonder he ever speaks to anyone so trivial and frivolous 
 as we must all appear. Are you really going, Vera ? Good- 
 bye. I shall see you to-morrow, I suppose." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 " Oh, anywhere. We are all bound to meet now the 
 season is over. One's circle is so small that everyone in it 
 does exactly the same things as oneself. You were not at 
 the American party the other night, by the way ? " 
 
 " No, I never go to political things. They bore me to 
 death." 
 
 "There was an awful crush, and they docked us of all 
 our prefixes. So odd, isn't it, to come into a country where 
 certain formalities are customary, and to drag in their own 
 brusqueriel I must own it was a shock to me when I heard 
 myself announced as ' D'Aulnoy,' and one of the Dukes 
 Westminster, I think went in before me with nothing but 
 his name to herald him. I suppose they think that titles 
 give us an unfair advantage, and are determined that we shall 
 not outshine the Americans. But it sounded so odd and 
 uncivil ! " 
 
 "What a sell for the American women who have married 
 for the title ! " said Lady Vera, with a harsh laugh. " Was 
 Carberry there ? " 
 
 "Yes, just as rude as ever. I wish he did not think that 
 his money did instead of manners. I can't think why we 
 all bear him. He is worse than the South African mil- 
 lionaires. I heard him tell Lena Haversham that she had 
 aged a good deal since they last met ! He sent a message to 
 you, Chiffon, by the way, but it's too long to deliver here. 
 Shall I drive you home ? " 
 
 "Thanks. I told the carriage not to wait, and if I am 
 to dress and come back to play Wall Street, I must rush ! "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 135 
 
 said Lady Harbinger, jumping up from her lowly seat. 
 "Good-bye, Duke! I feel so much better for my visit. I 
 love coming here." 
 
 " Then I hope you'll come as often as you like ! " said the 
 Duke, looking up into the smiling blue eyes. They were 
 quite simple in expression at the moment, and just repeated 
 what her lips had said that she felt better for coming 
 there. Patricia, standing behind her, put her hands on the 
 slight shoulders with a quick warm pressure. She was 
 taking her mother away simply because she felt the discom- 
 fort she had somehow brought into the party, but she was 
 sorry that, her action seemed to be breaking it up. 
 
 " Have we tired you, Duke ? " she said quietly, as they 
 shook hands. 
 
 " No, no ! Not at all ! " he replied genially, but there was 
 a new weariness in his kindly eyes that had not been there 
 before Maunders announced Lady Vera. Some people are 
 mental vampires by reason of their very selfishness they 
 exhaust the healthy atmosphere into which they enter, and 
 suck the vitality out of better natures. Perhaps the other 
 women saw it as Patricia did, for they one and all rose 
 leisurely and made their adieux, Lord Lowndes crossing the 
 room and opening the door for them. Lady Vera was, 
 after all, the last to leave, because she stood chatting with 
 him at the door, letting in a draught whereat the Duke 
 shivered. Patricia had firmly taken possession of Valerie, 
 and led the child away from the Duke, it being impossible 
 to repress her high chatter while she was in the room ; but 
 they had been waiting in the hall for some minutes before 
 Lady Vera appeared to realise that she was keeping anyone 
 waiting, and with a last shallow smile in her large cold eyes 
 she nodded to Lord Lowndes and departed. 
 
 " That woman always makes me feel as if she had the 
 evil eye ! " said the Duke, with a shrug of his whole body, 
 as the door closed on Lady Vera's tinselled tail. " When 
 she has been in the room with me I feel so much worse ! 
 And then she brings that noisy, ill-bred child with her! It 
 is a marvel to me that any man found her attractive, even 
 when she was good-looking." The emphasis of the past 
 tense as applied to Lady Vera Mornington made Lord 
 Lowndes laugh shortly. 
 
 " If all accounts are true she numbered her slain by tens
 
 136 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 of thousands ! " he said. " Certainly I can recall a dozen 
 men who claimed to be rather more than kin to her." He 
 lit a fresh cigar and pushed his hand absently through his 
 thick curly grey hair. "I have always wondered," he said 
 musingly, " who was responsible for Nougat. Whatever her 
 mother's claim to beauty was, hers is undeniable. It's a 
 trifle hard on Mornington that she should not be his 
 daughter ! " 
 
 "A woman like Vera Blais," said the Duke with convic- 
 tion, " is more than a trifle hard on anyone connected with 
 her. She is hard lines all round, in any capacity."
 
 137 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Sweet, let me kiss your hand : 
 If it so be a man may stand 
 
 So near to bliss. 
 Blue veins along the wrist, 
 Soft palm, made to be kissed 
 To take my claim to honour with the kiss. 
 #***#* 
 
 " Sweet, let me kiss your lips ! 
 If it so be I may eclipse 
 
 The Heaven I miss, 
 One moment's perfect sin 
 To suck the sweetness in ... 
 So take my hope of Heaven with the kiss." 
 
 La Grande Passion. 
 
 THERE was a popular fallacy in the Lexiter family that Caryl 
 was his father's secretary, and in some sort his man of busi- 
 ness. The only person who did not share in it, to some 
 extent, was poor Lord Queensleigh himself. He knew that 
 he gave his second son an income for writing his letters and 
 shepherding his investments ; he knew also how curiously 
 elusive Caryl's personality was apt to be, so that when he 
 wandered, in an aimless fashion peculiar to him, into his 
 study, there was no secretary on duty to transact the business 
 for which he had suddenly felt a capacity. Lord Queens- 
 leigh generally ended by writing his own letters, and apolo- 
 gised to Caryl for being so uncertain in his attention to 
 business. 
 
 There was, in truth, something to be said on both sides. 
 Caryl had been kept at home and allowed to idle through his 
 youth, gaining nothing but the acquirement of the best seat 
 and hands in the County, a reputation for always hitting what 
 he aimed at, and a few other experiences that did not de-
 
 138 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 tract from his charm of manner. He was old enough to be 
 connected with the former state of things to which the Duke 
 of London referred when he said that in certain big houses 
 younger sons kept their foothold as well as the heir, and 
 had their rooms reserved to them after they went out into 
 the world. Caryl had always had his corner at Queensleigh ; 
 as to whether it would be so still after Lord Loftus succeeded 
 his father he never appeared to speculate. It seemed prob- 
 able, however, that the " damn good fellow " of the Duke's 
 description would follow the family rule of " making things 
 up to poor old Car." Caryl had been the biggest and hand- 
 somest and wickedest of Lady Queensleigh's sons, Hawarden, 
 the youngest brother, being a full inch and a half shorter, 
 and having gone into the Church with nothing to hinder 
 him save the few thousands in debts with which he had left 
 Cambridge. It seemed somehow hard, even in Lord Loftus's 
 mind, that he had outpaced his second brother by a year, 
 and gained the inheritance which Caryl might have 
 squandered so gracefully. He felt it " rough on poor old 
 Car," and realised that he himself was not so typical a 
 Queensleigh as his junior. There was not even the reproach 
 of a ruined servant girl against Loftus, and a House owes 
 something to its traditions. In its secret heart the family 
 was proud of Caryl and his vices, for it is hard to uproot an 
 inherited admiration even for a scoundrel. 
 
 Caryl had enjoyed being young very much indeed ; he was 
 enjoying a spurious middle-age quite as much, and the prob- 
 ability was that at eighty he would still be looking out on an 
 interesting world with wicked, appreciative eyes, as amused 
 with his own interpretation of it as with the thing in itself. 
 His mental attitude had a certain charm for Caryl, and of 
 all his admirers he was himself the most constant. A 
 pleasant, unreliable, and artistically selfish man, he had never 
 lacked that innate something that breeding and training can 
 give, though he might act the cad in the guise of the gentle- 
 man. 
 
 "Let me hear a group of men talking," said the Duke of 
 London once, " and I will tell you, without knowing one of 
 them, which has been properly brought up I mean, of 
 course, from Our point of view. He may be the greatest 
 blackguard of the lot, but if he has the right manner I 
 would, I am afraid, rather talk to him than to the honest
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 139 
 
 bounder. I can't tell you what it is, but I can hear it among 
 a dozen voices I know it from the way a man puts on his 
 hat ! A gentleman doesn't even pick a pocket like a trades- 
 man." 
 
 The Honourable Caryl Lexiter did not pick pockets; but 
 if he had done so he would have fulfilled the Duke's distinc- 
 tion. He had always the certainty of social success with 
 him, and it gave him the graceful insolence which Patricia 
 Mornington had not yet decided whether she liked. Other 
 women did, however. Caryl's acquirement of the inexpres- 
 sible something the " right manner " had made his sins 
 bearable upon the surface, and he had taken his successes as 
 lightly as Gawain, of whose type he was : 
 
 " Light was Gawain in life, and light in death." 
 
 The indulgence of his own family had had its moulding 
 effect upon his character also. Oh, but we are hard upon 
 our " younger sons " when we train them in idleness and de- 
 mand nothing of their inherited powers but the facility of the 
 saddle and the gun ! The grit that should have gone to help 
 the Nation forward is bestowed upon trivial things nowadays. 
 His fathers won it for him centuries ago but he is only asked 
 to prove his manhood at Hurlingham, or at best in the Solent. 
 And it really seems as if he certifies himself the son of an old 
 house most undeniably in the spending of money. Even the 
 Services are recruited from the great Middle Class to-day, 
 and the nobleman's brother, if he must work, sells goods upon 
 commission. Caryl had been the show son of the family for 
 nearly thirty years, and had tried the resources of the junior 
 in all forms ; he was a known man for country-house parties, 
 and was asked out in London for his Bridge he played 
 fairly, notwithstanding Lord Lowndes's opinion, and his 
 advantage was simply skill and knowledge of the game ; but 
 he perceived a more solid establishment in life opening before 
 him than is usually the lot of younger sons, and regarded 
 these ephemeral advantages as less to be relied upon in the 
 future than he had been forced to do in the past. He 
 was going to marry Patricia Mornington he did not even add 
 " if she would have him," for he felt sure of it. She would 
 have a fortune that made other heiresses look puny, and was 
 without physical drawbacks to detract from her desirability, 
 but he never doubted that he should be the favoured above all
 
 140 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 other suitors, and he had a certain assurance for this belief 
 in Lady Vera's concurrence. For ten years Caryl Lexiter had 
 been learning the ethics of Vera Mornington's character, and 
 had found her a study that exceeded his conceptions of 
 women, whom he had otherwise held lightly. He did not 
 hold Lady Vera lightly, but whether his attitude towards her 
 were founded on admiration or something a shade stronger 
 and darker, was known only to that inward self which lay far 
 behind his charming, unprincipled exterior. 
 
 Lord Queensleigh's excuses for his unbusinesslike habits 
 had really some foundation. He proposed to get through a 
 certain amount of letter-writing, and to give Caryl a vague 
 thing which he called " instructions " in the morning ; but 
 more often than not his appearance was not until one o'clock, 
 when he read the paper and yawned beforehand over a pro- 
 spective duty in the House of Lords during the Session. 
 His succession in a political family had made an occasional 
 attendance an obligation, but if there were a personality 
 which Lord Queensleigh loathed it was that of his party's 
 Whip. There was only one occasion on which he felt it 
 important to be present and to vote, and that was the question 
 of making great race-meetings a holiday particularly for 
 Peers. On that subject he felt so keenly that he would almost 
 have tried to speak (and his powers of oratory were so well 
 known that he was not even allowed to get upon his feet at 
 public dinners), but during all others he was content to doze 
 if he could not escape actual bodily presence. If the House 
 of Lords is ever abolished it will come by reason of internal 
 heresy on the vote of such men as Lord Queensleigh. 
 
 Knowing his father's peculiarities, Caryl did not trouble 
 to rise early unless there were personal reasons to urge him. 
 He breakfasted in his own room when staying in his father's 
 town house, and came out of it about eleven o'clock, clean 
 and clear-skinned in spite of last night's card party, his fine 
 face a scoff to many men who still lingered on at White's, 
 but whose yellow dissipation denied them under the decorous 
 thirty. According to his custom he rose and dressed at the 
 usual time after the night of Lady Vera's Wall Street party, 
 and rang for Lord Queensleigh's man, who found that he 
 could combine an attendance upon his master and Caryl by a 
 neat dovetailing of their requirements. When it came to 
 Caryl's coat, the valet, who was a small man, made a ludicrous
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 141 
 
 effort to lift it in approved fashion on to the huge shoulders 
 over his head, and rising on tiptoe regularly upset Caryl's 
 gravity, though only his eyes were allowed to dance. He 
 always saw the pantomime in the glass, the little man strain- 
 ing upwards with puckered lips, and his own inclination to 
 stoop, and it never lost its humour. 
 
 " Thanks, Harris ! " he said pleasantly, feeling it a relief 
 to let his lips relax. Harris had no sense of humour. It 
 would have been unkind to accentuate his inadequacy, and 
 Caryl was never disagreeable to servants. No man with the 
 Duke's " right manner " and " proper bringing up " (Our 
 point of view, of course !) ever is. 
 
 " One of his lordship's handkerchiefs, sir ! " said Harris 
 solemnly, handing up the article. 
 
 " Eh ? " said Caryl in surprise. " What's become of all 
 my own, then? " 
 
 " I think you must have lost some, sir, the last time you 
 went to Brighton," said the man, without any intention of 
 disrespect or suggestion. " You lose a good many things at 
 a week-end, sir especially at Brighton." 
 
 " Oh ah ! " said Caryl, as if a little reminiscent. " You're 
 sure the washing is properly checked, Harris?" 
 
 " Oh yes, sir." 
 
 " And the housemaid reliable ? " 
 
 " Of course, sir. But if you wish to make enquiries " 
 
 " Oh no ! " said Caryl easily, with a shrug of his broad 
 shoulders. " I never make enquiries. I do as I would be 
 done by in this world. Still, how can I have lost two dozen 
 
 pocket handkerchiefs? The only thing to do, 
 
 Harris, is plainly to go out and buy more. My father up 
 yet?" 
 
 " No, sir. His lordship is still asleep. Not breakfasted 
 yet." 
 
 " Very well. Tell him I shall be back to lunch, if he asks 
 for me." 
 
 "Shall they call you a hansom, sir?" 
 
 " No, I'll walk." 
 
 But it was not a walk so much as a saunter when he set off 
 from the house in Portland Place and turned his face towards 
 Piccadilly. The day was threatening heat, the pavements 
 even now appearing to throw up an odour of baked dust. 
 Yesterday's cold East wind had shifted, or else was so miti-
 
 I 4 2 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 gated that it was again breathless Summer. Caryl walked 
 down Langham Place and turned out of Regent Street into 
 Conduit Street, emerging eventually in Piccadilly, below 
 Burlington House. As he passed Soloman's a lady coming 
 out with her arms full of flowers tried to pass and reach a 
 victoria standing at the kerb. Whence ensued that distress- 
 ing kind of impromptu quadrille wherein each person tries to 
 pass on the same side and keeps dancing about in front of the 
 other. 
 
 " Oh, do keep still a moment ! " said the lady impatiently. 
 And then " Oh ! " with a whole feminine vocabulary con- 
 densed in the one word. 
 
 " How are you ? " said Caryl, easily, offering his hand to 
 the great bunch of lilies and roses and sweet peonies beneath 
 which Chiffon's were buried. " May I ask if you have a 
 flower show on to-day ? " 
 
 " No ! it's only my usual bunch but I do like to buy them 
 myself when there are none coming up from the country, and 
 one gets such a much better choice early in the day ! " (It 
 was then half-past eleven.) 
 
 " Perhaps I may be permitted to help to stow them in the 
 carriage for you," said Lexiter, gently trying to disengage the 
 fragrant burden. But she gave a little cry of protest. 
 
 " No, don't do that get in and take them from me. Then 
 I can seat myself and arrange them, the dear things ! " 
 
 He did as suggested without further explanation, tucking 
 his long legs under the dust-rug in a practised manner that 
 showed them used to victorias. Chiffon stood beside the 
 step, her face half buried in the flowers, her eyes looking 
 over them at his manoeuvres. When he turned to her with 
 outstretched hands he met her glance and there was a 
 momentary pause. 
 
 " Well ? " he said at last. 
 
 " Take them ! " said Chiffon, filling his hands with her 
 flowers and springing into her seat. " I didn't say you were 
 to come too ! " she added in the same breath. 
 
 " Oh, I thought you did ! " he returned coolly. " Of course 
 if you didn't I can get out " He threw the rug back from 
 his knees. 
 
 "It's so stupid to be jumping in and out of a carriage 
 and I hate people to pass me ! " Chiffon said discontentedly. 
 
 The rug went back to its place, and Caryl began to laugh.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 143 
 
 " The Stores, James ! " said Lady Harbinger with a 
 heightened colour; then as the man tucked in the rug and 
 swung himself up beside the coachman, she flashed round on 
 Lexiter. 
 
 " What are you laughing at ? " 
 
 " You ! " he retorted, his whole face the handsomer for his 
 smile. "Teh! tch ! tch ! what's the matter? What are you 
 in a rage for ? " The big masculine hand drew the rug a 
 little higher over her pretty summer gown, and slid beneath 
 it to her lap. " How are you after last night ? " 
 
 " Oh ! hoarse with screaming ! What a noise we made ! I 
 was ashamed of myself " 
 
 " I wasn't ! " 
 
 " You never are ! " The blue eyes met the hazel-grey 
 again, and fell beneath them. " Let me alone ! " said Chiffon 
 beneath her breath, and jerked to her own side of the 
 carriage. 
 
 " You don't want to be let alone ! " he asserted insolently, 
 and the rug moved a little, undulated, hinted at a tale it did 
 not tell. "Are you really going to stop at the Stores, 
 Chiffon ? " 
 
 "Yes. At least I am going to leave an order there." 
 
 " What is the matter with you this morning ? You are in 
 quite a naughty little temper." 
 
 She struggled with herself for an instant, turned an April 
 face to him, and half laughed through shining tears. 
 
 " It was last night I felt hateful, somehow. Did you see 
 the way that Nougat looked at us all? I was next Ernie 
 Blais Heron how disgy we are when we let ourselves 
 go!" 
 
 " Did you let yourself go ? I am sorry I wasn't next to 
 you. I should like to see you let yourself go ! " His voice 
 touched her as materially as his hand. " You never have with 
 me, Chiffon!" 
 
 " And I never shall ! " she said quickly. 
 
 " I think you could be coaxed ! " he said audaciously. 
 " Was this all that made you cross this morning? " 
 
 " Oh, that and Nougat's face ! Nougat cowes me some- 
 times. And heaps of other things." 
 
 He glanced at her more keenly than usual, his eyes bright- 
 ening with a kind of flash. All he said, however, was : 
 " Don't you think it's very hot driving in the sun ? I shall
 
 144 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 be grilled if I sit in Victoria Street waiting for you without 
 any shade. Shall I come in and carry the parcels ? " 
 
 " I tell you I am only going to give an order ! I shan't be 
 five minutes, and I hate a man trotting at my heels when I 
 am busy in shops." 
 
 " How spoilt ! " he commented, in the upbraiding tone of a 
 grown-up person speaking to a very naughty child. 
 
 "Well, I won't have you, anyway. Tell the coachman to 
 stand in the shade if you like you can give your own 
 orders ! " She spoke half hastily, half recklessly, as she got 
 out of the carriage and ran up the broad steps, her gown up- 
 lifted in her hand. If she had been a Duchess, Chiffon 
 would never have learned dignity. She loved her coronet, 
 but its moral balance never weighed on her sufficiently to 
 hinder her flying feet. 
 
 When she came back, after a really short time for it was 
 too hot to make shopping enjoyable, and perhaps the victoria 
 held a greater attraction she did not for a minute recognise 
 her own carriage, and stood on the pavement looking back- 
 wards and forwards, a lost expression in her blue eyes, till 
 recalled by Lexiter's hearty laugh and her own footman touch- 
 ing her on the arm. 
 
 " Mr. Lexiter told me to put the hood up, m'lady," he said. 
 
 "Oh yes quite right. It will be cooler." But as the 
 carriage drove away she seized Lexiter by the arm and gave 
 him a little shake. " How could you do such a thing ? Don't 
 laugh at me like that ! " 
 
 "You looked so utterly bewildered. I never saw such a 
 strayed baby in my life. I expected to see you sit down on 
 the steps of the Stores and cry in a minute." He could 
 hardly speak for laughing. " Come, isn't this much nicer 
 and more cosy ? " he said softly, shifting his position a little 
 and drawing the rug more carefully around her. She did not 
 answer, save to say : " Where are we going ? " 
 
 " You told me to give my own directions, so I ordered your 
 man to take us for a little drive out towards Battersea. 
 Haven't you finished your shopping?" 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 He looked out swiftly at the passing traffic on the Albert 
 Bridge and his hand tightened where it rested. " It isn't clear 
 enough yet ! " he said. 
 
 Chiffon leaned back in her corner with a little gasp. Some-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 145 
 
 thing in this man's voice above others that had wooed her 
 frightened while it held her captive. Every nerve in her 
 tingled and felt as if charged with electric fluid. She waited, 
 she did not know for what, until suddenly in the desertion of 
 Battersea Park, he slipped his arm round her and held her 
 closely. 
 
 " Now tell me all the ' other things ' that trouble you ! " he 
 said. 
 
 " There will be no yachting for us this year, Caryl ! " she 
 whispered in troubled tones. " I had a message from Mr 
 Carberry to say he was going to ask us, and I just sounded 
 Bobby on the subject. He won't go he is determined to 
 have a house party for the shooting at our own place in the 
 autumn, and then to go to Cairo in the winter." 
 
 " Why ? Has he any special reason ? " Lexiter asked 
 rapidly, seeing all the disaster if Bobby even fancied Pooh ! 
 He had been too careful. A lifetime of experience has its 
 advantage in a case like this. Lexiter touched such delicate 
 situations with the finesse of a specialist. 
 
 " Oh no ! " She spoke with shocked haste, as if to reassure 
 herself as much as him. " Only he is as obstinate as a mule 
 if he makes up his mind, that is all. And he has made up 
 his mind to this particular programme." She shrugged her 
 small shoulders in the shadow of the raised hood a trifle 
 cynically. 
 
 " Supposing I persuaded Bobby ? No good ? " His eyes 
 smiled lovingly at the dear little profile outlined against the 
 dark carriage, and his lips instinctively moved " as we kiss in 
 the air whom we will." Through the thin muslin of her 
 sleeve she could feel his large masculine hand warm against 
 her sensitive flesh, his fingers clasping her arm above the 
 elbow. 
 
 " It might only make him think things. Besides, you 
 know what Mr. Carberry's conditions are he told me last 
 year when we were leaving that he would ask me again, and 
 anyone I liked, to meet me, on condition that I got Lady 
 D'Aulnoy to come ! Oh ! how I hated him when he tried to 
 make me a party to such a bargain ! I wish I had never 
 listened." 
 
 " Does she guess ? " 
 
 "I don't know. I don't believe she would look at him. 
 That is why he tried to reach her through me. He is so 
 
 IO
 
 1 46 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 swollen with money that he thinks it hardly worth while to 
 disguise his intentions, and from the way he spoke of it to 
 me but then he tells the most brazen lies ! " 
 
 " I am afraid that the verb To Lie is the most applicable 
 for the relations of women with men ! " said Lexiter in a 
 parenthesis. " He lies to her in the first instance ; he lies for 
 her, ultimately ; and he not infrequently lies with 
 
 " Caryl ! " 
 
 " Don't be shocked ; I was only inspired by the thought of 
 Carberry put it down to him. Well, if we cannot make use 
 of his yacht, we must contrive something else. Meet you I 
 must, of course. Chiffon, I wish it were safe to kiss you ! " 
 
 He drew her closer to him under the guard of the rug, and 
 glanced apprehensively at the liveried backs of the servants. 
 There is nothing more oblivious in appearance than the back- 
 view of a well-trained coachman or footman. There is also 
 no one, probably, who knows more by keen instinct of what 
 is going on behind him. Lexiter knew his risk, and was yet 
 half minded to take it. He was not often carried away by 
 his passions ; he had probably never had an emotion strong 
 enough to be its own excuse certainly none in which he had 
 not kept a guiding hand upon the reins of his fancy. There 
 was no necessity in his loves, but he was enough of a man to 
 chafe a little even while he yielded to common sense, and 
 decided that here and now was not the time to come one 
 inch closer. He had always been the first to remember how 
 very unpleasant consequences can be, and he had always 
 called it his care for the woman, and admired his own for- 
 bearance. Once or twice in his experiences the woman would 
 have forgiven him more easily for less prudence and more 
 selfishness. In this case " No, it isn't safe," he said, and 
 Chiffon drew away with a humiliated feeling that she would 
 not have minded the risk. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he exclaimed the next instant. " Lucky I 
 didn't look there ! " 
 
 " Where ? " Her bewildered eyes blinked at the sunshine, 
 and only saw, down a by-path, two vanishing figures a 
 decorous long black coat, and a woman's trailing gown. 
 
 Lexiter laughed with huge enjoyment. 
 
 " Mrs. Blais Heron and her parson ! Someone beside our- 
 selves thought the old cycle track might be fairly deserted 
 this morning, eh, darling? Battersea is a great place."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 147 
 
 "Was it really Editha? Did she see us?" 
 " Don't know, I'm sure but it doesn't matter much. We 
 were innocent enough in appearance. I wonder what in- 
 genious reason she gives her own soul for this tete-a-tete in 
 solitude ? There is much fertile excuse in religion ! " His 
 face lit up with the most cynical entertainment, and he was 
 obviously considering Mrs. Blais Heron's rather than his own 
 diversions. "It is a chance she did not bring Valerie as a 
 chaperon she has often done that ! " 
 
 " Don't ! " said Chiffon sharply. " I can't bear to think of 
 a child in connection with well, stolen violets. I have that 
 much grace ! " she added a little uneasily. " I think we had 
 better turn back I don't want to come face to face with 
 her." 
 
 " Where are you lunching ? " he asked after a minute's 
 thought. 
 
 "With Nougat." 
 
 " Send a note to her to say you can't, and come out with me 
 somewhere." 
 
 " But, my dear Caryl -the servants ! How am I to get rid 
 of the carriage ? " 
 
 " Write the note at your Club, and dismiss them there. You 
 can drop me first, and I will meet you again in half an hour's 
 time." 
 
 " Where ? " She turned her face away to the green of the 
 Park, but she had not said no. 
 
 u At the end of Dover Street, or I will come to the Club if 
 you like." 
 
 " Better not you see there is the direction to the cabman 
 of course I don't know where you mean to lunch?" she 
 broke off. 
 
 " Nor do I yet ! " said Caryl with a laugh as light as the 
 lie. " Shall we have the hood down, going home ? It looks 
 more usual." 
 
 " I thought you were afraid of the heat ! It was not my 
 suggestion." 
 
 " So I was I am not now. I think on the whole it's stuffy 
 having it up, don't you?" He looked at her with laughing 
 eyes, and she laughed in answer, half vexed with herself. 
 Caryl was so flagrant in his manoeuvres, and so inconsistent 
 in abandoning them when he saw a better method ! But she 
 would hardly think of the better method as yet. He had only 
 
 IO 
 
 *
 
 148 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 asked her out to lunch, and she felt an irresistible inclination 
 to go, though it might be foolish. They had seen so little 
 of each other lately, and life had somehow been dull. After 
 all, what was a luncheon? 
 
 " I hate treating Nougat casually," she remarked, but it 
 was her only protest, and at the bottom of St. James's Street 
 she dropped him, as he directed, at his Club. 
 
 " It's a pity those two are friends," said Lexiter to himself 
 as he lifted his hat to the vanishing carriage. " It makes 
 it almost impossible to run the two things side by side .... 
 I suppose one will have to go for a time, at least." 
 
 He did not despair of its ultimate resumption, for he had 
 had experience of women's friendships. Until he was actually 
 bound to Nougat, however, even by an engagement ring, the 
 second diversion was still open to him. On entering his 
 Club he went straight to the telephone office and rang up a 
 certain restaurant, from which he ordered a cold luncheon 
 to await him, and other details. Not to be expected meant 
 inevitable delay and the clumsiness of explanation while a 
 lady waited. Caryl never bungled his arrangements in such 
 a case; it was part of his definition of being a gentleman. 
 Half an hour after entering it he left his Club, strolled up 
 St. James's Street, crossed Piccadilly, and nearly ran into 
 Chiffon again at the corner of Dover Street. 
 
 " That's the second time to-day ! " he said with extreme 
 amusement. " You certainly have designs on my valuable 
 life. Hansom ! " 
 
 Chiffon looked vaguely round her as she got into the cab, 
 wondering if anyone she knew happened to be passing. In 
 the middle of the Season she could hardly have dared to 
 have done this, but town was rather empty, and it is a curious 
 fact that the risk of recognition in London is less than on a 
 desert island, even in the area most crowded by one's ac- 
 quaintance. She was busy thinking if she had known any of 
 the faces that had passed, and hardly noticed what direction 
 they took ; but when, after a short drive, they stopped in a 
 quiet street, she looked round and said : " Where are we ? * 
 
 "At a restaurant I know of, where we shan't be crowded 
 or stared at," said Lexiter quietly. " Go in at once though, 
 dear, it's never necessary to stand on the pavement ! " 
 
 So Chiffon drew her fluffy white boa over her shoulders 
 and passed through the glass doors into the restaurant. The
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 149 
 
 place looked quiet and respectable enough rather dowdy, 
 she thought and Lexiter lingered a moment and spoke to 
 one of the waiters. 
 
 "We'll lunch upstairs; it's cooler," he said, and Chiffon 
 walked leisurely up the velvet padded steps and into the room 
 he indicated. Even then it did not occur to her that there 
 was a special privacy about this luncheon, and she sat down 
 to the table and pulled off her gloves laughing and talking 
 merrily. The waiter placed the dishes on the table it was 
 a cold luncheon poured out the champagne and looked at 
 Lexiter. His face was discretion itself, and he had hardly 
 seemed to glance at Chiffon. 
 
 " That will do I'll ring if I want anything," said Lexiter 
 quietly. 
 
 "It's much nicer not having any servants fussing about, 
 isn't it? " said Chiffon amicably, going on with her luncheon. 
 It struck her that he was rather silent at first, but after a few 
 minutes he began to talk again, and was his most genial self. 
 She found him a charming companion, though he rarely talked 
 of anything but mutual acquaintances, being more interested 
 in their foibles and follies than the noblest things of the outer 
 world. When lunch was over he turned to Chiffon with his 
 hand on the bell. 
 
 " Will you have any coffee ? " 
 
 " Not for me, thanks ! " 
 
 "Liqueur?" 
 
 " No, but I should like a cigarette." 
 
 He came towards her as if to offer it, then suddenly placed 
 the box on the mantelshelf and took her in his arms. 
 
 " Don't smoke now, Chiffon this is so much nicer ! " he 
 said, his voice dropped to a wicked whisper. " Take your 
 hat off, and come and sit down." 
 
 She freed her pretty hair from the gauze and flowers and 
 lace of her hat, and did as he mutely suggested, slipping on 
 to his knee with a little laugh of excitement, and allowing him 
 to draw her head down to his shoulder. 
 
 " It is so nice to be properly kissed again ! " she said, half 
 laughing. " Why doesn't one's husband ever seem to know 
 how ? " Her fair soft face lay crushed against his, her head 
 tilted back for his kisses, her eyes wandering aimlessly about 
 the room. Then for the first time she noticed another door 
 beside the one by which they had entered and the waiter had
 
 I5o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 disappeared. It had been closed during luncheon perhaps, 
 and the draught from the open windows had swung it open. 
 Through the aperture it left she saw another room, not a 
 sitting-room at all and raising herself, suddenly struggled 
 free of his arms. 
 
 " Where have you brought me ? " she said. 
 
 He rose also, stretching out his arms towards her, his big 
 frame between her and the open door, blotting out the betray- 
 ing glimpse beyond. 
 
 " Chiffon ! " he said coaxingly. " It was only because I 
 knew we should be undisturbed ! " 
 
 But she shrank from him, her small hot hands held over 
 the frightened blue of her eyes. 
 
 " Oh ! I did not know ! I was a fool, but I did not guess ! " 
 she gasped. " No ! No ! No ! you mustn't touch me ! " 
 
 She writhed this way and that to free herself from the 
 gentle circle of his arms a circle he allowed her to break, 
 but which always closed again, until he laughed at her, 
 irresistibly. 
 
 " Come, darling ! don't be foolish ! " he said remonstrat- 
 ingly. " What does it matter ? What harm have I done you ? 
 No one recognised us ! " His lips were half stifled in the 
 scented masses of her hair, as with an inconsistent impulse 
 she turned to him and hid her face against his heart. 
 
 " I'm frightened, Caryl ! " 
 
 " What at? What is my pet afraid of ? " 
 
 " If Bobby should know that I had even been " 
 
 " But he will not who's to tell him ? And why should we 
 not lunch together ? " 
 
 Still the caressing arms that held her the whisper that 
 soothed her fear. She did not know that she had yielded 
 either from her protest or in actual bodily presence, when she 
 found herself back in her former position, her head against 
 his shoulder, his voice tempting her to linger a little longer. 
 The fascination of excitement was as strong a persuasion as 
 his arms perhaps, the craving for the novel thrill of passion 
 that even a good woman may miss in the man who is her 
 husband. The Eastern nations, recognising this fact, have 
 made monogamy a scoff; the Western have made it rigid 
 Law, and shut their eyes to its infringement. We are the 
 victims of impulse too, at our most excusable, for it is only 
 vice that is premeditated. Good resolutions and resistance
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 151 
 
 of temptation passed from Chiffon with that assurance of 
 Lexiter's that they need not be found out a heavier bribe 
 
 still to a woman than to a man Yet she had had 
 
 no intention of this. She had only gone out that morning to 
 buy flowers. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Not until Caryl Lexiter arrived again on his own doorstep 
 in time to dress for dinner did he remember that he also had 
 had an object when he left the house that day. He was still 
 oblivious of the fact that he had told Harris he should be 
 back to luncheon, and that it was now seven o'clock, but per- 
 haps the sight of the servant who admitted him recalled 
 something else to his mind. He laughed his charming spon- 
 taneous laugh that made his grey hairs seem a mere com- 
 pliment to his handsome face. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he said, " and I went out to buy some pocket- 
 handkerchiefs ! "
 
 152 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Beneath His quiet skies His quiet skies ! 
 
 We shriek and die 
 
 And watch the morning and the eve go by,* 
 And shudder to this God who does not heed our cries. 1 
 
 We could bear all things were He less divine. 
 
 He does not care ! 
 He set us in this coil of our despair 
 
 And straight withdrew Himself, and gave no hint of His design." C t 
 
 Lower London. 
 
 As Fate had said, Phlumpie's ideas were truly vague as re- 
 garded the difference between a sleeping bed and a garden 
 bed, and he found flowers as good to lie upon as feathers. 
 He was in the midst of the white alyssum now, his own fur 
 so indistinguishable from the delicate petals that from a 
 distance it merely looked as if the flowers grew in a thicker 
 mass in the centre of the bed. Twice Mrs. Leroy had taken 
 him up and shaken him, and he had blinked his disgust 
 with his pale, gooseberry eyes. Then she had kissed him 
 hard a process he disliked far more, but as he had always 
 trotted back to his improvised couch after a few minutes 
 of injured tail-lashing, she had given it up, and was strolling 
 up and down the garden path with Mrs. Carr, talking about 
 the future of the boy whom Vaughan condemned for not 
 wishing to be a pirate. 
 
 " You see, next year we ought to think of getting a nomina- 
 tion they go into the Navy so early now," she said, with 
 her great mother-eyes full of anxiety. "I don't like this 
 new system it takes them away from you so early ! " 
 
 " What will you do when he goes on his first voyage ? " 
 said Fate teasingly. "Three years, isn't it?"
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 153 
 
 Yes I know. It's so dreadful I won't think of it. 
 Three years without Teddy ! " The pretty voice shook, and 
 the long lashes fell hastily to hide her traitorous eyes. " I 
 wonder how far a woman's influence will reach, and how 
 long it lasts on the other side of the World ! Teddy and I 
 are such close friends now. But of course he must grow 
 away from me." 
 
 "Never mind," said Fate, snatching at the first foolish 
 comfort she could invent, "think how proud you will be of 
 him in his uniform ! " 
 
 "He isn't there yet," said Mrs. Carr, laughing at herself 
 a little. "Unfortunately neither Richard nor I can think of 
 anyone with a nomination." 
 
 " I wonder if we know anyone ! " said Fate, wrinkling her 
 expressive eyebrows. " It seems one of life's ironies that 
 the women who are willing to give up their sons to the 
 Empire should so frequently be stopped by a piece of red 
 tape ! One hears of the difficulty of getting boys for the 
 Navy; but I think the difficulty lies in getting the Navy to 
 take them ! " 
 
 " Well, you see, we do not happen to have any connections 
 in the Service, alive. One's connections always die when 
 they would be useful, don't they? It is only those with 
 whom one could do without who seem to propagate and 
 increase daily. People in our position who want their sons 
 to join the Service have endless trouble." 
 
 "Yes. Won't it be rather expensive altogether?" 
 
 "Oh, we could not afford it if we had more than one 
 son to start in the world, or were not helped. But Teddy 
 is the only boy. you see, and Richard has some relations 
 who are very well off and undertook to make him an allow- 
 ance. He is so bent on being a sailor! He has always 
 known what he wanted since the time when he was quite a 
 little chap." 
 
 " I will tell Gerald that ! " thought Fate with mental amuse- 
 ment. " His view of Teddy, and Teddy's doting mother's, 
 seem to differ ! " Aloud she said rather drily, " My husband 
 wanted to be a sailor, all his heart was bound up in it; 
 but there was no money to help him, and so it had to be 
 given up, and the country lost a good man, in all probability. 
 It is rather pitiful, isn't it?" 
 
 " One feels that the system must be wrong somewhere.
 
 154 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 I always wondered that Mr. Leroy did not go to sea. He 
 fills me with awe now when I hear him talk about boats! 
 I don't believe there is anything he does not know about 
 them. Teddy stands with worship in his eyes as long as 
 he will rig his ships for him." 
 
 ' Yes," said Fate briefly. The vague resentment she 
 always felt with Providence if Eldred could not have his way 
 made her swing her gown half impatiently over the pansy 
 border. She could bear disappointment for herself that 
 was nothing. But even to think of her husband's youth being 
 thwarted made her angry, though she had not shared in it. 
 Fate was feminine and inconsistent. She would have found 
 some virtue in another man's being denied his heart's desire 
 and the consequent development of his character through a 
 fight with circumstances. Even in Gerald Vaughan's case 
 her sympathy was tempered by a conviction that he was the 
 better man for his drawbacks. But for Eldred she had no 
 such consolation. She would have given Eldred the 
 universe to play with had she had the power, and denied 
 that the personality she loved could in any way be injured 
 by indulgence. 
 
 "It is nearly five o'clock, and I know you are dying for 
 me to go ! " said Mrs. Carr at last, as they paused in their 
 desultory saunter just beside Phlumpie in the flowers. " I 
 can see the clock in your eyes ! Are you going to the 
 station ? " 
 
 " No, not to-day. Eldred is coming down early, and 
 going to see a man on business at Urden. He left his 
 bicycle at the Junction this morning, and will ride from 
 there." 
 
 "He will have a lovely spin!" said Mrs. Carr, looking at 
 the liquid sky and the coming sunset that as yet hardly 
 reddened above the pear trees. " Do look at your cat ! He 
 will ruin your garden." 
 
 " I have driven him off twice this afternoon," said Fate, 
 stooping to pick up the sleeping white beauty. " He is so 
 cross with me now that he will hardly speak to me. Oh! 
 man! man! what shall I do with you? I think I will have 
 you skinned to wear round my neck in winter as a punish- 
 ment ! " 
 
 "He would make a beautiful tie! " said Mrs. Carr, laugh- 
 ing, as they walked down to the gate, Phlumpie lounging
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 155 
 
 over his mistress's shoulder like a sulky baby. Mrs. Leroy 
 rarely used his real name, and he was as accustomed to 
 being called " Kitten-man " or " man " as anything else. 
 The origin of " Phlumpie " she usually explained in this 
 wise, and quite seriously, to bewildered strangers : 
 
 ; ' We used to say that he was a little white elephant when 
 he was a kitten, he was so lumpy. But of course at that 
 age he could not pronounce the word ' elephant,' and he called 
 himself an 'elephlump! So it got to Phlumpie in time." 
 
 If it happened to be a " Cat-woman " to whom this explana- 
 tion was offered, she invariably went away saying to herself 
 that it was such a pity that dear Mrs. Leroy had no children ! 
 She was cut out for a mother. Why, she talked of that 
 stupid cat just as if he were a baby ! And Fate and Eldred, 
 when such opinions filtered round to them, laughed. 
 
 " By the way," said Mrs. Carr, absently, rubbing the cat 
 behind his ear, " how beautiful Miss Mornington looked at 
 Ashingham on Thursday ! Saydie and I were quite struck. 
 We could not take our eyes off her." 
 
 " She is always beautiful," said Fate with cordial enjoyment 
 of Patricia's memory. " I have not seen her for some days 
 now, and I feel quite hungry for the sight of her. She 
 generally motors down twice in the week." 
 
 " She must be rolling in money ! " said Mrs. Carr, with a 
 little sigh for Teddy not for herself. " Mr. Mornington 
 is the 'Wheelwright,' isn't he? Richard knows all about 
 his patent cart wheels, wasn't it?" 
 
 " Something to do with them, I believe. Men always 
 understand these things I don't. I am rather interested in 
 Mr. Mornington, personally, but Patricia lives a life estranged 
 from her people." 
 
 " Poor dear ! " said Mrs. Carr kindly. " How I should hate 
 a household divided against itself. And she is such an attrac- 
 tive woman to my mind, she seems somehow to merit a 
 happy home. What does Mr. Vaughan think of her ? " 
 
 " He is as perverse as usual, and declines to admire her! " 
 Jaughed Fate as Mrs. Carr departed. There was a sudden 
 very faint colour in her cheeks that irritated herself. She 
 felt them warm with something else than the sunset: the 
 memory of a pretty, irregular room, a man's peculiar voice, 
 a regretful sentence " I have never had what I wanted ! " 
 There was no least thought of disloyalty in Fate Leroy's
 
 156 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 heart, nothing that she would not have told her husband, 
 but the womanhood in her asserted its attribute of pity; for 
 a moment she wished perhaps that she had two personalities 
 an extra self to bestow elsewhere. The thought had never 
 definitely shaped itself in her mind before, though she had 
 known in every secret nerve that she was set apart in 
 Vaughan's mind as in her husband's a creature desirable 
 above all others. Her face was rather absorbed with this 
 inward thought as she went slowly back to the house and in 
 at the open front door, Phlumpie fallen asleep in her arms 
 as one resigned to malignant fortune. The prettiness of her 
 life struck her afresh as she came in, and she remembered 
 with innocent satisfaction that to make his surroundings 
 bearable to his irritable taste Gerald had to wage perpetual 
 war against his sister's antagonistic personality. She knew 
 that her own prejudice suited with his to perfection, she had 
 seen the approval and displeasure in his quick cold eyes times 
 out of number when he came into her rooms, or was made 
 aware of some new development in her household arrange- 
 ments. Yes, she could have managed Gerald Vaughan, and 
 made him satisfied, with as exquisite an ease as she did her 
 husband though certainly with less inclination. Gerald 
 would have been the second best to Fate Leroy, but he was 
 second, though to the immeasurable preference of Eldred. 
 
 She dropped Phlumpie gently among the sofa cushions 
 in the drawing-room, and put a vase of garden poppies at 
 another angle on the mantelshelf. Their blood-like crimson 
 stood out anew against the dull green of her walls, and she 
 stood still idly enjoying it. Colour was almost a passion 
 with Fate, but she enjoyed all the little details of her 
 married life with the full sweet joy of a woman who appre- 
 ciated her own happiness. She had her thorns among the 
 roses, of course, little pin pricks that Eldred shared with her; 
 but upon the whole life was a comedy rather than a drama. 
 It might be humdrum to a looker-on, but she found ex- 
 quisite humour, subtle experience, and infinite situations, to 
 make it absorbing to herself. She was rejoicing in the poppy 
 against the wall at the present moment, for it made one 
 detail in the background of her stage, while she played the 
 principal rdle of the piece. This was all her setting, and 
 so of value to her, too. 
 
 And even then tragedy came stalking towards her on
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 157 
 
 grim feet, bringing the realisation of the depths of the world, 
 and breaking in on the monotonous music of her existence 
 with the roll of muffled drums. 
 
 A carriage-clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past five, 
 and she turned and glanced at the door with a half resentful 
 feeling that she had lost half an hour of her usual time 
 with her husband. She had hardly expected him yet, but 
 she wished he would come home. It was too early to dress 
 for dinner, and she had no inclination to settle to anything 
 with half her senses waiting at the gate. So she went 
 upstairs to her bedroom, and loitered about among her most 
 cherished possessions as women will, wondering a little 
 leisurely whether her whole energies would have been 
 absorbed in her son if she had had one, as Mrs. Carr's in 
 Teddy. She thought not hoped not, indeed ; for to Fate 
 the woman whose life was absorbed in her husband was a 
 higher product of civilisation than the "Cat-woman," whose 
 maternal instincts were stronger than any others. " Any 
 cat will lick its kittens ! " she had said, but what cat cares 
 for the Tom who fathers them? Had humanity gone no 
 further than that ? Perhaps she held herself a trifle superior 
 in preferring Eldred to all extended affections, and at least 
 had given fewer hostages to fortune than Mrs. Carr, shivering 
 now at the thought of parting with her boy and what the 
 world might make of him. 
 
 There was a portrait of Eldred on the mantelshelf, taken 
 in his schooldays, and long before she met him Eldred in 
 a turned-down collar, with the quick intelligence of his face 
 only in embryo and the sweet firm mouth so pretty that a 
 woman longed to kiss him. Fate Leroy leaned her elbows 
 on the mantelshelf and her chin in her hands and looked 
 with grave grey eyes at the child face she had not known 
 in the father, and would not know in the son. A dear laddie, 
 so ready for life and so full of vitality even then ! Just 
 Eldred, even now. Well, she would not part with Eldred's 
 present for the sake of Eldred's past, or even the hope of 
 another Eldred in the future. 
 
 " And then he would be sure to have my nose," said Fate, 
 half aloud, and wrinkling up the offending member distaste- 
 fully. " And it is bad enough in me it would be so hateful 
 in a man! If I could choose its features well, perhaps 
 then, yes! But I should be dreadfully particular over my
 
 158 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 baby! If I didn't like it I should want to send it back- 
 after all one sends other property back to the place from 
 which one ordered it, if it is wrong. Let me see, Eldred's 
 mouth such a beautiful mouth ! " (She glanced at the boy's 
 face in the picture.) "And Eldred's nose before all things. 
 But my height and build, I think, because all my men folk 
 are tall. Eldred's hair and my eyes no, Eldred's eyes, 
 because I can't bear to part with them. I always like blue 
 eyes better than grey. And Eldred's voice to sing with- 
 why ! it is all Eldred ! " 
 
 A clock somewhere in the house struck six. 
 " It would be sure to be like me, and I should hate it ! " 
 said Mrs. Leroy, turning away from the mantelshelf and 
 the contemplation of a dream child together. "Things are 
 much better as they are just he and I together. We are 
 quite content ! " She strolled to the open window and leaned 
 out to the warm dying day. " I think he is rather late, and 
 he might have made more haste home to his Babs ! There 
 will be no time to talk before dinner." 
 
 Down the road, under the arching trees, she caught a 
 sound of approaching feet. It was not the single step she 
 waited for, but the approach of several people, two or three 
 men walking abreast she thought, for the pace was deliberate 
 and heavy, as if they kept step. She waited she hardly 
 knew for what just to see them come into view perhaps, and 
 satisfy a vague curiosity as to why they marched so slowly 
 together. Her eyes, idly resting on the first break in the 
 green where they must appear, saw three small boys half 
 running, half pausing to look back over their shoulders, then 
 a woman hurrying side by side with a man, but looking back 
 also. Then there was something coming! She knew the 
 incompatible units that form a Suburban crowd, and was not 
 surprised to see a well-dressed man pacing next, walking 
 indeed on the footpath; but, hardly glancing at him, her 
 eyes rested, with the anxiety that even an alien interest will 
 bring if delayed, upon the real centre of this passing ex- 
 citement. It came into view almost before she knew it 
 was there, a litter borne by three or four men, with a 
 muffled shrouded object lying on it, and which, turning aside 
 without warning or premonition, came in at her own 
 
 gate 
 
 T.he shock of such a thing .at any moment &$ ordinary
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 159 
 
 peaceful day, the crash and jar of accident or death or pain 
 coming suddenly upon her easy level existence, had hardly 
 time to make itself felt in her before she was out of her 
 room and running swiftly down the stairs. Her brain was 
 numbed with horror and fear, but it did not seem to affect 
 her mechanical motion. Her feet, indeed, acted without 
 guidance on her part. Whatever this was that was coming 
 to her, she must go to meet it. Stranger or friend, she tore 
 down the staircase and across the hall to him, thrusting 
 aside a startled servant who had appeared at the same 
 minute, with a flying order as she passed. 
 " Run across the road and fetch Mr. Murray." 
 It seemed a mechanical order also, for she had not paused 
 to think that the surgeon living opposite was not their own 
 doctor, she only knew that he was nearest, and there might 
 be no medical aid amongst the loose, advancing crowd. She 
 met the procession half way up the little drive, and was 
 stopped by the gentleman a stranger whom she had seen 
 from her window walking on the footpath. 
 
 " He is not dead ! we do not know what injuries 
 
 yet " 
 
 The tone of intended assurance told her what even her 
 heart had not permitted itself to fear. With a sudden rush 
 of calmness all over her that braced her limbs like a douche 
 of cold water, she turned and fell into walking pace by the 
 side of the improvised litter, laying one small white hand 
 on it gently, as if it brought her nearer to that unconscious, 
 unresponsive form. The only thing she seemed to realise 
 as she looked with shrinking at the set, bloodless face, was 
 that Eldred was very far away; he looked as he would look 
 when dead, and she flinched at her own loneliness. 
 
 Inside the house she was conscious again of a working 
 brain that would give orders. She learned the outlines of 
 the disaster and knew all that they knew a runaway horse, 
 an accident that overturned the bicycle and crushed the 
 rider how badly they could not tell. It had all happened 
 not half a mile away, on the Sunnington Road, and a passing 
 tradesman had recognised him and told the crowd that 
 gathered, and so they had brought him home. The unknown 
 man whom she unconsciously appealed to as of her own 
 class, went and dispersed the stragglers lingering at the gate, 
 and feed the men who had carried the litter. When he
 
 160 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 came back the surgeon was with him, and they made a 
 hurried examination. 
 
 "Take him upstairs," the doctor said quietly. "It can 
 do no harm, and it will be easier to nurse him should we 
 have to operate. If he recovers it may be a long busi- 
 ness." 
 
 So they carried him up, to the pretty airy room where 
 half an hour before Fate Leroy had been musing before the 
 boyish photograph on the mantelpiece, and laid him on the 
 bed, a. helpless broken thing that might die now unconscious 
 of the world moving around him, or might crawl back to 
 life again. 
 
 " I cannot tell you if he will get over it there is injury 
 to the head, and I think there may be cerebral haemorrhage 
 under the skull," said Mr. Murray, standing before the wife 
 of the man who was so far away from them all. He knew 
 Mrs. Leroy by sight with the admiration that all the Suburb 
 gave her, but he had never spoken to her face to face before. 
 She seemed to him a singularly tall fair woman at close 
 quarters, with a well-poised head, and a soft womanly face 
 by no means broken by tears. She had waited with perfect 
 self-control and patience for his examination and report, as 
 if there were no time to think of herself as yet, but he answered 
 the grey eyes facing him rather than the fine red lips. 
 
 " I do not know if he will get over it he may. I must 
 tell you that he may die during the night, or he may linger 
 and recover. There are no internal complications as far as 
 I can ascertain." 
 
 " It is the injury to his head you fear ? " 
 
 "Yes. He has, I think, ruptured a blood vessel. He 
 was probably not so utterly unconscious at first as he is now, 
 and he may become completely comatose. In that case it 
 might be necessary to operate." 
 
 "Will you send me a nurse?" said Fate composedly. 
 
 " I will send you a male nurse it is a greater expense, 
 but no woman can move him as I wish him moved. I am 
 going now to telegraph to an Institution known to me. I 
 shall come back in half an hour. Can I send a wire for 
 you ? " 
 
 " Yes. I ought to let his people know," said Fate, stand- 
 ing on one side of the bed and looking down on the helpless 
 absent face. How far away he was ! The doctor's statement
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 161 
 
 that he might sink more and more into unconsciousness 
 seemed to strike a knell in her heart all the rest of his 
 diagnosis was not so terrible as that. She took the pocket- 
 book he offered her without moving away from the bed, 
 and wrote her message, and when he was gone she sat down 
 quietly and began her watch, only moving from the bedside 
 to do some office in the sick room. 
 
 It did not seem to her long before the surgeon was back, 
 and yet she had had time to review her whole life, past, 
 present and to come, and to analyse her emotions, it seemed 
 to her, with a dull curiosity. 
 
 " This is one of the things you always said to yourself that 
 you could not bear," she reminded her inner consciousness. 
 " You have never even tried to imagine anything happening 
 to you apart from Eldred, because you thought you could 
 not face it. Yet here it is, happening, and it is quite bear- 
 able. You are not breaking down you are not dying of 
 the mental pain, yourself. You know that you will face it, 
 and go on, even perhaps beyond it .... only life would 
 never be the same again, if this ended like that." She 
 glanced at the absent face on the pillow, the body from which 
 all consciousness of her had fled. At the present moment 
 he was as dead to her as if she had heard the mould fall on 
 his coffin. Only he still breathed, and was warm, and not 
 irrevocably out of reach. "Is that why I am so unmoved?" 
 she thought half desperately, frightened at her own calmness. 
 " Or am I a person who has no very deep feelings? I have 
 heard of people dying of grief of women who said that there 
 were things they could not face. I can face this because I 
 have done so, it seems. Perhaps if he were really dead I 
 
 should realise it more " 
 
 One of Eldred's hands was lying beside her, palm upwards, 
 on the cool white sheet, the fingers half closed, as he had 
 a trick of keeping them even when at rest ; it seemed as if 
 his hands would not lie quite straight like other people's, 
 perhaps from all the rowing and sculling and rough work 
 that he had done of choice on board ship. Fingers used to 
 gripping hemp and wood gain a stiff facility to close rather 
 than open. Before his marriage Eldred had always spent 
 his holidays boating. She slipped her own small hand into 
 his with a desire to feel him nearer and less oblivious. The 
 fingers lay under her own, unresponsive, but for the moment 
 
 II
 
 162 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 it comforted her that she still had him, and could touch 
 him. 
 
 By and by the surgeon returned, and told her what he 
 had done. The nurse would come down at once, he said, 
 and if she found she wanted another he could come the next 
 day. It was then eight o'clock. He himself would return 
 before midnight, unless she sent for him earlier. There was 
 nothing more to do but watch, and follow his directions. 
 No alteration was likely to take place at present. Would 
 Mrs. Leroy like another opinion? 
 
 "Did he advise it?" Fate said thoughtfully, the habit of 
 limiting their expenditure even then holding her in check. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then please send for whoever you think best. Our own 
 doctor is Dr. Hare." 
 
 " I will go round and see him to-night he will know your 
 husband's constitution better than anyone. And I will tele- 
 graph for the best man I know of in London." 
 
 Something in the reassuring energy of the man, and his 
 simple, untiring work in her service, reached Fate as nothing 
 else had done as yet. She drew her breath for a minute 
 before she answered. 
 
 " If you will watch by the bed for a minute I want to give 
 the servants a few orders. I shall only go to the door." 
 
 He nodded and took her vacant place, while she told the 
 housemaid to cut her a plate of sandwiches and to bring 
 them up to her as soon as possible. She wanted nothing 
 else, but she would have some coffee. For the rest, the 
 dinner-table was to be cleared, and the house shut up as 
 usual. They need not sit up. 
 
 " If you want me, ma'am, I sleep lighter than cook or 
 Reynolds," said the housemaid jealously. 
 
 " Thank you, Alice, I will call you if I do. You had 
 better sleep in the spare room and leave the door open." 
 
 The girl departed, satisfied that she was to be only across 
 the passage, and Fate went back to the bedside, marvelling 
 a little. She had hardly realised the devotion of her own 
 servants; it touched her as the doctor's kindness had done. 
 She sat down in her former place, releasing Mr. Murray, and 
 turned her grave eyes upon her husband, and the surgeon 
 left her there, a vision of an utterly quiescent figure, a fair 
 face, the brown hair brushed cleanly back from the brows,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 163 
 
 but so softly that it rose with a little spring from her head, 
 and two grey eyes absorbed in the man who was not con- 
 scious of her. She was so young a woman, and so goodly 
 to look at, that her utter silence and the patience of her 
 attitude impressed him as rather awful. 
 
 She sat there for hour after hour, her hands on her knee, 
 her watch never broken save to fulfil the doctor's orders. 
 At half-past eleven the male nurse arrived, looked at the 
 patient, and had a short conversation with Mrs. Leroy. It 
 all seemed so quiet and orderly that she hardly felt any 
 strain. Should he relieve her now, he said? No? Then 
 he would just wait up and see Mr. Murray, and then go to 
 bed. He would come in to her at eight, and she must get 
 some rest. She thanked him, told the housemaid to show 
 him his room and attend to him, and sat down by the bed 
 again. 
 
 By and by all sounds in the house ceased, and the weight 
 of the night seemed a material thing laid upon her in the 
 element of the silence. A passing footstep in the road, or 
 a clock striking in the house, were all that punctuated her 
 vigil. She sat by the bedside, her stedfast grey eyes resting 
 on that unresponsive face that was her husband's that had 
 been his some hours ago, as she knew it and it seemed a 
 terrible thing to her to be young. The loneliness was the 
 only sense of pain that reached her as yet, and this might 
 go on for so many, many years if he died. She could 
 hardly picture him as alive now, seeing his face upon the 
 pillow, its intelligence closed to her, the soul as absent as 
 if the thing that appalled her simply from its desolation had 
 really happened. She realised then how secondary a place 
 the material side of life had had in her love for him, because 
 though she still tended and treasured his breathing body it 
 was but as the home of the soul that had seemed to belong 
 to her. Mind in mind, heart in heart, they had been locked 
 closer every day, until they seemed as indissoluble as her 
 own brain from her physical being. No least thing in her 
 daily life had been more trivial to Eldred than to her, in so 
 far as it had affected her. She had told him albeit laugh- 
 ingly of her troubles with the sweep, and had made 
 domestic difficulties a little diverting tale for his ears, to dis- 
 tract him from the routine of office and city. In return she 
 had drawn the ethics of the day from him, and they had 
 
 II*
 
 164 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 discussed the individualities that formed his business life as 
 much as those of their own social world. They had always 
 been together, even through the hours that elapsed until they 
 met on the platform, and still nearer to each other inside the 
 hall door when they kissed as fondly as in the first moments 
 of their avowal of love for each other. There is no intimacy 
 so intricate and inconceivable to the world at large as that 
 of a marriage of choice, confirmed by experience. It was 
 nothing to Fate that Eldred's fingers did not close upon her 
 own inserted in them, save that it told her of the non-recog- 
 nition also in his mind. She could bear to forego his kisses, 
 but not the look in his eyes as they rested on her. The 
 one meant what any man might have given her, and was of 
 value only as a woman chose to accept it ; the other meant 
 Eldred. 
 
 She did not tire of her mental vigil, but her body drooped 
 and ached for sleep as the long Summer night dragged 
 towards the dawn. Between two and three in the morning, 
 when life is lowest, she felt as if her face grew haggard with 
 the strain, and her eyes yearned to the window for the first 
 hint of dawn in the sky. With a growing terror, too, born 
 of her bodily weakness, she looked for a sign in that face 
 on the pillow, knowing how many lives go out at that hour 
 to meet the morning. With her hands still clasped upon her 
 knee she waited, her red mouth pressed to one crimson line 
 like blood, while Eldred was borne further and further from 
 her on the tide of his unconsciousness. It was then that her 
 forefathers stood her in good stead, and forced the reluctant 
 flesh to bear the strain that seemed unendurable. For 
 generations this woman's ancestors had been learning to wait 
 and work and endure; they had learned the stress of life, 
 as the educated classes learn it while they still earn their right 
 of way, and the training that had made them sound men and 
 self-respecting women gave Fate Leroy her power of control 
 as she sat out that first interminable night at her husband's 
 bedside. For with every natural impulse of sex comes the 
 responsibility of the future, and the man who begets a child 
 lays upon himself the obligation of begetting a Nation. 
 While we blame our fathers rightly for our infirmities, we 
 incur the blame of unborn generations, quite as rightly, if 
 we hamper them by inheritance of our self-failure or self- 
 indulgence. Fate was a good woman, and a brave one;
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 165 
 
 but she had not only her own free will to thank, but the 
 slow and painful building of those who had come before 
 her, in whose every self-denial and concessions to common- 
 sense her own character and physique had been formed. 
 Before we praise or blame a single class, let us look to their 
 breeding. 
 
 The critical time of the night passed away, having brought 
 no change in that absent face on the pillow; the grey dawn 
 came almost imperceptibly through the blinds and brought 
 the hesitating day. When the sun rose across the road, and 
 warmed a maiden Heaven to rosy consciousness of his 
 presence, the broad light found a woman with a white tired 
 face in the old attitude by the bedside, her aching eyes rest- 
 ing on what might mean to her a broken marriage tie.
 
 i66 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " His gift is the lovable human 
 
 Flung from a reckless sky ; 
 Brute beauty flashed on the senses, 
 
 Then passed by. 
 
 For Nature has made of his manhood 
 One splendid lie ! " 
 
 Satan-face. 
 
 ' I HAVE never quite made up my mind why we go to these 
 sort of entertainments or, for that matter, to any entertain- 
 ments." 
 
 " To see our friends, perhaps," Lexiter ventured, looking 
 steadily away from Patricia to the belt of quivering electric 
 lights which were starring the trees. As he was extremely 
 uncertain how the least hint of personal attraction would be 
 received he hazarded the suggestion with his head up, Nature 
 having made it easy for him to ignore a snub by placing his 
 eyes on a higher level than those of the rest of his acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 "Who are one's friends?" said Patricia, a little wearily. 
 '' If you said one's connections it would be more appropriate." 
 
 " No, it wouldn't. No one ever went anywhere to meet a 
 connection who was a connection and nothing more." 
 
 "Well, no one was ever entertained at an entertainment, 
 either." 
 
 " I am sorry I am failing so lamentably," said Caryl with 
 his spontaneous laugh, and Patricia laughed also, but more in 
 enjoyment of the pleasant ring of it than of his mild irony. 
 
 " That is the worst of being a connection," she said. " You 
 see I am not even civil to you ! " 
 
 u Heaven forbid ! " he said fervently. " I should suspect
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 167 
 
 you of hating me, and that is a consummation devoutly not 
 to be wished ! " 
 
 Patricia turned her head rather quickly and looked at him. 
 His voice had dropped a little, and she distrusted lowered 
 voices ; they generally meant a desperate attempt to advance 
 in intimacy, and she had already refused three men whose 
 card debts were larger than their prudence. She did not 
 want another such interruption to a pleasant intercourse, in 
 this case. But Lexiter's face was bent rather thoughtfully 
 over the cigarette between his fingers, and his eyes declined 
 to betray him. Patricia looked in vain, but having looked 
 she became aware of the fact that evening dress is peculiarly 
 becoming to a certain type of man. Caryl's physical advan- 
 tages had never been more patent to her mind than now as 
 he strolled by her side under the trees, bareheaded, for the 
 night was warm. Other men wore their hats because it was 
 more conventional, and few Englishmen care to court remark 
 from their fellows unless they are of an artistic type whose 
 pose is half their profession, or else are so absolutely sure of 
 themselves that the opinion of others does not count. Lexiter 
 belonged to the latter minority. That his thick silvery hair 
 made him all the more noticeable because he carried his hat 
 in his hand did not trouble him at all. He did not do it for 
 the sake of attracting attention, so much as from a perverse 
 feeling that he would behave as he pleased. 
 
 "I suppose the real explanation of my presence here is 
 that my father is a member of the Botanic Society," he 
 said candidly. " Most of the residents in Portland Place are. 
 The tickets for the Fete were there, and it struck me that it 
 would be cooler than indoors. That's all." 
 
 Being reassured of the personal application of his presence, 
 Patricia very naturally challenged it. 
 
 " Dear me ! I quite thought you came to meet me ! " she 
 said. 
 
 u So I did but you seemed inclined to resent my saying 
 so!" 
 
 Then they both laughed simultaneously, and other people 
 strolling in twos and threes at a hearing distance looked a 
 trifle curiously, a trifle significantly, at the couple who were 
 seemingly so well amused with each other. 
 
 " Isn't that Mrs. Blais Heron with her Parson ? " said 
 Lexiter with quickened interest as they sauntered a little out
 
 1 68 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 of the beaten throng towards the lake. Two dark figures 
 were ahead of them, vanishing in the direction of the bridge, 
 and he strained his tall head up to see. " I am sure I recognise 
 her back I am growing used to seeing it disappear from me 
 down a green vista of trees. She seems to find that a reli- 
 gious flirtation is best staged by Nature ! " An amused re- 
 miniscence flitted across his handsome face. He remembered 
 those same figures in a green walk in Battersea Park 
 
 " I daresay it is," said Patricia indifferently. " I wish 
 Editha did not try to justify her flirtations to me. She has 
 been explaining the various men who follow in her train, 
 until I am a little bewildered. When it was Captain Blais 
 (that was in March), she excused her frivolities by saying that 
 a married woman in Society was bound to appear successful 
 for her husband's sake ! And now that it is a clergyman 
 (he appeared as late as June), she says that she has begun to 
 think more seriously of life, and they have such nice talks." 
 
 " Yes," chimed in Lexiter, " and when it was old Lord 
 Ragby (that was a passing phase of April), she said that 
 though she might appear frivolous, she was really using her 
 influence to improve the tone of her circle, and him in par- 
 ticular ! The worst of it is she always uses the phase belong- 
 ing to the last man, and adapts it to the new comer!" 
 
 " Her liking for them appears to be a pretty patchwork of 
 old affections ! " said Patricia, trying to keep the contempt 
 out of her voice. " If you really think that that lady is 
 Editha, would you mind coming in the opposite direction ? " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I have no particular desire to meet her with with that 
 man. Have you ? " 
 
 " I think it would be rather amusing ! " 
 
 " How idle you are, Caryl ! " Patricia said in slow wonder- 
 ment. " How can it interest you to make such a woman as 
 Editha Blais Heron a little conscious for the moment? It is 
 only mischief, I know, but it is so pointless, even as mischief, 
 I think I could forgive you better if you were absolutely 
 spiteful. There is generally a settled purpose in spite." 
 
 Lexiter looked a little nonplussed ; he frequently found it 
 an effort to understand Patricia exactly, and he was not at all 
 sure that he enjoyed it when he did so. She did not scold 
 him he was used to being scolded by women, it was a form 
 of their claims to him but she really appeared to wonder
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 169 
 
 at him, and not always with admiration. He did what his 
 instinct prompted him to do, and skilfully turned an un- 
 propitious opening to account. 
 
 " It is kind of you to be interested in me, anyhow, Nougat," 
 he said with a simple good humour that disarmed her. " I 
 would rather you objected to my idleness than that you did 
 not care whether I were better employed or no ! " 
 
 Patricia turned a trifle abruptly and began to retrace her 
 steps to the more populated part of the Gardens. There 
 was no doubt about the personality this time. A vague pos- 
 sibility that had crossed her mind before began to assume 
 definite shape, and took the form of a question that she might 
 have to ask herself. She was not ready for it yet, however, 
 and rather resented its lack of repugnance to her mind. 
 
 " Have you seen Chiffon lately ? " she said with obvious 
 irrelevance. " She was to have lunched with me yesterday, 
 but she sent me a note at the eleventh hour to say that she 
 had to see a dressmaker or some importance of that sort. 
 I rather hoped she would be here to-night." 
 
 " Bobby told me they were not coming," said Lexiter easily, 
 skirting a lie with the same skeleton principle that made him 
 go to church. " I met him at TattersalPs." 
 
 " Do you know, I am amusingly ignorant, but I positively 
 do not know where that is ! I think no one can realise but 
 myself the lack of my knowledge of London. I am only just 
 learning not to lose myself when I go afoot." 
 
 " Tattersall's is at Knightsbridge. Bobby was buying some 
 gees for his place in the country, and I was helping him," 
 said Caryl airily. " He got a pretty little cob I should have 
 liked myself; it was cheap, too." 
 
 "I suppose it is for Chiffon to ride? I like cobs for 
 ladies, particularly in the country," said Patricia unexpectedly. 
 " I rather envy you at your unknown Tattersall's. The only 
 things I find really interesting in London seem to be the things 
 usually consigned to men ! " 
 
 " Another surprise ! " said Lexiter with lifted brows. 
 " Why ? Are you so fond of horses ? " 
 
 " It must be in my blood, I think," said Patricia a trifle 
 apologetically. " My mother comes of a racing house, but 
 she does not care for horseflesh one half as much as I do. 
 Possibly, if I could go far enough into my father's ancestry I 
 should find that one of them had been a horse-breaker."
 
 1 70 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Caryl laughed again, but he looked as if he were being 
 pleased as well as amused. " I will tell you what we will do," 
 he said. " We will go for a ride together if you like, and you 
 shall try a little mare of mine or rather of my brother's. He 
 has lent her to me while I am in town, with the understanding 
 that I shall try to sell her at the end of the season. She 
 Is hardly up to my weight, but she might suit you. Would 
 you like to judge for yourself? Or, perhaps you do not want 
 another horse ? " 
 
 " I perceive by a certain dryness in your tone that you do 
 not think much of my probable capabilities of judgment ! 
 Nevertheless I accept your offer, and if I like the mare I will 
 buy her. I have ridden both my mother's horses and those 
 kept for my own use, but I am not yet satisfied." 
 
 " I detest riding in town as a rule," said Caryl carelessly. 
 " But I would have endured even the Row if I had known 
 you were there. How one misses one's opportunities ! It 
 never occurred to me that I should find anything there worth 
 the getting up to see ! " 
 
 " It does not say much for your power of discovering 
 people's tastes that you have known me three or four months 
 and have never found out that I could ride until now ! " said 
 Patricia drily. " I did not think to tell you because I have 
 never seen you on horseback at all." 
 
 "And now it is the end of the season my father is going 
 down to Queensleigh next week," said Lexiter with genuine 
 regret. " I suppose your plans are made also ? " 
 
 " My mother's are, I believe," said Nougat with her usual 
 serenity in mentioning Lady Vera's life as separate from her 
 own. " I am hovering between Rye and an invitation to 
 stay with Chiffon." 
 
 "Rye! Do you mean Rye in Sussex? What on 
 earth " 
 
 " We have a house there," said Patricia inclusively. " My 
 father often goes down for golf. There are very good links." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Lexiter, with a half curious glance at her. 
 The house at Rye had slipped his memory as much as Mr. 
 Mornington himself was wont to do. He wondered how 
 Lady Vera would take this suggestion of Nougat's ! He felt 
 nearly certain that it had not reached her wildest imagination 
 as yet. But the composed strength of Patricia's face as she 
 strolled beside him made him draw his breath rather deeply.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 171 
 
 He knew enough of physiognomy to realise that one had to 
 reckon with such a mouth and chin as that, with the wide 
 brows and powerful brown eyes with the whole face that had 
 no single undeniable weakness. What would Lady Vera 
 say? What, more wonderful still, would Giles Mornington 
 say himself to Nougat's hopelessly rational suggestion that 
 she should go to Rye ? He remembered now that the finan- 
 cier had an unobtrusive habit of fading out of the house in 
 Piccadilly, to reappear in reference only as being at Rye 
 playing golf. The house was apparently of sufficient im- 
 portance to be called a " place." It was in any case the only 
 landed property with which Giles Mornington had ever bur- 
 dened himself. But if he had visitors they were all of the 
 male sex. Lady Vera and her noisy house-parties had never 
 gone to Rye, he felt sure, for the very adequate reason that 
 at some time or other at least he would have been amongst 
 them. 
 
 " Either of those alternatives will, I am afraid, place you 
 out of my reach," he said frankly. " For I am not going to 
 the Harbinger's that I know of, and I suppose you will not 
 ask your father to invite me to Rye?" 
 
 She smiled a little teasingly. " I am not invited myself, 
 yet ! Never mind, there is still a ride left you. When am I 
 to try the mare ? " 
 
 "To-morrow morning, if you like. She is quite at your 
 disposal. Shall I call for you about eleven? " 
 
 "Yes. I do not know that I am supposed to be doing 
 anything else," said Nougat musingly. " There is my mother, 
 talking to Lord Lowndes by the tent, and, do you know, I 
 think she looks as if she wanted to leave ? I can always tell 
 when people are waiting for me without any patience for my 
 dallying, can't you ? " 
 
 " From this distance I can see nothing but a fiery glare 
 that blinds me. How like the old dragons of the fairy 
 stories those gowns do make women look, don't they? 
 Lady Vera might be on fire." 
 
 Even as he said the words, lightly enough, it struck him 
 that it was a suggestive prophecy for Lady Vera, if her sins 
 were to be rewarded in the orthodox way from a religious 
 point of view. He almost wished he had not said it; but 
 Patricia did not answer she was making steady progress 
 towards her mother through the crowd, and paused at her
 
 172 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 elbow with patient courtesy for some seconds before Lady 
 Vera chose to acknowledge her. 
 
 " How awfully killing ! " she was saying, with the metallic 
 laugh that hurt a sensitive ear as it struck with something 
 material. " I shall tell Ernie. He used to admire her 
 awfully last year, but I think he has gone after the St. James 
 woman now." 
 
 " Well, Mrs. St. James is a great improvement on Lady 
 Haversham." 
 
 Lady Vera shrieked with laughter again. " Fancy her 
 taking to opium though! Lionel Captain Blais tells me 
 you have the most devy sensations ! I have almost a mind 
 to try it." 
 
 " Because you have tried everything else ! " commented 
 Lord Lowndes. " Anything for a new experience, I sup- 
 pose." 
 
 " Of course," Patricia chimed in quietly, without waiting 
 longer to be recognised. "That is why we are so fond of 
 the Switchback Railway, in reality. It takes our breath 
 away and it is so few things that will do that nowadays." 
 
 " I am under command to find your carriage," said Lord 
 Lowndes as they shook hands. " Lady Vera says she has 
 had enough of this, at all events." 
 
 " Yes. Really, Nougat, we must go. Beastly dull, isn't 
 it, Car? That tent was a good old frowst ! Editha said she 
 was choked with the smell of humanity there." 
 
 " She was still trying humanity, however, in the open air, 
 when we saw her ! " said Caryl cynically. " But to be just to 
 her she was proving her preference for it singly to taken in 
 the lump." He took the cloak that was slipping from 
 Patricia's shoulders and threw it round her again. As he 
 did so his fingers just brushed her throat, but so lightly that 
 it would not have ruffled the down on a butterfly's wing, and 
 left her wondering, after that first indignant bound of her 
 heart, if it had been accident. 
 
 " To-morrow then, at eleven? " he said. 
 
 Her grave eyes looked up straight into the audacity of his, 
 and found him laughing. But she did not laugh also, though 
 almost any other woman must have done so he judged, and 
 left him with a slight bow which pledged her to nothing. 
 
 " Having done it, it was best to laugh ! " said Caryl as he 
 strolled away amongst the lessening crowd, looking for his
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 173 
 
 acquaintance, and followed by questioning or admiring 
 glances " Who's the man without a hat ? " " One of Lord 
 Queensleigh's sons ! " " I wonder if I made a mistake ? " he 
 mused. " Nougat is just enough of a prude to grow tiresome. 
 I hope it won't upset our arrangement to ride. Well, we shall 
 see to-morrow." 
 
 He joined a group he knew, by no means disturbed at the 
 risk of offending a woman though it happened to be Patricia, 
 and made himself as charming as it was worth his while. 
 Lexiter was naturally social, but he had found that a very 
 little amiability in his own case did as well as a great deal in 
 others. When he did choose to exert himself he was very 
 nearly irresistible to a certain type of woman. 
 
 Patricia leaned back in her corner of the brougham when 
 they drove away, as nearly silent as politeness allowed. She 
 interpolated a " yes " or " no " into the disjointed stream of 
 Lady Vera's jerky small talk, but her thoughts strayed away 
 and disquieted her. It had been a shock to find that any 
 man even Caryl Lexiter should dare to touch her without 
 her own permission ; it was a greater shock to find that she 
 did not much mind after all. Did she like him so much, or 
 was it that it hardly seemed worth while to be angry ? for she 
 had always taken Caryl with a certain tolerance, as of the 
 Gawain type : 
 
 " Light was Gawain in life, and light in death ! " ^ ' 
 
 It would be making him of too much importance to be 
 angry with most of his graceful insolences. Or was it that 
 she was getting careless, and taking the tone of the women 
 round her, whose flesh, it seemed, was free of touch to men's 
 fingers? She lifted her lovely head with a sense of distaste, 
 and stared with hardening eyes out at Regent Street, flashing 
 by as they bowled down to Piccadilly. No, Lady Helen's 
 tenets were too firmly ingrained in her for that. 
 
 She came back to the supposition that she liked him too 
 well to mind, and faced the problem that lay behind it. 
 Should she marry Caryl Lexiter, and so buy her escape from 
 a life that she was beginning to find intolerable ? For as a 
 married woman she could at least pick and choose without 
 question ; she could go her own way without the sense of 
 battle in the air which threatened her at each fresh step to-
 
 174 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 wards independence. She knew, too proudly to ask herself 
 why, that at least Lady Vera would put no bar in the way of 
 her marrying Caryl, though she might have looked to make 
 a far more brilliant match. As to the man himself, Patricia 
 acknowledged that she liked him, even without analysing her 
 sensations too closely. Most women did like Caryl Lexiter, 
 in spite of his faults. He was one of those men who is bound 
 to live out his life through a series of broken hearts that had 
 begun with his mother's, and would end God knew where. 
 But Patricia was not a girl to ask too much, even of mar- 
 riage. She had become sufficiently disillusioned, even after 
 five months in the house in Piccadilly, to think that mutual 
 consideration, and actual liking, were as much as one might 
 insist upon from fortune. There was another household at 
 Sunnington of which she would not think just now, and she 
 thrust it aside as an ideal beyond most women's hope. It 
 was because she did not want to contrast it with her own 
 possible future that she had not been to see Fate Leroy for 
 a longer period than usual, and had no intention of going at 
 present. She wanted to make up her mind without disturb- 
 ance, if she were really going to consider the possibility of 
 marrying Caryl Lexiter, for that he would eventually ask her 
 to do so she had no doubt in her inmost heart. Somewhat 
 pitifully she would not face herself too closely with his 
 motives; they liked each other, they were excellent friends 
 and fairly good companions, and she could at least promise 
 herself that his manners would never offend her in public. 
 As to their private intercourse, money at least places a woman 
 in a position to withdraw into her own personal sphere and 
 exclude even her husband if she pleases. After marriage 
 they would no doubt go their own way to a certain extent; 
 but Patricia meant to keep the outward decency of a good 
 understanding with him. He would stray away from her of 
 course, but not very far, and with the unconscious conceit of 
 a beautiful woman who has proved her own charm she thought 
 that she could easily whistle him back did she choose. She 
 had never yet known Caryl well enough, however, to recog- 
 nise the far limits of his straying capacities. 
 
 It was in her mind to refuse the riding expedition that 
 night, but after all she changed her mind next morning, and 
 went, rinding no further advance to alarm her in his usual 
 debonair manner. Caryl was in truth secretly surprised
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 175 
 
 that he escaped with no worse snub for the last night's 
 venture, and if she chose to ignore it he would reward her 
 with a more scrupulous attention to the conventionalities. He 
 looked well on horseback because he was perfectly at his 
 ease, and a sense of exhilaration and comradeship quickened 
 Patricia's splendid vitality with the rush of the flying hoofs 
 as they rode side by side. Caryl and the little black mare had 
 arrived before the time he had appointed, if anything, and 
 they pushed for it to get down to Richmond and try a canter in 
 the Park. The air felt fresher than it had done in Piccadilly, 
 and the blood beat joyously in her veins with the first increase 
 of speed in the mare's stride. Through the flicker of sun 
 and shadow her companion seemed to her to swing along 
 naturally at her side, as though some mental affinity were 
 suggested by the physical movement. Stride by stride, neck 
 by neck, the big grey horse and the black mare kept easily 
 abreast of each other, while through the brilliant morning the 
 familiar, handsome face beside her seemed to Patricia a very 
 possible one to have always in her life. 
 
 " Take care ! " said Lexiter warningly. " Hold her in she 
 gets away with you sometimes." 
 
 " I feel almost too much in sympathy with her to object ! " 
 said Patricia, with a laugh in her voice born of the 
 triumphant speed. " I should like to run away myself, this 
 morning ! " 
 
 He laughed also, but he took no advantage of the reckless- 
 ness of her speech. He was too wise to risk checking this 
 unusual mood of hers, but his quiet glance rested on her for 
 a moment comprehensively the rich beauty of her quickened 
 face, and the perfect balance of the lovely figure. Truly, 
 some ancestral blood must have made horseback an instinct 
 with Patricia, that it should stir her like this ! She was 
 happy, in love with her mount, body and brain alike enjoying 
 the exercise. When he asked her if she would care to be the 
 permanent owner of Asti, she was jealously eager, and 
 would have concluded the bargain then and there. The very 
 frankness with which he told her that it was to his interest to 
 sell the mare for his brother, Lord Loftus, gave her a more 
 generous liking for him, and she would have paid a fancy 
 price had he been unscrupulous enough to ask for it. She was 
 more absorbed in her new purchase than Caryl had expected 
 to be possible, and he saw and promptly sei/ed the tie of a
 
 1 76 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 new sympathy between them. He was not allowing her to 
 cheat herself, for he was a real judge of horses, and over the 
 luncheon table at Piccadilly they became more intimately 
 acquainted than they had been up till now. Asti, the black 
 mare, was an unexpected straw to turn the scale, but she 
 seemed a revelation of possibilities to Patricia. 
 
 " We should have mutual tastes, and one thing in common 
 at least," she told herself, looking across the round table at 
 Caryl with a resentful start to think that she might do so in 
 their own house. His fresh face with its good looks struck 
 her as a familiar thing that might belong to her, almost it 
 seemed without her willing it to be so. It was seldom that 
 circumstances seemed too strong for Patricia, in comparison 
 to her own right of action, but she realised that she was drift- 
 ing to a great event in her life, which made her present sur- 
 roundings the more superficial by contrast. To recognise 
 her future husband across the delicate roses and forced 
 peaches on the luncheon-table, struck her as a mockery. The 
 exaltation of the ride had decreased a little, and she was only 
 reluctant to face actual destiny. 
 
 " I wonder what has happened to the Harbutts ? " said Lady 
 Vera at the moment, snatching pickled lobster into her mouth 
 with a fork and a gobble. The table-manners of the Blais 
 were as frankly natural as those of Soho. " I haven't seen 
 Emma since she was here the other day. She looked 
 wretchedly ill then so does Windersley." 
 
 " Where did you see him ? " asked Lexiter with the keen 
 look in his eyes that gossip of his acquaintance always woke 
 in them. It seemed to Patricia that he was more interested 
 in trivialities with regard to soiled men and women than any- 
 thing else, and her heart sank. 
 
 " On Saturday, in Norfolk. We did the hundred and 
 eleven miles in five hours and a quarter, never stopping a 
 second. What do you think of that ? " 
 " Whose car ? Not yours ! " 
 
 " No, Mr. Carberry's. He turned us all out at a little inn 
 where we could get nothing but eggs and bacon a regular 
 pothouse of a place. And there was Windersley in the tap- 
 room, drinking vile beer. We simply shrieked. He looks 
 frightfully fed up with the whole business though. I didn't 
 mention Emma, of course. If you are doing nothing this 
 afternoon, Nougat, we might go and see her."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 177 
 
 "I am going out of town this afternoon into the wilder- 
 ness ! " said Patricia with faint but polite irony. The decision 
 was so sudden that it seemed to form itself in her mind even 
 while she spoke, but she knew that she was going to see Fate 
 and ease her mind of its threatened decision, behind which 
 lurked the good-looking face opposite. Should she? .... 
 
 Should she not ? Perhaps Fate's habit of analytical 
 
 talk, even when the subject was personally unknown to her, 
 might help her. " I am going to Sunnington," she said in a 
 final tone that admitted no argument. 
 
 Lady Vera shrugged her shoulders. "At least you will 
 have some fresh air!" she said with unwonted civility. 
 "What are you doing, Car?" 
 
 " Nothing, if Nougat deserts me." 
 
 "Come along, then I'll take you to see Emma Harbutt, 
 and we'll probe the situation ! " 
 
 " Poor Lady Harbutt ! " said Patricia in her kindly heart. 
 One of the most extraordinary and degrading things in the 
 lives of the people round her, to her mind, was the ease with 
 which they appeared to regard and discuss immorality. It 
 seemed almost a childish curiosity, utterly out of proportion to 
 what she had been trained to regard as at least a tragedy, and 
 almost as a crime. Lady Vera was taking Caryl Lexiter to call 
 on Lady Harbutt with an artificial sympathy that had not in 
 it even that excuse, in reality ; what she really wished was to 
 discover how far the trouble had gone, and whether Sir 
 Richard had made a commotion, and if there were going to 
 be a scandal. And Caryl was going because it interested 
 him for the same reason. The last of the riding exaltation 
 died away. Patricia felt utterly discouraged. 
 
 " He can't turn her out of the house he has much 
 too much love of the family dignity ! " Patricia heard her 
 mother say confidentially to Caryl as they all gathered 
 in the hall together. " Besides, there is his name to con- 
 sider!" 
 
 It all seemed to Patricia hopelessly ill-bred even the piti- 
 ful clinging to respectability expressed in the husband's care 
 of his " name " above his honour. Poor fetish of the Aristo- 
 cracy the last remnants of self-respect left them ! Now- 
 adays, it seemed, a man was less solicitous of his wife's 
 fidelity than of the world's cognisance of it. So long as his 
 " Name " was not openly a printed scoff, she might bring what 
 
 12
 
 178 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 bastard blood she pleased to sully his race, and these things 
 were always guessed, though they did not get into print. 
 
 " If I were a man," said Patricia with the slow conviction 
 of her nature, " I would face the publicity and the scandal 
 but not the canker in my own home. No woman should 
 calculate on my slavery to outward decency in order to foul 
 her marriage tie. As long as women of what is called the 
 Upper Class know that they can make their husbands a con- 
 venience to their lovers, because of the family pride, just so 
 long they will risk facing the Divorce Court knowing that it 
 will not come to that. Yes, I am of the Middle Class. I 
 show it most plainly in this I " 
 
 She clenched her long delicate hands, and unconsciously 
 denied her assertion by every racial line of her indignant 
 body. The thought of Lady Harbutt and her fettered hus- 
 band kept her company the whole way to the familiar suburb, 
 down the long road bordered by shady trees, in at the 
 little gate, up even to the quiet door that was generally 
 open, but was now closed. Still too absorbed in her thought 
 to be more than vaguely puzzled, she rang the bell, 
 and 
 
 " Mr. Vaughan ! " she said, awakening to the surprise of 
 the encounter and the sudden suspicion of something being 
 wrong. 
 
 His quick step had sounded in the hall almost before she 
 had pulled the bell, and his spare figure faced her in the door- 
 way before she could draw her breath. " I came to see Mrs. 
 Leroy ! " she faltered in her amazement. 
 
 "I am very sorry that she can see nobody," he said, cere- 
 monious in his politeness. " Mr. Leroy had a bad accident 
 the day before yesterday -he is not expected to live ! " 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 The shocked horror of her tone told him how baldly he had 
 expressed it better than anything else could have done. He 
 felt a little impatient with her for her concern, as with an 
 outsider who had no right to hinder anyone connected with 
 Fate just now, even with enquiries. What did it matter to 
 Patricia Mornington that Eldred Leroy might be dying ? His 
 personality was as far removed from her existence as one 
 planet from another. 
 
 " It happened two days ago," he repeated, courteously 
 still, but in as concise a form of words as possible. " He
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 179 
 
 was knocked off his bicycle by a runaway horse and run over. 
 Mrs. Leroy has not left him since he may not recover." 
 
 " How dreadful ! " She spoke under her breath, as if the 
 realisation stunned her. In her mind she saw the pretty, 
 perfect home she had half dreaded to think of, as suddenly 
 desolate. " How is Mrs. Leroy ? " 
 
 " As well as anyone can expect under the circumstances," 
 he returned impatiently. It struck him as a foolish question, 
 utterly superfluous, and his irritability made him openly 
 ironical. Yet had it been one of Fate's Sunnington friends 
 who stood on the doorstep craving for news of her, he would 
 have been more merciful and kindly, almost sympathetic. 
 It was only to this triumphantly beautiful woman, aglow with 
 health and vitality, that he turned hard. The evidences of 
 her successful life which always seemed to background her, 
 filled him with a pitiful resentment for Fate, threatened with 
 the loss of her one treasure Patricia's very clothes, the motor 
 waiting her bidding at the gate, were all so many aggravations 
 of contrast. 
 
 " I am very, very sorry 1 " she said simply, and then feeling 
 the antagonism of his attitude, her own spontaneous kindness 
 froze in his presence. " I suppose there is nothing I anyone 
 can do ? " she said blankly. 
 
 "Nothing, thank you." 
 
 " Will you say I called when Mrs. Leroy can attend to 
 anything beyond the sick-room ? " she suggested, taking a 
 card from her case and offering it to him. The very name 
 seemed to him ironically assertive "Patricia Mornington," 
 and the address in Piccadilly. 
 
 " I shall come down again " 
 
 " There is really nothing you can do ! " he interrupted 
 pointedly, though still with an unimpeachable manner, 
 " Mrs. Leroy has many friends and they have all recognised 
 that the only kindness they can do her is not to ring the 
 bell ! " 
 
 " I see. But as I can have news in no other way, I shall 
 come down all the same," said Patricia quietly. " I can go 
 to the back door, if that will be less disturbing ! " 
 
 She turned and walked down the little gravel path to the 
 gate, apparently unaware of the fact that he had left his self- 
 imposed position of warder, and was following her. The 
 long sweep of her gown, indeed, kept him at a regal distance, 
 
 12*
 
 i8o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and prevented conversation. She felt, with feminine 
 savagery, that she was glad of such a guard. 
 
 " Allow me ! " said Vaughan's voice at her shoulder as she 
 paused at the gate, and his lean strong hand shot past her and 
 opened it for her. She bowed without speaking, then with a 
 last impulse she turned before getting into the motor and 
 looked up at him with the brown eyes that were always so 
 kindly anxious to help. 
 
 " If there were anything that I could do," she said slowly, 
 the words a rather proud effort, " I should trust to you to let 
 me know, Mr. Vaughan. I think, as Mrs. Leroy's friend, you 
 will understand how great a pleasure it would be to me. I 
 am quite helpless, of course, if you choose to shut me out, as 
 I am not so selfish as to worry her with letters." 
 
 If it had not seemed that she had so much of good for- 
 tune, and Fate so little, he might have met her more gener- 
 ously. As it was the almost imperceptible pause she made 
 went unrewarded. He raised his hat, the cold eyes hardly 
 meeting her own, and she drove back to town telling herself 
 that her vague dislike of this man was quite justified. She 
 had been ready with the olive branch in Fate Leroy's time 
 of trouble, and he had met her with what seemed open 
 enmity. 
 
 " He is cruel by nature, I suppose," pondered Patricia, 
 almost forgetting to shrink from the overwhelming solidity of 
 South Kensington in her troubled absorption " And he has 
 become warped and hard. Perhaps that is not his fault 
 but I do not like him any the more for it ! " 
 
 At her own door she encountered Caryl Lexiter, a very 
 light overcoat over his evening dress, and a smile of easy 
 greeting in his eyes. 
 
 " Lady Vera has asked me to dinner you will have had 
 too much of me by the time you go to bed ! " he said. 
 " Won't you be very late ? It is half-past seven already ! " 
 
 " I won't spoil dinner for you you need not be afraid ! " 
 said Patricia, smiling back into the friendly eyes. There was 
 something comforting and human in Lexiter's very inches 
 after the discomfort and rebuff of the afternoon. She found 
 silent satisfaction in his presence, and the instinctive know- 
 ledge a woman has when a man finds her desirable. It was 
 absurd, but she could not picture Caryl turning her away 
 from any friend's door without some scrap of consolation.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 181 
 
 and the foolish contrast to Vaughan warmed her heart to 
 Lexiter. 
 
 " Have you seen anyone ? Heard any news ? " she said 
 wistfully, pausing on the lowest stair. Even there, with the 
 advantage of ascending, his head was on a higher level than 
 her own. 
 
 " I'll tell you all that at dinner," he said with his easy air 
 of confidence. " Oh, by the way, there is one thing we heard 
 for which you will be sorry " 
 
 She almost shrank. " Not more bad news ? I heard of a 
 most dreadful accident this afternoon, and it shook me. 
 Well, go on." 
 
 " We called on the Duke of London, and learned that he 
 has a turn for the worse." 
 
 " The Duke ! " Her brown eyes clouded despondently. 
 " I am unlucky all my friends seem in misfortune. Is he 
 very ill?" 
 
 Lexiter nodded carelessly. " Influenza, I think. Do run 
 along, Nougat ! You will really be late." 
 
 But his effort to rouse her dignity by treating her like a 
 little girl met with no reward. Patricia turned slowly and 
 went upstairs with a step as heavy as her heart. It seemed 
 to her that all the best in life by which she held was being 
 withdrawn from her when she most needed counsel.
 
 182 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " A passive life was hers, to yearn 
 
 Against a passive Heaven, 
 For uncommitted sins to learn 
 
 How sweet to be forgiven, 
 Was all she knew of need to earn 
 
 The ' Seventy times seven.' " 
 
 " But sometimes, when the noon would seem 
 
 To drag, and stay, and wait, 
 And sometimes in the sunset's gleam 
 
 When day was growing late, 
 
 She rose in spirit from her dream 
 
 To break her heart on fate." 
 
 Monotony. 
 
 THE bed-chamber was so quiet that the flutter of the curtains 
 at the window became an important thing in the routine of 
 silence, and Fate found the faint ticking of the clock on the 
 mantelpiece such an irritation that she had it carried into 
 the dressing-room. It seemed in the days of Eldred's danger 
 that all ordinary, active life was suddenly removed from her, 
 or at least that sound had ceased; for the very passing of 
 carts in the roadway was lessened, to her fancy not only 
 muffled by the ominous straw before the gate, but surely 
 less in number than had been usual. She seemed to have 
 lived under the new conditions of her life for so long, that 
 she could hardly imagine it detached from the confines of 
 the sick-room, and the long, flat, colourless days stretched 
 backwards through her memory in an endless procession, 
 though in counting them it was only a week at the outside 
 since they had laid him down on the bed from which he had 
 never moved of himself, even to turn his heavy head. Even
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 183 
 
 the more vivid interlude of the operation, which the doctors 
 decided was advisable after consultation, did not seem a 
 thing of great importance once it was over; they talked, to 
 her outward comprehension, of removing a clot of blood, and 
 trephined the skull, but it was only Eldred's body that they 
 handled. If she winced, it was almost unconsciously; she 
 was, even then, waiting for his mind to awake as the result 
 of the operation, and when he still lay there oblivious of her 
 it seemed only one more dull pang of pain in the whole ex- 
 perience. 
 
 She sat in the old attitude of patient watching, her hands 
 clasped on her knee, her emphatic grey eyes, which never 
 changed their colour, resting as if in contemplation upon the 
 unconscious mask that did not know her that had never 
 known her since he went away that morning a week ago; 
 but, as a fact, her thoughts were almost as far away as 
 Eldred. Her eyes had grown to hold an inexhaustible en- 
 durance, and had the composure of something which has 
 settled to wait for an indefinite period. She was always 
 waiting for Eldred to come back to her. The doctors 
 who attended him had not yet asked themselves definitely 
 what change would alter her face if she found her vigil pro- 
 longed until the Judgment Day. 
 
 Events took place, even now, in Fate Leroy's physical 
 existence, though they did not matter to her at all, it 
 seemed. Eldred's own people came at. intervals, stole softly 
 up the stairs, stood and looked at the bandaged head and 
 the unrecognising face. They spoke to his wife, too, gently 
 and kindly even cheerfully and hopefully and she 
 answered them without a tremor. Then they went away. 
 There was nothing more that could be done. 
 
 Fate had never left the room for more than a few hours 
 for sleep, while the nurse watched and waited in her place ; 
 or during the day she might go into the dressing-room for 
 her meals, or would stand in the passage outside the door to 
 speak to anyone whom it might be necessary to see. There 
 was an aunt of Eldred's staying in the house the same whom 
 they had visited in the earlier part of the year, and who 
 directed the household; but Fate was still to be consulted, 
 and they came to her for this or that decision, which she 
 gave as collectedly as she had ever done. It. was not that 
 she had any reluctance to leave the empty shell upon the
 
 1 84 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 bed, which was only a body now without intelligence ; she 
 had no material desire to linger by what had once been as 
 flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone, but she was always 
 haunted by the fear that if she left him for long, Eldred 
 the Eldred she craved for might come back in her absence, 
 and so she mighi miss him. That he might only come back 
 to go away for ever, she did not even say to herself; she 
 watched the closed eyes, those blank windows out of which 
 the soul might look at her once again, and she waited for 
 him to give at least some sign, though it only ratified a tryst 
 with her beyond the gates of death. 
 
 The door bell had been first muffled, and then discon- 
 nected. It was an electric bell, and Gerald Vaughan had 
 taken the liberty of practising a very simple little operation 
 upon it, which as he explained to Miss Leroy was easily 
 nullified again when necessity for its silence was over. Per- 
 haps the vision of a tall woman on the doorstep vexed his 
 soul, or perhaps he doubted his own assertion that Fate's 
 friends would have the good sense and unselfishness not to 
 enquire too often; at any rate, it was the day after Patricia 
 had learned of the accident that Gerald disconnected the 
 wires, and after that, there being no bell to ring, callers 
 went round quietly to the back entrance and asked news of 
 the servants. A grim amusement lightened Vaughan's 
 anxious face once when he first learned this. He had taken 
 Miss Mornington at her word if she came down again she 
 would be forced to do as she had suggested, and go to the 
 back door. 
 
 When Fate's neighbours and friends came so softly over 
 the straw, and round the familiar garden way, they left at 
 least goodwill and offers of help behind, and they generally 
 saw someone who could give them news. In the dining- 
 room sat a beautiful old lady with silver curls, which she 
 tied up with a black velvet, and a face like delicately modelled 
 old china. She was always knitting with black mittened 
 hands, and there was a little old Bible so constantly at her 
 elbow that it was impossible to dissociate her from it. Mrs. 
 Carr or Mrs. Rodney would come in as if to their own rooms 
 and sit down with her for a little talk, if they came in the 
 morning ; but if they came in the later afternoon they always 
 found Gerald Vaughan. He was in the house soon after 
 five, and he never left it until ten or eleven. Miss Leroy
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 185 
 
 had become so accustomed to his presence that it would have 
 troubled her more to miss him than to lose one of the ser- 
 vants. She even found it a relief to confide her fears to 
 him, for to the old Hope is a less tenacious guest than to 
 those whose years make them " incredulous of despair." It 
 seemed as if the suspended household were worked by these 
 two incongruous personalities, and the central figures upstairs 
 were shut off into another world. 
 
 " I am afraid, my dear Mr. Vaughan, that he is weaker ! " 
 Miss Leroy would whisper, easing her frightened heart by 
 what she would not have said even to the doctor. " I went 
 and looked at him once to-day. I see a great change in 
 him ! " 
 
 Vaughan's mouth, under the ragged moustache, writhed a 
 little as if with pain. If he suffered in his intercourse with 
 the innocent little old lady, she certainly never knew it. His 
 irritable, capricious temper never betrayed itself to her, and 
 she found him courteous, and kind, and infinitely helpful in 
 the mutual trouble. 
 
 "What does the doctor say?" he suggested, sitting down 
 to have tea with her, as he always did on his arrival. 
 
 " Nothing at all won't give an opinion. That is what 
 frightens me ! " 
 
 " It might just as well cheer you up ! " said Vaughan. " If 
 there were anything bad to say, you may be sure a medical 
 man would say it ! " 
 
 " And Fate will break down under the strain I know she 
 will ! " 
 
 For a minute Vaughan did not answer. In his mind he 
 saw the quiet black figure watching by the bed, with eyes 
 that waited and waited for her husband, and saw no man in 
 all the world beside. It seemed to him that during those 
 past days in which he also had waited to serve the woman 
 he might have loved, he had learned the distance to> which 
 a completed union can thrust an outsider. He had never 
 been so far from Fate as now, when the conditions that held 
 them apart might at any moment be removed. He realised 
 it .... and his service was none the less perfectly given 
 because it was quite without hope. She did not want him, there 
 was no room for him in her life. It seemed to him that he 
 dropped quietly outside of it, and became all the more her 
 friend for some inherent honour of his manhood.
 
 1 86 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " I think I will go and see Fate for a minute, and just 
 judge for myself if she is breaking down," he said, reassur- 
 ingly, setting down his empty cup. " Has she had tea 
 yet?" 
 
 " Not yet. I thought you would like to carry it up to 
 her." 
 
 " I should. Has anybody called to-day ? " 
 
 " Half a dozen people came to the back door. Every- 
 body is so kind! I do think it takes a time like this to 
 bring out the best in human nature." 
 
 "Perhaps it does," said Vaughan slowly. "Some human 
 nature, at least." 
 
 " Mrs. Rodney brought those grapes this morning in case 
 dear Eldred were by chance allowed fruit as yet." (Miss 
 Leroy always spoke of people who were at all afflicted as 
 " dear." It was one of the trials of Vaughan's intercourse 
 with her, but he bore it much better than he did his sister's 
 peculiarities.) " Of course they are no use for that, but do 
 you think Fate would eat some? They will only spoil." 
 
 " I think she shall eat some," said Vaughan conclusively, 
 breaking the white Muscats with his long, nervous fingers 
 and adding them to the choice collection he was making 
 on a plate two slices of bread and butter, a piece of toast, 
 and a large portion of cake. It looked a feast for an ogre 
 rather than a nurse whose appetite is lost in a sick-room. 
 He caught up the daily paper as he passed the sideboard 
 where it was lying, and tucked it with cat-like deftness under 
 his arm. Vaughan's step was cat-like also, and he had 
 hardly made a sound as he arrived before the closed door 
 of the sick-room; yet Fate's ears must have been preter- 
 naturaJly sharpened, for she opened the door before he could 
 tap, and stood just in the doorway, looking at him with a 
 smile that was absently friendly. 
 
 " Thank you, Gerald ! But I don't want all this pile of 
 things to eat ! " she said in a low voice. 
 
 It seemed to cost Vaughan some sort of an effort before 
 he spoke ; yet he answered her in the half whimsical manner 
 of their ordinary converse. Perhaps he did not himself 
 know how hungrily his eyes were resting on her tired face all 
 the while. 
 
 " Miss Leroy is making herself luxuriously miserable over 
 your lack of appetite, so I must really beg you to make an
 
 AS YE ''HAVE SOWN. 187 
 
 effort. She has already endowed you with a break-down 
 and an illness, and I am not sure that she is not in fancy 
 designing your tombstone ! " 
 
 " I know " a faint but quite easy smile lifted the drooping 
 red mouth. " It is a joke of Eldred's that Aunt Annelie 
 always orders the wreath for the funeral if anyone's little 
 finger aches. Tell her that you thought me looking good 
 for many years, please, Gerald." 
 
 She took the paper from under his arm as she spoke, and 
 selecting a slice of bread and butter from the plateful, put 
 it into the saucer and relieved him of the teacup also. 
 
 There was a moment's indefinite pause. 
 
 " I really wish you would try to eat, Fate ! " he said, with 
 a touch of the old restive authority in his manner. It had 
 been part of her system with Vaughan to let him lord it over 
 her. She only shook her head very slightly now. 
 
 " I would if I could." 
 
 " Eat some of the grapes at least fruit is good for every- 
 one." 
 
 " Very well," she said passively, and took the cool berries 
 in her hand with a submission that stirred his blood, and 
 almost took him off his guard. He looked down on her 
 bright head, half turned even now to catch the least stir in 
 the sick-room turned away from him, as ever, and towards 
 Eldred! and all his impotent manhood rose up and longed 
 to comfort her. He wanted it so much that the yearning 
 seemed to thrill the mental atmosphere and made her turn 
 to him again with something that was a vague sense of 
 gratitude in her passionless grey eyes. 
 
 " I see a slight a very slight change this afternoon, 
 Gerald ! " she said below her breath. " So does the nurse. 
 The doctors will not come again before night, however, so 
 we cannot be sure." 
 
 " Would you like me to fetch them ? " 
 
 " It is no good. I thought of that, but I know they would 
 both be out at this hour. I might send a message, but I am 
 afraid of being needlessly selfish and bringing them here for 
 nothing. He has lain like this for so long." 
 
 " All the more reason he should change now let us hope 
 for the better ! " 
 
 " It might be the other way ! " she breathed, and sud- 
 denly her controlled face woke up with a passing spasm of
 
 1 88 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 anguish that swept across it like a visible cloud. Into the 
 wide-open grey of her eyes the pain seemed to spring and 
 pass like a flame of fire, the red lips drew into a tight line 
 for an instant, and her whole figure shrank as if from some 
 appalling blow. Mechanically he threw out his hands as if 
 to protect her, and then realising his own helplessness, and 
 something else, they dropped to his side and he stood and 
 merely looked at her, feeling the bitterness of a pain that 
 was too complex for him to even face and argue with it. 
 For in the same moment that the agony crossed her face and 
 passed, leaving the old-trained patience, he saw the ghastly 
 temptation before him to be glad of her loss rather than 
 sorry. Just for an instant the ignoble nature that makes a 
 man's mind seem ugly to himself marred the feeling he had 
 schooled his heart to give her then it was gone again, and 
 he could stretch his hands to her in reality, without feeling 
 them treacherous. 
 
 " Don't say that don't think it ! " he said huskily. " You 
 mustn't, you know or you really might break down. It's all 
 right we'll stand by you." 
 
 His hands found one of hers blindly, and held it as im- 
 personally as he might have done a child's. The next instant 
 she had turned from him and gone into the sick-room, again 
 fancying a movement, and he was walking downstairs, breath- 
 ing hard with a feeling of physical exhaustion as definite as 
 if he had been running. He was surprised to find, indeed, 
 as he passed his handkerchief across his forehead, that it 
 was wet. 
 
 Fate walked back to the bedside, forgetting the man who 
 was only second-best to her the instant her eyes fell on the 
 bandaged face on the pillow. Only such close scrutiny as hers 
 could have detected a difference in it, but there was some- 
 thing a relaxing of the set features, if nothing more, a 
 shade more colour in the bloodless lips, that made her feel 
 that a change was coming. She sat down and forgot to drink 
 her tea until it was cold ; but no increase of symptoms took 
 place, and at last, with a sigh, she opened the paper and 
 began to read without taking in a word, until a paragraph in 
 the Court and Personal news dimly forced itself on her com- 
 prehension. 
 
 " His Grace the Duke of London is lying seriously ill at 
 his residence in Piccadilly."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 189 
 
 " How sorry Patricia will be ! " thought Fate indifferently, 
 as of a being a great way off whose affairs could not touch 
 her. " I think he was the only friend she had in that life." 
 She read another paragraph, but it meant nothing. Then, 
 with a feeling of the necessity to pull herself together, she 
 swallowed the bread and butter and the grapes and drank 
 the cold tea, and, turning the sheet, forced herself to under- 
 stand the words of the Leader, reading very slowly. But 
 her thoughts, though they told her quite connectedly now 
 that the Duke of London was lying seriously ill at his resi- 
 dence in Piccadilly, declined to go further, and she found 
 herself saying that Patricia would be sorry the Duke of 
 London was seriously ill Patricia would be sorry alter- 
 nately. 
 
 She had not noticed that she had left the door ajar when 
 she hurried back to the bed, perhaps thinking that Vaughan 
 would close it for her, nor did she see it pushed a little 
 further open and the white cat slowly squeeze himself through. 
 For days Phlumpie had been trying to discover what lay 
 behind that door in the only room which had ever been 
 refused to him, and where his master was. Now was his 
 opportunity, and he trotted noiselessly across the room, 
 jumped lightly on to the foot of the bed, and, walking up 
 beside that silent form, lay down in the attitude of a couchant 
 lion, his broad head just touching one of the immovable 
 hands lying outside on the coverlet. Fate had not seen him 
 come, or jump, for the paper was between her and the bed; 
 her first knowledge of him was a little rustle of the clothes, 
 and she turned and almost sprang upon him, checking the 
 cry in her throat, and all her pulses seeming to close with a 
 throb of raw pain upon her heart. But before she could 
 snatch the cat from the bed her glance reached Eldred's face 
 and her movement was arrested. For he was looking at her 
 with eyes that were again conscious, though they had 
 come back from somewhere such a long way off that he 
 was bewildered and could hardly recognise his surroundings. 
 His lips moved faintly, and he tried to touch the cat's head 
 with his nerveless hand. His face was the face of a strayed 
 child, looking for assurance that somebody who is reliable 
 is near by but the soul had come back. It was no longer 
 Eldred's body alone that was left to her. 
 
 Fate slipped to her knees gently beside the bed, and with-
 
 ipo AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 out actually touching him laid her arms about him, answer- 
 ing the living eyes in the awakening face. 
 
 "What is it, Sweetheart? I am here with you," she said. 
 The words rounded off the whole universe to their mutual 
 
 existence. 
 
 ****** 
 
 "I shall always keep Phlumpie even when he is so old 
 and blind and deaf that people tell me he ought to be 
 destroyed ! " said Fate quite seriously, looking at Vaughan 
 across the moonlit porch. It was the first time for many 
 days that she had breathed the outside air save from the 
 window, but she had run down to say good-night to him on 
 the nurse's assurance that she might safely do so. 
 
 " I hope if the poor beast's life were a misery to him that 
 you would not be so selfish as to keep him alive ! " said 
 Vaughan, his man's common-sense a little outraged by her sen- 
 timent. " I most devoutly believe in the survival of the fittest. 
 Modern science is making the world too full of the halt and 
 the blind, even amongst human beings. Why this canonisa- 
 tion of Phlumpie?" 
 
 " He was the first thing that Eldred realised next to me," 
 said Fate, adding, a trifle jealously " His eyes saw me first ! 
 Then he tried to touch Phlumpie's head." 
 
 " Whereupon Phlumpie becomes a household deity ; as 
 much to be worshipped as if he had lived in Egypt centuries 
 since ! How utterly inconsequent women are 1 You look as 
 if you wanted a good night's rest after all this excitement. 
 Go to bed soon, won't you ? " 
 
 " I don't feel as if I were very tired now I " she said, 
 with a long sweet breath of the night air. " It is a very 
 beautiful world, Gerald 1 Only while we are so busy think- 
 ing of the pain and the sorrow all round us we forget to be 
 thankful." 
 
 " The Power that ordained the sorrow and the pain can 
 hardly blame us for being forgetful of less assertive details 
 of the universe ! " said Vaughan bitterly. 
 
 "And there is a lot of sorrow and pain .... How 
 hard it is to realise that other people are in the darkest part 
 of the night still when one gets out into the moonlight a 
 little oneself! Do you know I saw the illness of a man of 
 whom I have often heard lately, and seemed almost to know 
 at second hand, and it meant nothing to me but .9. form of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 191 
 
 words until about an hour ago. Then I found that I was 
 alive enough again to be sorry." 
 
 "Who was it?" Vaughan asked as he lit a cigarette to 
 accompany him home to Ashingham. 
 
 " His Grace the Duke of London is lying seriously ill at 
 his residence in Piccadilly," said Fate, repeating the para- 
 graph which she had gradually forced into her memory, as 
 if it would not now be effaced. 
 
 " I dare say it is not true," said Vaughan consolingly. 
 " The papers so 9ften exaggerate, and no journal is scrupulous 
 when it is eager for news. He probably has a cold, and 
 they are short of copy." 
 
 " I will hope so, anyhow. He is a great friend of Patricia 
 Mornington." 
 
 A curious look flitted over Vaughan's face for a minute, 
 vaguely reminiscent. " She called here one day last week," 
 he remarked. " I told her what had happened. She has 
 not been since, as far as I know." 
 
 "That is unlike her," said Fate, innocently, not guessing 
 the encounter at the door. "But possibly they have gone 
 out of town. Still, she might have written. Don't you feel 
 a little resentful with people if they disappoint you as to their 
 interest in yourself ? " 
 
 " I never expect people to be interested in me ! " was 
 Vaughan's parting assurance, with his head in the air, and 
 the long spare figure vanished in the darkness along the road 
 to the station, carrying somewhere in his conscience a little 
 pin-prick with regard to the woman whose interest Fate Leroy 
 thought had flagged. Not that Vaughan acknowledged that 
 he had been in the wrong in practically requesting her to 
 come down no more to enquire, for he thought it common- 
 sense and kindness to stay away since she could do nothing. 
 He was generally very certain that he was in the right in his 
 own line of action, but the unexpected result of Fate think- 
 ing herself neglected by Patricia was a situation for which 
 he had not looked. He could not actually say that her non- 
 appearance was the result of his advice indeed, she had 
 plainly asserted that she should come again in spite of that 
 but he acknowledged to himself that he had not been 
 encouraging. Well, let her stay away, instead of intruding 
 a pointless sympathy into an already harassed household ! 
 There was quite enough to do without answering Miss Morn-
 
 I 9 2 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 ington's enquiries. He was not in the least sorry to hear 
 that the man whom Fate called her only friend was probably 
 out of her reach also; the fact that it was the Duke of 
 London merely accentuated his theory that her sphere and 
 that of the household he had just left lay far apart. She 
 had better spend her idle time in ringing the Duke's bell, and 
 asking after him. 
 
 He found that his sister had not yet gone to bed when 
 he reached Ashingham, and observed with a distracted eye 
 that a new blue bow had made its appearance in the centre 
 of each looped curtain in the drawing-room. Vaughan waged 
 a bitter war against blue bows, and discouraged his sister's 
 love of colour in every way. The offending decoration _did 
 not make him more sociably inclined, and after stalking into 
 the drawing-room, where Miss Vaughan was reading Marie 
 Corelli's last book, he was about to stalk out again when 
 she stopped him. 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 "I did not expect you to sit up for me! " said Vaughan, 
 purposely misunderstanding her desire for news. 
 
 " You might at least stop and tell me how they all are 
 since you do find that I have waited up to hear ! " said Miss 
 Vaughan, in aggravated tones. "Really, Gerald, it is not 
 very considerate of you ! The instant you get down from 
 your work you go flying over to Sunnington, and you never 
 come back until you expect me to have gone to bed. There 
 is nothing for you to do over there, I am sure, and it is 
 simply a ridiculous restlessness that takes you." 
 
 " If you have nothing more to say than unnecessary com- 
 ments on my actions, I will say good-night and go and 
 smoke," said Vaughan icily, his hard eyes staring at the 
 blue bow rather than the sallow face of the lady by the lamp. 
 
 " I see that the Duke of London is very ill," remarked Miss 
 Vaughan, grudgingly changing the subject. * The evening 
 papers say that it is influenza." 
 
 Her brother, however, kept an unpropitiated silence, nor 
 did he mention that the Duke was a friend of Miss Morning- 
 ton, whom she might remember had called on her with Fate. 
 He knew perfectly well that Bertha had what Fate called 
 " the Middle Class worship of the Aristocracy," and that even 
 the slight connection of knowing someone who knew the 
 Duke of London would be of immense interest to her of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 193 
 
 much more interest in reality than the household at Sunning- 
 ton. He withheld the knowledge he possessed with de- 
 liberate intention, in order not to gratify his step-sister, nor 
 can he entirely plead the blue bow as an excuse. Gerald 
 Vaughan cannot be described as an amiable character, or 
 is there much to urge in his defence. He was simply a 
 highly-strung, irritable man, struggling just now with a base 
 instinct, and trying to rise to the nobility of his ideals. He 
 felt the antagonism of his surroundings almost intolerable in 
 the stress of it. 
 
 "You might at least tell me how things are going on with 
 the Leroys ! " Bertha exclaimed at last, as if driven back 
 to her original grievance by his lack of response. 
 
 " Eldred is better the doctors think it just possible he 
 may pull through. They say now that they have not thought 
 so before, even though the clot of blood under the skull 
 was successfully removed." 
 
 " But he may die in a sudden relapse, I suppose?" 
 
 The bald statement of the thing they had all pushed from 
 them in their first leave to hope, made Vaughan wince, almost 
 visibly. Something else in the inner recesses of his mind, 
 also, made him wish with all his tired soul that his sister had 
 not put it into words. 
 
 " There is no need to be a bird of ill omen ! " he said, 
 sharply, and was out of the room beyond the fine torture of 
 her comments almost before she had gathered breath to say 
 that Fate Leroy would be a good-looking widow, and to feel 
 herself generous again for the admission. Gerald often 
 denied his step-sister the self congratulation of the com- 
 plaisant egoist by declining to be her audience. 
 
 He shut the smoking-room door behind him with a de- 
 cision that she understood even at a distance, and he knew 
 that he should be disturbed no more that night. Yet he 
 did not sit down as usual with a sigh of relief and satisfac- 
 tion to read and smoke in contented peace for an hour or so 
 before going to bed. There was a restlessness about him 
 that suggested pain to-night. He crossed aimlessly to the 
 empty fireplace where he had sternly forbidden a row of 
 flower-pots or a painted fire screen, arguing that a frost was 
 not impossible in the middle of Summer, and he preferred to 
 be able to light a fire at any moment; the dead grate 
 struck him suddenly with a sense of homelessness, and he 
 
 13
 
 194 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 stared resentfully at the decent tidiness of the unlit coals. 
 The homely simile was not unlike a man's life perhaps the 
 fire, ready laid, capable of throwing out warmth as well as 
 another, only waiting to be ignited, and no one to strike 
 the match. 
 
 How absurd ! 
 
 He had leaned his arms on the mantelshelf and bent his 
 sleek brown head above them, staring at the empty grate. 
 Now, with a conscious effort to put off the thought, he moved 
 away to the book-shelves lining the walls (Vaughan had col- 
 lected a heterogeneous library, not in solid sets or editions, 
 but a volume here and there as the caprice took him), and 
 laid his hand uncertainly on the first book that came. It 
 was an American work poems, little known in England. 
 He turned the pages without intent. 
 
 " The sweeping up the hearth 
 And putting love away, ^ 
 We shall BBf Want fo use again 
 Until the Judgment Day ! " 
 
 He flung the book on to the table with a movement like a 
 child resenting a pain it cannot understand. Why had this 
 thing come upon him ! Life was hard enough surely to the 
 average man without wrestling with vile passions out of all 
 proportion to everyday life. For he felt himself vile because 
 he could not guard every breath he drew, and every sug- 
 gestion that circumstances forced upon him. A fastidious 
 man for himself and others, he felt his own degradation if 
 he fell below his secret ideals. His standard might not be 
 a high one as regards conventional virtues, but it allowed 
 no margin for treachery or dishonour. 
 
 In that one moment when Fate Leroy had stood before 
 him, all the dearer for her flagging vitality and her watch 
 in the sick-room, had he not longed to take her to his pro- 
 tection, not only as a friend not, in some possible future, 
 as the second in her life, but the first? For a minute had 
 he not wished that the husband for whom she was wearing 
 out body and soul should die and leave him a free path to 
 guard and cherish her instead? It was the natural impulse 
 of the man to thrust his strength between the woman and 
 her trouble. Her weakness and tire made her intolerably 
 appealing to his manhood. But though he might state such
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 195 
 
 a circumstance as a reason, he did not plead it as an excuse. 
 He had set his teeth and turned upon his heel, as upon a 
 former occasion the last time she had been in his house 
 praying to some Power he seldom approached that Eldred 
 might live, and that he himself might not come so near to 
 Hell again. How well Christ knew the inscrutable ways of 
 God, and man's weakness, is nowhere more noticeable than 
 in that pathetic phrase of the great Prayer 
 
 " Lead us not into temptation." 
 
 Again, when Bertha had forced him to face the possibility 
 of a relapse, this evening, his traitorous pulses had answered 
 the suggestion with a dull leap for which he loathed himself. 
 Had this crisis in their circumstances not occurred, he might 
 have drifted safely past the verge of danger, and never put 
 into words the attraction which Fate Leroy had for him. 
 Their lives could have run on side by side for years, and 
 never driven him to this torture of self-examination. He 
 was impatient of the senseless pain and the inaction, but he 
 was too honest to risk such thoughts as had beset him 
 again. It had to be faced now and fought down. There 
 was this point in his favour, that he could not conceive him- 
 self as the vanquished, and set his will and his long years 
 of training to give up even the semblance of a stolen hope. 
 As he had said, he had never had the things he wanted in 
 life; that should stand him in good stead, now that it was 
 a case of voluntary renunciation. And, though he did not 
 realise it, had he been a self-indulgent man like Caryl 
 Lexiter, or one more weakened by an easy life, such a thing 
 as he strove to do would have been morally impossible. 
 
 "After all, she does not want me!" he said, bitterly. 
 " She has never given me one thought with which to reproach 
 herself. That does not make it any easier, however, and 
 it is cold comfort. I thought I had won my battle after 
 that day she came here .... but T never looked for this 
 hideous temptation. It is a dreary thing to ' sweep up 
 the hearth ! ' " 
 
 " The sweeping up the hearth 
 
 And putting love away, 
 We shall not want to use again 
 Until the Judgment Day ! " 
 
 *#*# 
 
 13*
 
 196 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 By and by he rose quietly, turned out the light, and went 
 up with a noiseless step to his own room. He did not want 
 his sister to accuse him of having sat up late her comments 
 were apt to rasp raw nerves. But it was only one o'clock, he 
 reflected, even now. He was not a boy to sit up all night 
 with his trouble, and carry a betraying face that all the world 
 might read with scornful pity. Vaughan went to bed and 
 to sleep, nor did he even dream. The most dramatic of 
 our mental experiences are not necessarily effectively staged.
 
 197 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE MAN. 
 " In an older day I have wept heart's blood as tears 
 
 Has the curse not passed ? Will the memory still pursue ? 
 Across the merciful gulf of the drifting years 
 
 She looks at me with the eyes of a man I knew ! " 
 
 THE WOMAN. 
 " I have said ' It is false, I am sinless ! ' (knowing I lied), 
 
 And I hate the innocent Witness that proves it true ; 
 Out of the grave of my passion, long dead and denied, 
 She looks at me with the eyes of a man I . . . ." 
 
 The Witness. 
 
 '' THE doctor is here now, my lord. Would you like to wait 
 and hear what he says ? " 
 
 " I'll wait and see Maunders, anyhow," said Lord Lowndes. 
 passing the servant and putting his hat and umbrella down 
 on the hall table with decisive energy. And before the dis- 
 comfited footman could hinder him he had stumped off into 
 the familiar sitting-room, which, like the Duke's bedroom, 
 was on the ground floor, his square shoulders very square in- 
 deed, and no yielding either in face or manner. 
 
 There is nothing more empty than a room where you have 
 been accustomed to see somebody, and the Duke's figure 
 being almost invariably the central object of the room his 
 absence made itself more startlingly felt than if he had been 
 in and out like ordinary mortals. The great invalid-chair 
 standing empty gave Lord Lowndes a feeling as if something 
 very unhappy were happening inside him an experience 
 generally described as a " turn " and for the minute he stood 
 staring at it and seeing nothing else. Then he started, for 
 there was a movement in the room, and he became aware of 
 someone being present beside himself.
 
 198 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " How are you, Mornington ? " he said, shaking hands the 
 more heartily to cover his start. " Upon my word, I didn't 
 see you when I first came in ! " 
 
 " No ? " said the other carelessly. " Hope it wasn't a 
 shock." 
 
 There was always a faint irony in this man's tones that was 
 a puzzle to other kindlier natures. Lord Lowndes wondered 
 in his inmost heart why it should be suggested as a shock to 
 him to find anyone sufficiently anxious about the Duke to 
 wait in his house for the last report of the doctor. It seemed 
 to him a very natural thing to do for a man like his Grace 
 the Duke of London. 
 
 " I hear the doctor is here," he said, for want of a better 
 remark. " I suppose you are waiting, like myself, to know 
 how the Duke is ? " 
 
 " No, the doctor left ten minutes ago just before I came. 
 The Duke's valet let him out. I don't suppose the footman 
 knew that he was gone." 
 
 " Henry is always a damned fool, anyway he's a proteg6 
 of the Duchess, and Pic took him from Hyde which accounts 
 for it!" said Lord Lowndes explosively. "What did Sir 
 Richard say ? " 
 
 "I have not heard. I am waiting to see the valet." 
 
 There was a pause, while Lord Lowndes fidgeted with the 
 familiar objects on the mantelpiece, and nearly upset the 
 Duke's favourite cigar lighter into the fender. He had big 
 fingers that were only deft in their grip upon a bridle, with 
 the tips as square as his other attributes. 
 
 " Your people have not left town yet, have they ? " he said, 
 jerking into conversation again. Mornington had sat down 
 by the table and bent his impassive face over an illustrated 
 paper. He answered without even looking up. 
 
 ' Not yet. I believe they go next week." 
 
 ' Ah ! Lady Vera said something about Spa this year ! " 
 
 ' I dare say." 
 
 ' You are off to Rye, I suppose ? " 
 
 ' I shall go down for the week-ends," said Mornington, 
 with the same utter indifference. " But I don't fancy I shall 
 leave London for good until the Autumn this year." 
 
 "I'm glad to hear it," said Lord Lowndes heartily. 
 "There will be someone to speak to at the Clubs." 
 
 " You are not going yet, yourself ? "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 199 
 
 "Not until my old friend is much better," said Lord 
 Lowndes with a short nod at the door which led to the Duke's 
 bedroom. 
 
 Mornington raised his head at last and looked at the big 
 grey man with the handsome face. There was something 
 in the dark blue eyes that made them sparkle oddly, and the 
 large features showed a momentary emotion that even a very 
 English breeding could not hide. The financier looked as 
 if he were a little curious he even opened his lips as if he 
 were going to speak and agree. Then he closed them again, 
 and a little cynical smile was all his answer. 
 
 " Will you come down to my place for the week-end some 
 time, and try the links? " he said deliberately, after a minute, 
 his reserved eyes meeting Lord Lowndes's with nothing in 
 them beyond the invitation. 
 
 " Thanks oh, yes, thanks ! I should be delighted. You 
 don't mean this week, of course ? " 
 
 " Well, no. I supposed " 
 
 " I can't leave this week," said Lord Lowndes restlessly, his 
 broad finger-tips still working havoc with the Duke's Lares. 
 ' But next, perhaps ah, Maunders ! " 
 
 The door opened and shut with the peculiar click the man- 
 servant always gave it. There was something natty and 
 precise in Maunders's very way of entering a room, but this 
 morning his decorous jauntiness was sobered to a look that 
 would have been anxiety if he had not been so well trained. 
 He held a letter in his hand which he offered to Lord 
 Lowndes. 
 
 " This came half an hour ago, my lord. His Grace asked 
 if you would read and deal with it, hearing you were here." 
 
 Lord Lowndes took it with one of his bright blue glances 
 beneath his bushy eyebrows. It was a thick business-like 
 envelope without seal or crest, and he did not know the neat 
 caligraphy. But he very nearly uttered an exclamation as 
 he turned to the signature crammed into the very last corner 
 "Your affectionate wife, Alicia." 
 
 " What's the doctor's report, Maunders? " said Mornington, 
 while Lord Lowndes was still immersed in the thick pages. 
 
 " He did not say much, sir. I did not see him alone." 
 
 u I thought you let him out? " 
 
 " No, sir. Sir Richard sent me back to his Grace at once." 
 
 An extra little wrinkle seemed to have added itself to
 
 200 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Maunders's puckered lips, and his face was that of a worried 
 bird. 
 
 " Has he a temperature still ? " asked Mornington, picking 
 up his hat. 
 
 "Yes, sir 101 this morning." 
 
 " Ah ! I think there is nothing I can do, Lord Lowndes, 
 except to take my departure." 
 
 " Wait a minute." Lord Lowndes was still struggling with 
 the Duchess's letter. " Perhaps you can throw some light on 
 this extraordinary epistle. What did the Duke say, 
 Maunders ? " 
 
 " His Grace said he felt too ill to read it, my lord ! " said 
 Maunders without moving a muscle. " He got through the 
 first page " 
 
 "Lucky he read no more! " snorted Lord Lowndes. " It's 
 enough to kill any healthy man, let alone a sick one. Listen, 
 Mornington," he added, with a mingled sense of the ludicrous 
 and the dramatic that made the reading of it aloud a piece 
 of acting in itself. 
 
 This was the letter in which there was little or no punc- 
 tuation : 
 
 " MY DEAR JAMES, 
 
 " I am not at all surprised to hear you are ill with 
 closed windows and a good many measles even in the Village 
 where I insist on seeing to them myself. If you had only- 
 taken my advice which old Porter neglected and his daughter 
 is now in service with a Methodist who drinks but I forgot to 
 tell you it might have been avoided. Of course I am very 
 anxious at your time of life and natural infirmities increased 
 by folly. I must say it is never safe to hope too much but 
 in Providence (see Job xxxvi. 6) and Joshua Nunn's Camphor- 
 tonic (see Ad. which I enclose) I shall have your name men- 
 tioned amongst the sick and afflicted Service for the Harvest 
 Gleaners and of course you will write and tell me if your 
 temperature goes up and you at all delirious. I am much 
 worried because the housekeeper tells me that the cook is 
 leaving which is most inconvenient for me as I shall have to 
 look out for another (I won't trust that woman) all on account 
 of her sister's baby and this is the third since Christmas and 
 not one of them could make pastry. 
 
 " Your affectionate wife, ALICIA."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 201 
 
 A slight cough seemed to have seized Maunders, and he 
 rather suddenly disappeared into the Duke's room as if he 
 heard a summons no one else had caught. Lord Lowndes 
 looked after him with appreciation, then at Mornington, and 
 then suddenly roared with laughter. It was one of the 
 Duchess's most devout objections to him that he could laugh 
 whatever the crisis, and though he might have wept five 
 minutes before. The quick emotional nature was an offence 
 to her. 
 
 " What I want to know is, is she coming up to town or no ? " 
 he said, referring to the second sheet of the letter, which was 
 all postscript : 
 
 " It is impossible for me to leave just now and Richard 
 Burford is a fool he alarmed his poor wife about her health 
 for years before the kitchen chimney caught fire and she 
 died of angina pectoris. The five ten is the best train but 
 don't send anyone to meet me as I shall drive round by the 
 Stores and ask for their Homoeopathic list. Fat can sleep in 
 the hall he is a good house-dog as long as the milkman does 
 not come when he wakes everybody by barking. I must 
 bring him because the cat is ill and I have given her 
 Ipecacuanha which makes him sick and I think he is pining 
 If you are better to-morrow let me have a wire." 
 
 " I should say she was decidedly coming, and with a whole 
 chemist's shop ! " said Giles Mornington drily. 
 
 " But then why should he wire ? " 
 
 " Oh, that's to reassure her that she needn't come when 
 she has already arrived ! Who the deuce is this ' Fat ' ? " 
 
 Lord Lowndes gave a little laugh of amused reminiscence 
 not entirely caused by the Duchess. " Fat is the Duke's dog. 
 I didn't know that he was down at Hyde, but I expect she is 
 right about his pining he adores the Duke." 
 
 " It's an odd name for a dog." 
 
 " It's just like Pic to call him so, though. The dog is fat 
 far too fat for his breed. He's a retriever at least he 
 was a retriever pup," said Lord Lowndes, faint resentment 
 struggling with his sense of humour. " You know my Nellie, 
 don't you? I breed retrievers, you know, and Nellie's the 
 best old bitch of the lot. I gave one of her pups to Pic, and 
 rather fancied myself for the generosity, but the old wretch 
 said that if the pup grew as large as Nellie it would be a
 
 202 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 bother to have such a big dog about him. So he gave him 
 gin 1 Upon my word, it's a fact. And the dog's body grew 
 to its natural size, but his legs are short in proportion, like a 
 turnspit's, and he waddles." 
 
 " It was rather a pity to spoil a thoroughbred, though a 
 mongrel would have done as well for those experiments ! " 
 Mornington was sportsman enough to be scandalised, though 
 he laughed as well as Lord Lowndes. 
 
 " Yes, but that's so like Pic spoiling a good thing for a 
 whim ! And now he tells people quite gravely that Fat is a 
 special breed of dog that he got in Persia a Turcoman, I 
 think he calls him and that they have those short legs and 
 large paws from running for miles over the desert. And, of 
 course, when his stories are believed he is delighted, and the 
 Duchess is seriously shocked at the untruths he tells ! She 
 always takes him quite seriously. Those immense women 
 very seldom have a sense of humour. She's too stout to risk 
 a laugh ! : ' 
 
 " I suppose you will meet the 5.10? " 
 
 "I!" said Lord Lowndes, with a certain irresponsibility. 
 " Good Lord ! No. The woman hates me like poison." 
 
 " Then you will leave the Duke to her tender mercies 
 homoeopathy and all, of course." 
 
 " No, I'm damned if I will ! She would kill him with 
 worry. Maunders and I will mount guard and keep her cut 
 of the sick-room, if we have to get a warrant from Sir Richard 
 Burford ! " 
 
 " You know your own affairs best," said Mornington, with 
 a shrug of his shoulders. He waited a minute at the door, 
 as if it were so unusual to offer his services that it came 
 hardly to him. " Can I meet the Duchess for you? " he said 
 abruptly, with a merely formal politeness. 
 
 But Lord Lowndes was not sensitive where he saw a great 
 advantage. " My dear fellow, I wish you would ! " he said. 
 " She will be sure to change her mind and will be personally 
 affronted if nobody is there, because she specially tells us 
 not to send and meet her. You know her, don't you ? " 
 
 " No, nor does she know me. How am I to identify her ? " 
 
 " You can't mistake her she's a mountain ! Look out for 
 a woman who ought to be shown round in a fair, and you 
 have her. But the servants will know. I'll tell Maunders 
 to order the carriage for you."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 203 
 
 " Thanks it had better pick me up at the Club then," 
 said Mornington carelessly, as he departed, leaving Lord 
 Lowndes still frowning over the letter and its varied 
 references. 
 
 It was to be a day of unusual occurrences to Giles Morning- 
 ton. He was still questioning his own weary heart as to why 
 he had taken the trouble to do a good-natured action for no 
 hope of reward unless it were a sense of discomfort, when 
 he arrived on his own doorstep. He was lunching at home, 
 he recollected, unless he learned from his butler that there 
 were no outsiders to augment the house-party, in which case 
 he would have an engagement that took him to his Club a 
 few hours earlier. As he paused to put the question to his 
 servant, he was aware of a rustle of silk and the sound of a 
 woman's light feet on the stairs behind him, but he did not 
 turn his head, nor was he expecting to be addressed when 
 the steps paused at his side. 
 
 " Are you going out or coming in ? " said Patricia with the 
 easy friendliness she bestowed on any other acquaintance. 
 " You are such a difficult person to catch that I am obliged 
 to seize this opportunity. I have been wanting to speak to 
 you for days." 
 
 He looked the displeased amazement that would have de- 
 terred half the world from continuing to encroach upon his 
 time. Patricia belonged, however, to the other half, to whom 
 even the closed doors of his eyes were not insuperable bar- 
 riers. To her mind the doors of her father's own portion of 
 the house, behind which she might not enter, were not more 
 visibly closed to her than the mind which lay behind his ex- 
 pressionless face. 
 
 " I can answer any question you want to ask here and now," 
 he said with perfect politeness, pausing at the foot of the 
 stairs below which she stood. The butler discreetly drew 
 away, and by an occult process took the footmen with him 
 out of hearing, as needles follow a magnet, never mind how 
 unwillingly. 
 
 " I want you to invite me to Rye ! " said Patricia with the 
 same charming ease. Her great brown eyes met his with a 
 little smile and absolute candour, while beneath her cool 
 linen gown her heart shook in wonder at that look he gave 
 her. If she had ever done him a wrong in thought or word 
 she felt as if it would have scorched her.
 
 204 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " I am not at present going to Rye," he said very quietly, 
 his manner so perfectly non-committal that she wondered even 
 more why he regarded her as something in which one dreaded 
 to find an awful recognition. A hatred of the house of Blais 
 must surely have grown to the roots of his very nature for 
 Patricia knew herself to look a Blais. 
 
 " But if you and your mother wish to go down there, the 
 house is quite habitable," he added composedly. 
 
 " I do not think it has occurred to her," said Patricia. " I 
 believe she is going to the Continent soon." 
 
 " Are you not going with her ? " 
 
 " No. I have accepted an invitation to stay with the Har- 
 bingers later," said Patricia, unconscious of the beauty of her 
 own eyes as they met the strong repulsion of his. She had 
 never stood so near him in sole converse before, she thought, 
 and his face was a shock to her. It was not so much that he 
 was a grey-haired man at little more than middle age, or that 
 he was lined and weary ; but there was a dreadful something 
 in his face that made her feel as if the real man had been 
 struck dead all hope and love of the race of life, even the 
 joy of striving, seemed to have been starved out, and left 
 nothing but the old query of " Cui bono ? " written there in 
 lieu of other expression. 
 
 " I am afraid you will find it dull," he said, after a minute's 
 pause that was worse than a point-blank refusal. " There 
 will be no one in the house except yourself unless you can 
 induce some lady to chaperon you, and are thinking of getting 
 up a house-party." For the first time he smiled, and she 
 drew away from him as if it frightened her. " A house-party 
 is a form of entertainment which grows more and more 
 popular," he said slowly. 
 
 " I had no thought of such a thing ! " Patricia said almost 
 hastily. " I supposed you would be staying down there, and 
 I could join you until I went to the Harbingers. But it is no 
 particular matter. I presume you will be in town ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I shall keep to my rooms here and leave the rest of 
 the house to the workpeople whom I suppose will take it in 
 hand." 
 
 " I am afraid even that will be rather uncomfortable," he 
 replied with an irreproachable courtesy that thrust her to the 
 outermost circle of acquaintanceship. " But you are, of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 205 
 
 course, free to do just as you like." The added weight of 
 the last few words and their marked emphasis made her turn 
 and look at him again. His eyes met hers as if he would 
 impel her to a comprehension of his meaning. " If you find 
 that your expenditure is more than your allowance at any 
 time, I hope you will let me know without any hesitation," he 
 said. " I know that women often find themselves short of 
 money unexpectedly. You can have more when you want it." 
 
 " Thank you, but as I do not play Bridge much, and you 
 gave me my motor and pay for the up-keep of it, I have not 
 much on which to spend money," said Patricia, a little 
 heavily, her voice dragging as if disappointment had weighted 
 it. " I bought a horse the other day, but beyond that and 
 some gloves, I think my quarter's allowance is at present un- 
 touched." 
 
 " A horse ! " he repeated, as if the words struck him. " Ah ! 
 your mother has the same taste. Do you bet?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " There is such a thing as ' making a book ' on races, you 
 know ! " he remarked with another ugly smile. " Is that a 
 vice of yours ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 "I am a little surprised to hear it," he remarked with one 
 of his inscrutable looks at her in her young health and beauty. 
 His hard eyes searched her face as though they would have 
 pierced her without pity. But he went his way without say- 
 ing more, and left her to go hers with a feeling of defeat. 
 Nevertheless, she had gained an assurance that she needed, 
 and had not faltered once in her resolution not to accompany 
 her mother to the Continent, or to spend an undefended holi- 
 day in the company of Lady Vera's friends. She had been 
 expecting for some time that there would be a further advance 
 in their arrangements for leaving town, and had thought it 
 well to be prepared with her own plans. She had indeed 
 been surprised that Lady Vera had not spoken to her defi- 
 nitely on the subject, but had not connected their lingering on 
 past the end of the Season with any dilatoriness of the 
 Queensleigh household. Caryl Lexiter had come and gone, 
 as he would, all the Season ; but so had other men, who im- 
 pressed her less, but were almost as frequent visitors at the 
 house. Caryl's passing remark that his father was going to 
 Queensleigh next week, and he himself leaving town, did not
 
 306 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 connect itself at all with Lady Vera's movements, in her 
 mind. She only thought that it might have been expected 
 long since when, a day or so later, her mother strolled into 
 her rooms about four o'clock, and asked if she could have 
 some tea and talk a little. 
 
 " Certainly ! " Patricia said cordially, ringing the bell. " I 
 thought you were out, or I should have come down to the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 " I went round to my tailor to hurry them up about my 
 habit, but there is no one in town to see now. I have been 
 thinking, Nougat, that we might get away next week." 
 
 " Are you going abroad ? " said Patricia civilly, but with the 
 impersonal interest one takes in plans not one's own. " I 
 think you will find the Riviera very hot." 
 
 " You'll come too, of course," said Lady Vera with an 
 abrupt decision that was apt to arrange things to her liking 
 in more lives than her own. "You don't go to Chiffon till 
 October." 
 
 "I really don't know," said Patricia indifferently. "We 
 have not settled the date yet. But I certainly should not 
 come to the Riviera, anyhow." 
 
 Lady Vera had been leaning back in an easy chair with her 
 knees crossed, the result being a view of frills and openwork 
 stockings that suggested, if it did not actually reach, her 
 knees. She sat up rather suddenly, a little increase in the 
 warm colour of her cheeks, and the wandering anger con- 
 centrated in her tawny eyes. 
 
 " What nonsense, Nougat ! " she said loudly. " Of course 
 you will come to Alassio with me ! I have arranged quite a 
 big party for the villa there." 
 
 " The villa ? " said Patricia with the same easy attention. 
 
 " Ah ! you generally take the same villa, I suppose ? " 
 
 " We had it last year " 
 
 " And the same party ? " 
 
 " Not quite." The red light in the tawny eyes flashed out 
 at the younger woman's imperturbable face. "Anyhow, you 
 will have to come. They are all expecting you." 
 
 " T am afraid they must be satisfied with you alone as 
 usual," said Nougat quite as composed as ever. "If you had 
 told me beforehand I could have explained to you that I did 
 not care to come." 
 
 She saw the red tide of passion sweep over the fair face
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 207 
 
 before her like a danger signal. It did not take long to light 
 the Blais beacon, and her anger flamed in Lady Vera's face 
 like a torch. She checked the torrent of words rising to her 
 lips only because a servant was bringing in the tea, and sat 
 kicking her pointed shoe against a pile of books on the lower 
 shelf of the little table until the maid had gone again. The 
 impatient sound was as uncontrolled, to Patricia's ears, as 
 that of an ill-tempered child. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she demanded in a burst of rage, 
 as soon as the door closed. "What is your objection to 
 Alassio ? Where are you going instead ? " 
 
 Patricia looked up from pouring out the tea with a curbed 
 disdain that contrasted oddly with her mother's loss of con- 
 trol. " I do not know that I shall go anywhere," she said 
 quietly, " until I go to the Harbingers. I shall probably stop 
 here."' 
 
 " Here ! You must be mad ! The house will be turned 
 inside out. Here ! " 
 
 " I can keep my own rooms until I do go away," said 
 Patricia composedly. "But I shall most certainly not go 
 with you to Alassio." 
 
 "Whvnot?" 
 
 " I think it would be better if I kept my exact reasons to 
 myself," said the girl rather slowly and proudly. " Will it 
 satisfy you if I say that I am heartily tired of that coast of 
 Italy, where I went with Aunt Helen many times? I should 
 prefer to stop in England this year." 
 
 "No ! " said Lady Vera. quite as rudely as if she had not 
 been a Blais, for uncontrolled passions are apt to nullify the 
 best breeding. " You will kindly say what you do mean, and 
 not put on this damned side as if there were something 
 against your coming with me that was too awful to say ! 
 What do you mean by it?" she almost screamed, giving the 
 rein to her anger and springing up to her quivering height like 
 a fury. The tawny eyes were all red now, the face was white 
 where the rouge did not hold its own, and the cruel lips 
 seemed to coarsen and loosen over the little white teeth. She 
 was a beautiful woman still, this uncontrolled Harpy in her 
 temper. There was something magnificent even in her un- 
 bridled emotions. 
 
 Patricia had been standing also, but stooping over the tea- 
 tray. She drew herself up now, her slightly added height
 
 208 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and larger frame making her more ominous still than Lady 
 Vera. There was neither fear nor uneasiness in her face 
 only a slightly disgusted surprise and a certain hauteur, for 
 the first lesson she had been taught, and taught again, albeit 
 gently, was to control herself and rule her spirit. Here was 
 i woman before her who could do neither! Perhaps Lady 
 Helen had been wise in that training, remembering the stock 
 from which her god-daughter came. 
 
 " You can sit down," she said icily. " As you prefer it, I 
 will tell you why I decline to stay with you and a house-party 
 at Alassio. I have been telling it to you as courteously as 
 might be all this Season, but you will not take a hint, it seems. 
 I do not care for your set of friends we have nothing in 
 common, and I have not the slightest intention of admitting 
 them to the degree of intimacy you do, in the future. It is 
 just as well, perhaps, that we have come to this explanation. 
 We are both women with moulded characters, and one is 
 not likely to influence the other. We had better each go our 
 own way, and keep the peace so." 
 
 For a minute it seemed that Lady Vera was breathless. 
 The firm young face opposed to hers baffled her, for there 
 was no yielding in it, either of pity, or to her usual domina- 
 tion. She was keen to realise that even had she tried to get 
 her way in another fashion, and had persuaded the girl to 
 come to Alassio as a companion to herself, she would have 
 failed quite as completely. Patricia was not a merciful 
 woman Lady Vera had never been merciful herself. 
 Patricia was as hard to move as a man, once her judgment 
 was set. Lady Vera knew, on the contrary, that she herself 
 had been proved weak once or twice in her life, and was 
 weaker now than her daughter by reason of the girl's guard 
 upon herself. She stood there panting with her own sense 
 of impotence, and flung a last taunt to cover her defeat. 
 
 " You seem to think the house is your own ! You are 
 arranging your universe without much thought of whether 
 you will be able to carry out your plans." 
 
 "First and foremost," said Patricia with a rather bored 
 courtesy, "I must remind you that I am over age I am 
 twenty-four. Then I happen to be independent, as I have 
 Aunt Helen's money, whatever my father might decide to do 
 with regard to my allowance. But as it happens, I have 
 already spoken to him "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 209 
 
 " To him ! To " 
 
 For the first time Lady Vera quailed. She stared at 
 Patricia as if she saw a ghost some hideous spectre risen up 
 to confront her. Almost the same look, but from a different 
 source, Giles Mornington had given her, the girl thought with 
 a passing wonder. 
 
 " You spoke to him " 
 
 " Certainly. I mentioned that I thought of remaining in 
 town. He told me that I could do just as I pleased, now or 
 in the future. If you like to ask him, I am sure he will 
 confirm me." 
 
 " Good God ! " 
 
 " Why are you so surprised ? It strikes me as a very usual 
 thing to have done. To whom should I refer if not to my 
 father?" 
 
 " Your father ! " 
 
 Patricia, drawn up to her full height, was still facing Lady 
 Vera. There was a touch of contempt in her face and 
 in the heavy-lidded eyes that rested on her mother. For a 
 minute the older woman looked at her as if fascinated. Then 
 suddenly the hot, ugly blood rose up to her very forehead, 
 making her face appear mottled in spite of its paint. Her 
 eyes fell uneasily, and she turned without a word and tore 
 out of the room like a whirlwind, slamming the door behind 
 her. By the table Patricia still stood in her imperial attitude, 
 her head drawn slightly back, almost as if she had dismissed 
 a subdued rebel from her presence.
 
 210 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " Every year it is becoming more obvious that inherited titles are as 
 dangerous an evil as inherited money. . . . But there are some men 
 whose nobility patents itself. Such alone have a right to the beautiful 
 names of Duke=Leader, and Earl=One higher than a carl (or peasant)." 
 
 Unpublished Opinions. 
 
 PATRICIA had other reasons for determining not to leave 
 town at present, as well as the one that she had given to 
 Lady Vera. Her only means of knowing how the Leroys 
 were in their trouble lay in remaining within a distance from 
 which she could motor down and enquire for herself, for she 
 was keenly aware, with bitter resentment, that Vaughan 
 would not send her word, even had she asked him, save that 
 he would of course answer a letter with freezing courtesy and 
 the least possible news ; after which he would volunteer no 
 more bulletins. Sometimes she felt as if she almost hated 
 this man with his hard eyes and warped judgment of her; 
 and sometimes she almost liked him for his jealous guarding 
 of his friends' household, and the frank resistance of any 
 charm she might herself possess, and absolute adherence to 
 his mental attitude with regard to her. He was at least an 
 honest antagonist, and she had learned to trust open enmity 
 rather than doubtful friendship in the sham world around 
 her. When Mrs. Blais Heron called her a " dar," and looked 
 sideways at her to calculate how far one could gloss matters 
 over in a half confidence, Patricia had a savage feeling that 
 she was not only being fooled, but made use of to an ignoble 
 end. 
 
 Her second reason for wishing to be in London was again 
 a case of illness that of the Duke of London, of whom
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 2n 
 
 bulletins still appeared in the Morning Post, and were also 
 privately issued by Maunders at the rate of many tips, for 
 the valet was besieged by more adherents of the Duke than 
 he himself would have accredited. He had never recognised 
 his own popularity, being most indifferent to the opinion of 
 anyone whom he did not really like; but those to whom he 
 had been most plain spoken were amongst the earliest 
 enquirers, and were honest in their regret and anxiety. 
 Truth is like a pickaxe in some hands, and will force the 
 gold out of the most uncompromising substance where it lies 
 embedded. 
 
 Patricia called daily to hear of her old friend, for she 
 had not so many amongst her acquaintance whom she classed 
 under that name that she could afford to be indifferent to one 
 of them. Sometimes she saw the foolish footman, Henry, 
 and once or twice Maunders, but she was unaware that the 
 Duchess had arrived far less that Mornington had been 
 deputed to meet her at the Station until one morning when 
 she encountered Lord Lowndes upon the doorstep and they 
 went in together to hear the doctor's report, Sir Richard 
 Burford's carriage being at the kerb at the moment. "When 
 Henry ushered them into the formal dining-room instead of 
 the Duke's favourite sitting-room, Patricia felt a momentary 
 surprise which was increased by the sight of a remarkably 
 stout lady sitting at the table in a forest of correspondence. 
 Her broad back was turned to them as she bent over her 
 writing, but she appeared, even from that point of view, as 
 voluminous as her letters. By her side sat a curly-coated 
 dog whose figure had a ludicrous resemblance to her own, 
 for his body was as round as a barrel, and though his fine 
 head and big paws suggested the retriever, his curiously 
 short legs gave him a bulbous appearance more native to a 
 pug or a dachshund. 
 
 Henry, who was bound to blunder, murmured the names 
 inaudibly, and the stout lady did not turn her head until the 
 fat dog rose and waddled across the room, his greeting of 
 Lord Lowndes being that of one who receives an honoured 
 friend. At the sound of his bark the unknown lady jumped 
 and quivered like a jelly, turning slowly round in her chair 
 as if quick movement were a physical impossibility to her. 
 
 " Good gracious ! " she exclaimed in a voice that matched 
 her person, for it was of an overpowering quality also, 
 
 H*
 
 212 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 though not harsh. "I didn't see that there was anybody 
 there, till the dog told me. Fat, lie down! Good morn- 
 ing!" 
 
 She made a little short bow to Lord Lowndes, to whom 
 she did not offer her hand, and glared at him with rather 
 prominent eyes. Everything about the Duchess was large 
 and practical ; she was a plain woman, and made no attempt 
 to disguise the fact. Even her hair, which a sorrowing maid 
 had contrived to puff into something like the prevailing 
 fashion, was its own unmitigated grey, and only looked in- 
 congruous from its correct dressing. Her manner was as 
 unpretentious as her face, and in spite of her anxiety and 
 grief over the Duke's illness, Patricia could not help an 
 irresistible amusement at the contrast between her and Lord 
 Lowndes, whom she obviously disapproved of and disliked. 
 That gentleman, however, advanced upon her with his usual 
 enthusiasm, the short-legged dog fawning upon him all the 
 way, and insisted on shaking her hand, whether from mischief 
 or because he did not choose to be snubbed, Patricia could 
 not tell, because she could not see his eyes. She trusted to 
 their twinkle to betray more of Lord Lowndes' mind to her 
 than passed his lips. 
 
 ' I really came in to hear Sir Richard's report. Is he still 
 here?" he asked, as chattily as if the Duchess were his best 
 friend. (" Good old Fat ! Are you glad to see me ? ") 
 
 " Yes, he's still here," said the Duchess, making ineffective 
 snatches at the dog as if his lordship's proximity were con- 
 taminating. She was too stout to reach the animal's collar, 
 nowever, and to Patricia's extreme entertainment the pos- 
 session of the squat beast's body appeared to be a tacit object 
 of rivalry between her and Lord Lowndes during their brief 
 converse, the one ordering him away and the other retaining 
 him by parenthetical exclamations. " He generally stays half 
 an hour or so, talking nonsense and prescribing slops," said 
 the Duchess, referring to Sir Richard Burford. "If he had 
 had the sense to give James china he would be a different 
 man by now ! (Come here, Fat !) " 
 
 " An angel rather, my dear madam for he would probably 
 not be on earth at all ! " said Lord Lowndes with surprising 
 sweetness, stooping to pat the retriever head that was too 
 handsome for the quaint body. (" Poor old Fat ! good old 
 boy!) May I introduce Miss Mornington?"
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 213 
 
 The Duchess turned to Patricia with a shade more warmth 
 and interest in her face, diverted for the moment from the 
 dog, who was still paying Lord Lowndes a forbidden atten- 
 tion. She was an intelligent woman in appearance at all 
 times, and when her face woke up it was a pleasant one, if 
 still emphatically matter of fact. 
 
 "Mornington! Mornington!" she said, looking at 
 Patricia's tall figure and undeniable face. " Are you related 
 to Giles Mornington?" 
 
 "He is my father," said Patricia smiling, with the ever- 
 unconscious lie. It struck Lord Lowndes as an extraordinary 
 thing that quite half the world lied with conviction, while the 
 other half shrugged its shoulders over the truth. 
 
 " Then you are the daughter of the only sensible man I 
 have met in London for an age ! " said the Duchess promptly. 
 " Most people who live in town seem to get the fog into their 
 brains until it makes them half imbecile, I think ! " (Lord 
 Lowndes, who spent nine months of his year there, looked 
 delighted.) "But I really enjoy talking to Mornington." 
 
 " Do you know him well ? " said Patricia with some won- 
 derment. It struck her that here was the first person who 
 had ever seemed to have formed an opinion on Mr. Morn- 
 ington at all, adverse or otherwise. The majority of her 
 acquaintance knew him as an inaccessible personality that 
 was all. 
 
 " Never remember seeing him until he met me at Padding- 
 ton the other day ! " said the Duchess briskly. " I declare 
 I thought that drive down here the quickest I ever took. I 
 hate driving to a sick house as a rule one always expects tc 
 find the blinds down." 
 
 Lord Lowndes suddenly and unostentatiously walked tc 
 the door. " If you will excuse me, I think I will just see 
 Maunders, and then go. I am sure you don't want a crowd 
 of visitors," he said quietly ; but something in the tone told 
 Patricia that the Duchess hurt most when she was not in- 
 tending it. 
 
 "You can do as you like," she said, a trifle stiffly. "I 
 have no doubt you know this house as well as I! (Fat, come 
 here !) " 
 
 Lord Lowndes bowed and went, Fat making an ineffectual 
 effort to follow him; but the Duchess had at last grabbed 
 his collar, and though his forward movement threatened tc
 
 2I 4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 land her on the floor, her dead weight stood her in good 
 stead, and left her victorious though gasping a little and 
 quivering. 
 
 " He is so strong ! " she said indignantly. " I really think 
 his legs are all the more vigorous for being so short. But 
 it is a wicked distortion of Nature James gave him gin when 
 he was a puppy, you know, because he said he was afraid he 
 would grow as large as his mother. Shockingly flippant, to 
 my mind. But there is that strain in James' people ! " she 
 added musingly, sorting her correspondence even while she 
 talked all the while. 
 
 "His mother! " said Patricia, vaguely, with some idea that 
 the Duchess must refer to her husband's family. She sat 
 down in the chair her Grace had indicated, and put her hand 
 absently on the dog's head, for Fat, on being released, im- 
 mediately sat down on the tail of the visitor's gown and looked 
 up with intelligent eyes into others as brown as his own. 
 
 "Fat's mother a thoroughbred, and very valuable, I 
 believe. Of course this poor beast is worth nothing, but he 
 is very docile. He seems to like you he is devoted to 
 James, too, and I cannot see why," said the Duchess with 
 a touch of resentment. " He will go to James at once and 
 leave me when we are both in the room, and yet James pro- 
 fesses to dislike animals, and T am always so kind to them, 
 upon principle ! " 
 
 "Perhaps that is just why!" thought Patricia, while she 
 drew Fat's glossy ears through her fingers, from instinct 
 not because it was a caress " on principle." She realised at 
 the same time how this incessant stream of comment, and 
 plans from an active brain, must weary an invalid, and under- 
 stood why the Duke preferred his town quarters to Hyde, 
 where the Duchess's energy was most rampant in its scope. 
 She also thanked Heaven that Sir Richard Burford, 
 Maunders, and Lord Lowndes had formed a bodvguard 
 whose object was to keep the Duchess out of the sick-room 
 
 "How is the Duke?" she said in her quietest tone at the 
 first pause from the Duchess, but with a determination to 
 be informed that gained its object. 
 
 "T haven't seen him at all yet!" said the Duchess frankly. 
 "The Burford man insists that he shall have no visitors. 
 He is about the same, they say what can one expect from 
 such treatment! I had five children down with whooping
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 215 
 
 cough in the Cottage Hospital when I had to come up to 
 London, and they have all just recovered from measles 
 because I insisted on their mothers going to china ! " 
 
 " To China ! " said Patricia, with a bewildered feeling that 
 the Duchess had bereaved the unfortunate infants of their 
 owners by wholesale emigration. " But I don't quite see " 
 
 " Instead of quinine, my dear. I fly to china at the first 
 symptom of a cold ! " 
 
 "Oh!" said Patricia with a long breath. "I see. China 
 is a drug." 
 
 " No one in their senses uses drugs ! " corrected the 
 Duchess scornfully. "That's the evil in Burford's system. 
 Poor James is a walking chemist's shop by now, you may 
 depend upon it. It will walk away with him one of these 
 days!" (Patricia's sympathies were more and more with 
 Lord Lowndes in his abrupt departure.) " You are not at 
 all like your father," said the Duchess, so consecutively with 
 her last speech that Patricia nearly lost the thread again. 
 " And yet your face reminds me of someone it's someone 
 I know well, too. I have forgotten who your mother was?" 
 
 "Lady Vera Blais." 
 
 "Of course." The Duchess's lips took a little set that 
 Patricia understood. Lady Vera was not, however, a sub- 
 ject she could discuss with Lady Vera's daughter. "Your 
 father ought to have gone into Parliament," she remarked. 
 " But the best men always keep out of it nowadays, and 
 leave the governing of the country to those who use it as an 
 advertisement. No one ever brings in a measure in the 
 Lower House, it seems to me, with any motive except to have 
 it associated with his name. The Fiscal Policy is to Mr. 
 Chamberlain what soap is to Mr. Pears ! " 
 
 " Have you seen my father since he met you on your 
 arrival?" asked Patricia, still following a train of thought. 
 
 " Every day, I am glad to say ! " said the Duchess. " He 
 comes in during the afternoon, and we have a chat. I sup- 
 pose, like most modern young women, you hardly know 
 what goes on in your own family." 
 
 " Hardly ! " said Patricia, absently. With a woman's in- 
 tuition she had discovered what Lord Lowndes had just 
 missed the reason for Mornington's remaining in town. 
 He also, like herself and Lord Lowndes, was a staunch ally 
 of the Duke's. But she perceived also, what surprised her
 
 216 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 still more, that his partisanship had taken the practical form 
 of keeping the Duchess interested and partially content while 
 she remained in London. This form of service had occurred 
 to no one else ; but it had probably prevented her coming to 
 open warfare with Sir Richard Burford. 
 
 She was still trying to stem the current of the Duchess's 
 swift talk in order to reduce it to lucidity, when Maunders 
 opened the door and asked her respectfully to come and 
 speak to Lord Lowndes again before he left. Patricia looked 
 at the Duchess, who shrugged her broad shoulders. 
 
 "Oh, go, my dear go, by all means. He shows his dis- 
 cretion by not coming back here. We are not very fond of 
 
 each other, he and I. I detest all that family casual, 
 
 material, excitable! There never was a Lowndes yet who 
 did not roar with laughter if the house was on fire, and they 
 call that a sense of the ludicrous. All the men are hard 
 riders and hard livers boast of it, too ! Why couldn't this 
 man marry decently, instead of remaining a bachelor? And 
 besides, everybody knows there! it's not a story for a girl's 
 ears. Run away, and don't bring him back to me if you 
 can avoid it." 
 
 Patricia, still smiling slightly, had begun to follow 
 Maunders even through the flood of reminiscence. She did 
 not notice that as she rose the dog rose too, and, grown 
 wary from his last experience, had slipped behind her 
 long skirts, so that he escaped the Duchess's vigilance and 
 accompanied Patricia out of the room. She did not see Fat 
 until some minutes later, or realise that with the miraculous 
 instinct of animals he was trying to discover where his master 
 was, and had tracked him as far as his bedroom door. The 
 instant they entered the sitting-room the dog walked over to 
 this goal of his desires, and thrusting his ungainly body close 
 to it, rested his head against the panels. He escaped Patricia's 
 observation because she was thinking of Lord Lowndes, and 
 the Duchess's indignant half-revelation. Patricia was grow- 
 ing hardened to innuendoes even about people she liked; 
 it was nothing to her if my Lord Lowndes had preferred a 
 morganatic marriage to legality, so long as his sins were not 
 thrust upon her notice. And in her own mind she mitigated 
 the Duchess's summing-up of his family characteristics. 
 Casual he might be, but he was staying on in town when 
 other men left, because his friend was ill. Material he
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 217 
 
 might be but no more than the rest of his world, who " sat 
 down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." And for 
 " excitable " Patricia interpolated " emotional," and thought 
 that even this was a virtue of sorts as he hurriedly gave her 
 the doctor's report, and she saw the dark blue eyes magnified 
 by the tears in them. 
 
 " Burford thinks him very weak," he said, and his pleasant 
 voice seemed to have lost some of its music and fallen a 
 
 note lower than usual. " The fever has gone, but ." He 
 
 stopped, and looked blankly round upon the familiar objects 
 most connected with the Duke, for they were standing in his 
 own sitting-room. " Forty years ! " he said, as if thinking 
 aloud. " We've been friends for forty years ! A man doesn't 
 begin again at my time of life." For to Lord Lowndes, his 
 Grace the Duke of London was still the younger son, " Jim " 
 Piccadilly, of no great account save for being the best fellow 
 that one knew. 
 
 Patricia looked away from him with an instinct of delicacy, 
 and her eyes fell on Maunders. The servant was standing 
 in an attitude that had become habit to him, just behind the 
 arm of the Duke's great chair, as he always stood when 
 bringing a message or waiting for an order ; and the tears 
 were running quite quietly down his sharp-lined face, giving 
 him a grotesque twist of feature in place of his usual astute- 
 ness. But Patricia found nothing to amuse her in a grimace 
 of pain such as this. Against the bedroom door, his head 
 pressed close to it, the dog still sat in his wonderful patience. 
 
 " If watching and nursing can do it, my lord, you know 
 I won't fail ! " said Maunders with a catch in his breath. 
 " I've been with him for five and twenty years if it's faith- 
 ful service the doctor wants I think I'm better than those 
 hospital nurses ! " 
 
 " I hope they will let you wait on him as well as the 
 nurses, Maunders," said Patricia, gently. " I think we would 
 all trust you more than anybody else." 
 
 " Yes, miss, thank you. His Grace always hated strangers 
 round him ! " said the man with subdued eagerness. " He 
 sends the nurses out of the room half the time, but Sir 
 Richard Burford thinks they ought to be here, in case in 
 case " 
 
 "Yes," Lord Lowndes interrupted hastily. "You must 
 have the nurses, Maunders. They have more authority
 
 218 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 than you would in keeping the Duchess out." What the 
 Duchess called excitement, and Patricia emotion, seemed to 
 threaten to overwhelm him. He caught up his hat suddenly, 
 with a hand that was not so steady as usual, and by a 
 characteristic impulse held the other to Maunders and shook 
 hands with him. 
 
 " You're a dam' good fellow, Maunders ! " he said. " And 
 for God's sake look after your master. We we can none 
 of us afford to lose him." 
 
 " Thank you, my lord ! I will do my best for everyone's 
 sake my own the most of all, Miss Mornington! The 
 Duke's had me up now and then for things that were not to 
 his liking, but I'd never take service with anyone after him ! " 
 
 " And Pic thinks, or says in his cynical way, that Maunders 
 has no attachment to him ! " said Lord Lowndes to Patricia, 
 as they left the house together. He blew his nose rather 
 hard and blinked his eyes at the outside sunshine, but he 
 was not at all ashamed of his ready tears. Very few people 
 gave Lord Lowndes the credit for being either as simple or 
 as sensitive as he was, his physical appearance suggesting 
 rather a strong, self-reliant man, reserved, and a trifle 
 emphatic in manner. 
 
 " I am so glad that the Duke has Maunders," said Patricia 
 as cheerfully as she could. " I feel him such a strong ally, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 "Oh, Maunders is all right! " said Lord Lowndes heartily. 
 " He's a capital fellow and a good servant. He would never 
 presume, for instance, on the fact that I shook hands with 
 him just now. Well, I liked to do that ! The fellow is faith- 
 ful, and that's of more value just now than hired service." 
 
 " Yes," said Patricia with a sudden sense of depression ; 
 it seemed to her a very grey world and full of subtle sadnesses. 
 Why was it that the Duke, whom everyone loved, had no 
 relatives to give brain and bodily power in his service when 
 he was ill no one but his man-servant to trust to, and that 
 principally to keep his wife away ! She found the universe 
 at loggerheads, and curiously mismanaged. The men with 
 the best and most sympathetic womenkind were the least 
 worthy the Caryl Lexiters of this world, for whom Lady 
 Queensleigh had carried a sore heart to her grave, and many 
 a woman beside had wept in secret. But Giles Mornington 
 had been unlucky in his married life, and the Duchess of
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 219 
 
 London, for no fault but an incompatible temperament, was 
 as a casual stranger in her husband's necessity. Patricia 
 thought of yet one other couple, where the love had been 
 full and complete ; but there the Tragic Fate had entered, 
 and struck the husband down, possibly to death, while the 
 wife sat by his side in a patient despair, and would not leave 
 him, save for sheer necessity of sleep and food. 
 
 Patricia had not been to Sunnington for a week, after 
 Vaughan's plain-spoken request to her to stay away. It had 
 not been only that encounter which had hindered her, but 
 a shrinking from herself a reluctance to contrast her possible 
 future with the little home even when it was shadowed and 
 threatened with dissolution. It was strange to her that the 
 more she accustomed herself to the thought of Caryl Lexiter 
 in some nearer relation, the more she vacillated in her desire 
 to see Fate. It had been an impulse that had taken her 
 to Sunnington on the day when she first heard of Eldred's 
 illness, and though the more vital trouble had put her own 
 affairs out of her head for the time, she was half relieved 
 that they had been so forced on one side. She felt that if 
 she went to the Leroys' house, whatever else she found there 
 she would have to face her own decision ; something in that 
 atmosphere made honest confession a necessity to her, and 
 she was still afraid to say yes, even to herself. Since 
 the night of the Botanical Fete Lexiter had not advanced 
 one step, either from his prudence, or her panic fencing 
 with him when they met. But she could not forget the touch 
 
 of his fingers on her neck and that she had not 
 
 been angry ! She was ashamed of her own memory a little, 
 even now, but she was not entirely resentful. Lexiter was 
 the first man who had ever dared to offer Patricia the ex- 
 perience of masculine proximity a fact that Mrs. Blais 
 Heron could not have credited, seeing that Nougat was 
 twenty-four, though it happened to be true and the start of 
 sensation had graven him in her memory as someone a little 
 different from all other men, no matter what her later ex- 
 perience. His very audacity seemed to her to separate him 
 from the lave, for she did not realise that the man who 
 makes a woman's heart beat in angry recognition of her 
 sex will take a place in her life, however unacknowledged, 
 unusurped by any other. He need not develop into a 
 husband, or even an avowed lover, but he is the pioneer,
 
 220 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 breaking the silence of the unknown territory that lies beyond 
 maidenhood. 
 
 With an effort rather than an impulse this time, Patricia 
 made up her mind to go to Sunnington in the afternoon of 
 the day when she met the Duchess. She did not see either 
 Mornington or Lady Vera at luncheon, the latter having 
 ignored her save for passing friction since her stated deter- 
 mination to go her own way, and seeming as ready to avoid 
 more open warfare as Patricia herself. It was hardly 
 necessary to meet in the confines of the great house, and 
 they went their own way, Patricia not even being certain 
 on which day Lady Vera would leave London for Italy. Her 
 face was shadowed with many thoughts, and none of them 
 glad, as she got into the motor and gave the chauffeur the 
 direction now familiar to him. It was rather a sunless after- 
 noon, and the depression of the dull season, or the heavy 
 August weather, seemed to her to accord with her heavy 
 heart. 
 
 The blinds were half lowered in the front of the Leroys' 
 house, as a quiet glance showed her even before she alighted 
 at the gate. There was no one about, and the hall door was 
 closed. The whole place had an air of repose to her mind, 
 almost of resignation, and she let herself in gently and walked 
 up the path with light footsteps. She had a nervous fear of 
 encountering Vaughan again in her present state, for the last 
 few days had tried her and left her feeling unusually over- 
 wrought. Patricia was very delicately healthy, but she was 
 used to living a far more open-air life than was possible in 
 London, in a far more amiable climate The abrupt altera- 
 tion of all aspects of her life since she had come to live under 
 Mr. Mornington's roof, had been like a shock to her physical 
 as well as her mental system, and she was suddenly over- 
 powered with a horrible nervousness. If she received bad 
 news she felt that it would be the last blow that she could 
 not bear ; yet she walked almost furtively round by the side of 
 the house, along a winding path that she guessed would lead 
 her to the back door, with an intention to enquire. There 
 was no one about in the garden, and the little lawn and the 
 pear tree had an air of desertion. Even the white cat was 
 absent, and Patricia's knock at the door sounded in her own 
 ears so faint that she started when one of the servants 
 appeared and looked at her with puzzled surprise.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 221 
 
 " I came to enquire for Mr. Leroy I thought I would not 
 go to the front door for fear of disturbing anybody," Patricia 
 said with unusual rapidity and hardly recognising her own 
 voice. 
 
 The servant's face was still frankly mystified. " He is 
 just about the same, thank you ! " she said. 
 
 The words sounded like the monotonous knell of hope to 
 Patricia, who was unaware but that they meant the con- 
 tinuance of the stupor in which Eldred had lain at first. 
 She turned away without waiting for more, afraid of details, 
 indeed, and with a vague " Thank you you need not say I 
 called," she brushed past the shrubs again to the gravel of 
 the little front garden. Something in the misery of it all 
 made her despondent, she felt that Eldred would only lie 
 like this, with " no change " until he drifted out of life, and 
 then 
 
 As she emerged from the shadow of the house into the 
 garden path she heard the front door open, and to her 
 regret a man's footstep following her down to the gate. 
 She hoped that her obvious hurry would prevent whoever it 
 was from speaking to her, but as she laid her hand on the 
 gate Vaughan's familiar croak was at her ear an undis- 
 guisable voice that she felt she recognised all the more for 
 having dreaded it 
 
 "Miss Mornington ! " 
 
 There was just the finest grain of apology in his tone, but 
 she did not realise it any more than she did the fact that 
 he must have seen her from the front windows and known 
 that she had accepted his unkind concurrence in her going to 
 the back door. Vaughan's state of mind was so far a happy 
 one, owing to Eldred's improvement, that it softened him 
 to all the world, and he felt really sorry that he had met 
 Patricia so belligerently on the former occasion. He laid 
 his hand quickly on the gate before she could open it, and 
 detained her so. 
 
 " Won't you come back to the house and have some tea ? 
 Do, please! Miss Leroy Leroy's aunt sent me as a special 
 messenger. Mrs. Leroy will never forgive us if we let you 
 go so inhospitably now that her husband is better." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, as taken aback as she had been at 
 his appearance, for he had caught sight of her face. It was 
 paler than he had ever seen it, and he recognised that she
 
 222 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 looked ill and unhappy. Her mouth was painfully com- 
 pressed, and her eyes were full of tears which she was 
 making a desperate effort to hold back or disguise. He had 
 never denied Patricia Mornington's beauty it was an offence 
 to him in itself; but he had always had an aggravated im- 
 pression of a woman all the more calmly self-possessed by 
 right of her fair face, and her eyes had been rather repellent 
 to his imagination, for all their wonderful brown colour. 
 Now it came like a revelation that she was very human in 
 spite of her undesirable possessions and the vulgarity of 
 excessive wealth. He felt a little shocked, too, and arro- 
 gated to himself rather more cause of her present distress 
 than was quite fair. It made his voice three times as gentle, 
 and his manner almost irresistible as he spoke to her. 
 
 "Have they not told you that Leroy is much better? Of 
 course it is a deadly slow recovery, but the doctors think 
 he has every chance to live. Please come back to the house 
 and share in the general rejoicing." 
 
 She shook her head, trying to refuse; but words were 
 dangerous at the moment, and in despair she turned at last 
 and walked back to the house with him, in silence. She was 
 quick to recognise, with gratitude, too, that in the dusk of 
 the hall he went on first to the dining-room as if to explain 
 her presence really, she felt, to give her time to recover. 
 Her eyes were no longer wet, though the lids still smarted, 
 when she followed him into the dining-room. 
 
 A beautiful little old lady with silver curls was presiding 
 over the tea tray, which looked odd to Patricia set on the 
 uncovered oak dining table. She knew that had Fate been 
 downstairs it would have been laid in the pretty, cool draw- 
 ing-room. Miss Leroy made her unexpected guest welcome, 
 however, and rang for an extra cup, and Vaughan quietly 
 and skilfully placed a chair with its back to the light 
 another intuitive action for which Patricia thanked him in 
 her heart. A change seemed to have come over their re- 
 lations, she vaguely recognised, engendered in one moment 
 by that pause at the gate, for she felt the hostility gone from 
 his manner even more than during her visit to Ashingham 
 when, as host, he could afford to be charming. She found 
 him waiting on her and talking nonsense as he did to Fate 
 Leroy, and accepted it as if glad to bury the hatchet. 
 
 " We did not see you at first, owing to the blinds being
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 223 
 
 half down," he explained as he brought her her tea. "It 
 is a particularly sensible habit we have when there is no 
 sunshine, you observe." 
 
 " Well, my dear Mr. Vaughan, I have been expecting the 
 sun to come out all day ! " protested Miss Leroy, as if this 
 were sufficient explanation. "And sunshine fades a carpet 
 so, does it not, Miss Mornington?" 
 
 " Of course," said Patricia with due gravity. " But Mr. 
 Vaughan, not being a housekeeper, cannot be expected to 
 understand these things." 
 
 " Pardon me ! " Vaughan's familiar challenge almost made 
 her laugh " but I am an excellent housekeeper. My sister 
 is away for six months of her year on hideous visits, and 
 then Ashingham runs on oiled wheels under my benign 
 rule." 
 
 " And does she appreciate the faded carpets when she 
 returns ? " asked Patricia teasingly. 
 
 " That is a small detail compared . to the benefit of the 
 sun in a room. If we were all forced to have a sun-bath 
 whenever it was possible, we should be happier, healthier 
 mortals, I believe." 
 
 " One is apt to get impregnated with clouds and grey 
 skies in England, certainly," said Patricia wistfully. 
 
 "But why do you say that your sister pays hideous visits?" 
 asked Miss Leroy, who had evidently been puzzling over the 
 sudden adjective. 
 
 " All visiting is hideous unless one goes down into the 
 country for sport," said Vaughan half pettishly. He had 
 finished handing Patricia the toast and its attendant butter, 
 and now sat down near her as if to see that she ate it. She 
 had an amused impression of being taken in hand, and found 
 it rather restful. With masculine inadequacy Vaughan was 
 making up for his former attitude by trying to spoil his 
 enemy with little material kindnesses. His muscular hand 
 seemed always ready to serve her the instant there was any- 
 thing to be done, until she wondered that he seemed to know 
 when her cup was empty, without looking. 
 
 "My sister visits in a peculiarly hideous manner," he went 
 on to explain. " She takes any amount of luggage to begin 
 with, that wears out her soul with its care, and she stays 
 with people she does not like in order to talk about it to 
 someone else whom she likes less. Do you notice that almost
 
 224 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 everything people do socially is done in order to make sub- 
 jects for conversation ? " 
 
 " But surely one goes to see one's friends because one likes 
 them ! " protested Miss Leroy, a little shocked by his novel 
 ideas. 
 
 " Not at all ! Most people go to see their friends to say 
 that they have done so to other 'intimate enemies.' They 
 go to the theatre for the same reason. ' It will be some- 
 thing to talk about!' they say. Why do women pay calls? 
 Why do they do picture shows ? Certainly not for the sake of 
 exchanging ideas, or because they know anything about 
 pictures ! " Vaughan snorted. 
 
 " I am sorry for your guilty conscience," retorted Patricia. 
 " Of course, you are really speaking personally, Mr. Vaughan ? 
 If you ever come to see me after this I shall wonder for whom 
 I am to make a subject of conversation." 
 
 " I shall discuss you from your hat to your shoes, be 
 assured of it ! " said Vaughan gaily. " Not a hair of you will 
 escape. All the same, the present company is always ex- 
 cepted, Miss Mornington. When I said 'we' I did not 
 include myself, of course." 
 
 " Because you felt yourself so superior ! " 
 
 "We are always superior to our own weaknesses in our 
 own minds. Let me get you some more tea. Miss Leroy tells 
 fortunes in the cup, by the way. Last night she promised 
 me that I was going to marry by accident ! Doesn't it sound 
 light-hearted ? " 
 
 " There is something a trifle unsteady about it. I should 
 doubt the legality, if I were you. Are you always so giddy 
 in your actions?" 
 
 "I didn't think so, but Miss Leroy is finding me out, you 
 see. Will you have yours told? I can see a coach and 
 horses, and the letter C and two imprisonments I am sure 
 I can ! " He had screwed his glass into his eye and was 
 staring into the empty cup, standing tall and spare before 
 her. But Patricia stretched out her hand for it almost im- 
 pulsively. 
 
 " No, I am afraid of being told my fortune just now ! " 
 she said with a faint accession of colour, though she laughed. 
 " I have a superstitious dread of hearing any more bad 
 news." 
 
 "Why? Have you heard so much of late?" he asked
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 225 
 
 gently, and his eyes were quite kind in spite of their intent 
 gaze into her flushing face. 
 
 " Yes, on the whole I think I have. Besides Mrs. Leroy's 
 trouble, which has been very real to me, I have had another 
 friend very ill, and as he is an elderly man and an invalid, 
 I am very anxious." 
 
 "You don't mean the Duke of London, do you?" said 
 Vaughan with an impulse that surprised himself, for what 
 were Patricia Mornington and her anxieties to do with 
 him? 
 
 " Yes, I do." 
 
 " He is not so old a man that you need be unhappy, I 
 think," said Vaughan, setting down the empty teacup. 
 " It is only influenza, is it ? " 
 
 " No, but you must remember that he is rarely well, and 
 we are all very fond of him," said Patricia rather breathlessly. 
 " Everyone whom he admits to his friendship, I mean, and 
 a good many whom he does not ! I never knew a man who 
 tried to be popular less, and succeeded more." 
 
 " It seems to me almost good to be a Duke sometimes ! " 
 said Vaughan quietly. His words were nothing, but his 
 eyes meeting hers pointed the meaning. She was aware that 
 she had spoken earnestly, and the colour in her face deepened 
 rather than left it to her own slightly haughty surprise. Her 
 nerves must be very unsteady if a suggested compliment from 
 a man she professed to dislike could not pass her by, in- 
 different. 
 
 "There is a good deal of illness about, I am afraid," she 
 said as she rose to go, snatching at the platitude as a guard, 
 " Will you give my love to Fate, Miss Leroy, and say how 
 very, very glad I was to hear that her husband was getting 
 better." 
 
 " I hope you will be able to see her the next time you 
 come down," said the older lady cordially, as they shook 
 hands. She was under the spell of Patricia's manner, and 
 full of sincere admiration for her face and figure. "We 
 have persuaded her to come down once or twice, but she is 
 resting upstairs to-day." 
 
 "They are going away as soon as Eldred recovers suffi- 
 ciently to be moved," Vaughan added, as he walked with 
 her to the gate. " Of course it may be many weeks yet." 
 "I am staying in town," Patricia said a little hurriedly. 
 
 15
 
 226 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 "If you do not think I should be in the way, I should be 
 so thankful to come down every now and then ? " 
 
 She did not mean to revenge his former speech on him, 
 but he winced a little. " You have a right to be nasty, I 
 suppose ! " he said with his over-sensitive manner. " But 
 you need not rub it in. I know I was discourteous to you 
 on the last occasion when we met, and it has been rankling 
 in my mind ever since. I am crossgrained when I am very 
 unhappy, I suppose." 
 
 " I did not mean that ! " she said quickly and generously. 
 " You could not think it ! I dare say you were quite correct 
 in the circumstances, But I should really like to know if 
 you think visitors would be better away, and I promise not 
 to resent it if you tell me the truth ! " 
 
 " I think you will be perfectly welcome, and that we shall 
 all be very glad to see you ! " he said, as generously as she 
 had spoken. " And I hope I shall be over here on the 
 occasions when you come." 
 
 He held out his hand to her, smiling. Vaughan was if 
 anything a plain man ; when he was out of sorts or ill- 
 tempered he was positively ugly. But for the moment 
 Patricia acknowledged that she liked his face much better 
 than many a handsomer one. There was something irritat- 
 ingly attractive in his characteristics that made them linger 
 in her memory, as, for instance, the little croak in his voice 
 and the way in which he screwed the eyeglass into his eye 
 and looked down on her. She found herself pondering 
 about him long after he had passed out of her sight, and 
 forgiving him his unreasonable temper for the sake of his 
 quick kindness and the extreme gentleness with which he 
 could speak. Of one thing, moreover, she felt sure that 
 
 he was quite incapable of taking a liberty such as 
 
 a man might in placing a woman's cloak round her shoulders, 
 for instance. Generosity or inclination could call this 
 audacity, but she felt that Vaughan's fastidious rejection of 
 such methods was the better breeding. 
 
 And Vaughan himself, lighting a cigarette in the porch, 
 forgot for once that Patricia had just driven away in a seven 
 hundred guinea motor, or that her lot was fallen unto her 
 in too fair a ground. He remembered only two brown eyes 
 that were full of tears, and that proved her human.
 
 227 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " If in some Future yet to be 
 
 Thine heart should beat, 
 Hearing, across the thought of me, 
 
 Returning feet, 
 
 And then thine eyes should fill 
 Because they lingered still, 
 Were I a thousand miles afar we still might chance to meet !" 
 
 Mirage. 
 
 " LEAVE the blind up, Babs ! You are shutting out the sun- 
 light," said Eldred's voice lazily from the bed. 
 
 " I thought it was in your eyes, sweetheart," Fate re- 
 sponded, drawing up the blind again and fastening it, so that 
 the long level rays struck across the cool big room which was 
 really her own, but had become Eldred's kingdom for the 
 nonce. The bed had been wheeled round so that the 
 prisoner could at least breathe the free air for which he pined, 
 and the open windows made the long monotonous days less 
 hard to him. 
 
 " I always think there's health in the very feeling of sun- 
 shine ! " he said, turning his heavy head ever so slightly upon 
 the pillows, so that the apology of his blue eyes could reach 
 the lady sitting nearest to him. " Do you mind, Miss 
 Mornington ? " 
 
 " I infinitely prefer it, thanks, Mr. Leroy. A long acquain- 
 tance with real summers has caused me to hoard every ray 
 of sunshine in what is merely called after that Season in Eng- 
 land ! Like Mr. Vaughan, I would take a sun-bath every day 
 if I only could." 
 
 " How you must miss the warmth and the flowers of 
 Funchal ! Babs will let down the blinds because she thinks 
 
 IS*
 
 228 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 I shall be too hot I can't be hot getting no exercise. It's 
 rather shivery, if anything." 
 
 Patricia looked down at the helpless figure, shorn of its 
 strength, with the eyes of a possible mother. She was not a 
 very maternal woman as a rule by no means the " Cat- 
 woman " of Fate's condemnation but where her affections 
 were touched her protective instinct rose to guard the object. 
 And she was very fond of Eldred Leroy. For a singularly 
 simple and one-minded character Eldred attracted an unex- 
 pected amount of affection. His attribute of Youth was 
 perhaps one reason of this, and a naturally sunny disposition 
 which the world saw, while the real Eldred that lurked behind 
 it was a very reserved man, and one in whom his wife some- 
 times found surprising depths that she had not expected. 
 Even his male nurse, who still lingered to attend upon him 
 in his convalescence, had succumbed to a certain charm of 
 character in him, and satisfied Fate by his obvious devotion. 
 Patricia, sitting on one side of the bed, was conscious that 
 though there were several people in the room, each with a 
 marked personality that impelled attention, the man with the 
 bandaged head lying so helplessly on his pillows, was the 
 leal centre of everyone's thoughts as well as the obvious one 
 of the group. 
 
 " I was looking over May's ' Confession Book ' the other 
 day," remarked Marion Rodney from a seat nearer the 
 window, " and I came on that page where she induced Eldred 
 to write. I see that his idea of happiness is ' Fresh air ! " 
 
 " How funny she was over that ! " said Fate in tickled re- 
 miniscence. " She came to me quite solemnly and asked if 
 I had minded her asking Mr. Leroy to write before me, ' 'cos 
 she liked him a little bestest ! " 
 
 " May is my sweetheart," Eldred smiled to Patricia. " We 
 are great chums. When she grows up she is going to be my 
 second wife ! " 
 
 " And without disposing of Fate either ! " put in Gerald 
 Vaughan. " I asked her what she was going to do with 
 Mrs. Leroy, and she merely said, ' She could do a travel ! ' ' 
 
 " Oh, very well ! " retorted Fate. " I shall start for India 
 at once, overland, with the nicest man I can find. I can't 
 take a sea voyage, unfortunately; I am too uncertain a 
 sailor, and, of course, if he were very nice I could not possibly 
 look plain."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 229 
 
 " May has got a newer love than you, Eldred ! " warned 
 Mrs. Rodney. " She is now Miss Mornington's devoted 
 slave. Did you know?" she added, turning to Patricia. 
 
 " I did not, indeed, and I am immensely flattered, as it 
 must have been a lightning conquest. I found her in the 
 garden the last time I was down here on Thursday, was it 
 not ? and we made great friends. But I did not know that 
 she liked me very much. Indeed, she gave me a lecture on 
 deportment ! " 
 
 " That was for your soul's health," explained Gerald 
 Vaughan. " May sets us all to rights. What did she say to 
 you ? " 
 
 " She said, ' Aunty, if you let your pwetty fwock dwag it'll 
 be vewy dustered, and I fink your nursey will be cwoss ! ' I 
 held up my gown after that. I was most meek." 
 
 " Evidently your meekness made the desired impression, 
 for she asked me to bring her Confession Book to-day and 
 get 'her big lady' to write in it! Here it is." Marion 
 Rodney tossed a small battered volume into Patricia's lap 
 a volume that had evidently run the gauntlet of many ink- 
 pots and gone to bed with May herself occasionally. 
 
 " I had not bargained for such a compliment ! " said 
 Patricia a little ruefully. " May I read the other confessions 
 first ? " 
 
 " Not until you have written your own and you must speak 
 the truth, please." 
 
 " That, of course," said Patricia quietly, " as the book 
 belongs to a child. It is rather a grown-up possession for a 
 person of May's years, surely ? " 
 
 "It is the best-beloved of her heart all the same. She 
 wants Mr. Vaughan to write too, by the way." 
 
 " With pleasure," said Vaughan, his unexpected promptness 
 causing both Fate and Mrs. Rodney to look at him as if a 
 little startled. He crossed the room with the long step 
 that seemed unavoidable on account of his build, and 
 taking a small stool seated himself beside Patricia. 
 "Now, Miss Mornington, I will have that page opposite to 
 you ! " 
 
 " Wait a minute," said Patricia, wrinkling her brows as she 
 wrote, and wrestling with the rival merits of oysters and 
 raspberries as judged by her own taste. " To be strictly im- 
 partial, I ought, perhaps, to have put two answers to every
 
 230 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 question, but the book is not capacious enough. Now, Mr. 
 Vaughan your turn ! " 
 
 " What a lot you seem to have written ! " said Vaughan, 
 screwing his eyeglass into the eye nearest to her and peering 
 at the conscientious answers. " ' My favourite colours white 
 and fawn.' Pardon me, but white is not a colour! " 
 
 " It is the foundation for them all, anyhow, and the result 
 if they are all merged, isn't it? And, besides, you have no 
 right to look at my Confession before you write your own." 
 
 Vaughan took the book on to his own knee and began to 
 write in his turn. He was not sitting near enough to Patricia 
 for his sleeve even to brush her own, yet she had an annoyed 
 feeling of his proximity, and was a little restive under it. Two 
 or three times lately he had deliberately come and sat by her 
 side, as if he found some satisfaction in it. Patricia, always 
 with a preconception about Fate in her inmost mind, 
 wondered if he took refuge with her from himself and his 
 temptations ! They had met, inevitably, an incalculable 
 number of times since his embargo upon her presence at 
 Sunnington had been removed, for she had either motored 
 or driven down two or three times a week, and had generally 
 found him there, unless he were late, though even then he 
 arrived before she left. They were excellent friends now, she 
 told herself quietly, and on the whole she liked him. For, 
 in spite of an irritable temper and other characteristics no 
 more tolerable, Vaughan possessed that most subtle and 
 powerful influence called Personality which to some women 
 is all the Law and more than the Prophets. 
 
 " May I be allowed to read yours now that I have finished 
 my own ? " he demanded, cramping his small signature into the 
 furthest corner of the page. It was a fine handwriting at 
 the best of times. Patricia could hardly read the " Gerald 
 Ludlow Vaughan." 
 
 " Of course," she said with faint irony. " It will interest 
 you if only to see how much we differ ! " 
 
 " On the contrary, it interests me to see that we only 
 diverge sufficiently to blend a contrast. Entire sameness 
 would be monotony. Yours first : 
 
 " My favourite colours White and fawn. 
 My favourite occupation Riding. 
 My favourite names Arthur, Elizabeth, Helen.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 231 
 
 My favourite food Oysters. 
 
 My idea of misery To be helpless. 
 
 My idea of happiness Congenial companionship. 
 
 My favourite prose authors Hugo, Bunyan, Oliver 
 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 My favourite poets Omar Khayam and King Solomon. 
 My favourite artists Turner and Millet. 
 My pet aversion Ill-breeding. 
 My favourite virtue Tact. 
 The vice I hate most Dishonour. 
 My favourite motto Non quo, sed quomodo (Not who, 
 
 but how). 
 My signature Patricia Mornington." 
 
 " It is full of side-lights on your character! " said Vaughan. 
 
 " I have tried to be truthful ! " 
 
 " You have succeeded in putting me to shame ! " 
 
 " Let me read yours ! " said Patricia remorselessly. 
 
 " To yourself, then ! " 
 
 " You did not read mine to yourself ! " 
 
 "There was no occasion." 
 
 " That I feel sure is a base subterfuge to avoid vivisection 
 of your character," said Patricia calmly, but she did not read 
 out his confession nevertheless. 
 
 " My favourite colours Purple and brown. 
 My favourite occupation Sport. 
 My favourite names George and Margery. 
 My favourite food Olives and Chianti. 
 My idea of misery Want of means. 
 My idea of happiness Freedom from responsibility. 
 My favourite prose authors De Quincey and Cervantes. 
 My favourite poets Schiller, Homer, and Omar Khayam. 
 My favourite artists Michael Angelo and Giotto. 
 My pet aversion A Philistine. 
 My favourite virtue Common-sense. 
 The vice I hate most Lying. 
 
 My favourite motto ' It is on the knees of the gods.' 
 My signature Gerald Ludlow Vaughan." 
 
 " We only touch once over Omar Khayam," said Patricia
 
 232 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 thoughtfully. " It seems to me strange that we should both 
 have named him." 
 
 " So our souls meet under the auspices of old Omar ! You 
 do not, however, really like him." 
 
 " I ! Really, Mr. Vaughan, I must be allowed to know 
 my own taste." 
 
 " He is utterly alien to you. I doubt if his philosophy 
 comes home to you at all. You simply like the music of 
 Fitzgerald's translation. 
 
 " Oh, don't be foolish ! " said Patricia a trifle impatiently. 
 " What can you possibly know of me ? It is not even worth 
 while to quarrel with you ! " 
 
 She turned the pages idly and read scraps of other people's 
 failings with annoyance that she had paid any attention to 
 Vaughan's synopsis. It was nothing to her nothing. He 
 did not enter into her life at all. If she regarded him in 
 any particular light it was sadly, as something that might 
 possibly threaten Fate Leroy's perfect circle of existence, as 
 she saw it. She kept her eyes studiously on the written 
 pages of the child's book, and away from Vaughan's lean, 
 strong profile. There was a suggestion of hunger in the 
 lines of his face a look as of a man dissatisfied, who 
 might have been almost peevish if he had not passed 
 through the refining fire of endurance. Her eyes, outwardly 
 on what she was reading, saw inwardly every line of the 
 face beside her, and read it with a gentleness that was 
 almost tender. 
 
 " Fate has put courage and self-reliance as her pet virtues, 
 I see," she remarked for the sake of breaking her own 
 thought. "They seem to me a trifle egotistical. I would, 
 I think, call her kind and generous rather than brave and 
 able to stand alone." 
 
 " Yet your own idea of misery is to be helpless ! " he re- 
 minded her quickly. " How very illogical you are." 
 
 " And how very personal you are this afternoon ! " said 
 Patricia good-humouredly, turning to him with an impulse 
 that surprised herself, and with a warm light of laughter in 
 the brown depths of her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, that is my style I was always impertinent ! " he 
 returned calmly. " Here is the book, Mrs. Rodney with 
 two more victims, as you can tell May." 
 
 " Thanks so much. I must be getting home to her now
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 233 
 
 my nurse has asked for an 'evening out' and I have to put 
 the chicks to bed myself. I sometimes wonder when my 
 ' evening out ' comes ! I am sure the mothers want it as much 
 as the nurses." 
 
 "That is not a bad idea," said Eldred. " The last develop- 
 ment of Woman's Suffrage that they shall have their ' night 
 off,' whether married or single. Babs here wants hers badly 
 enough of late, I am sure." 
 
 "You silly old thing!" said Fate with dainty disdain. "If 
 you don't take care I will motor back to town with Patricia, 
 and leave Phlumpie to sick nurse." 
 
 " Phlumpie's idea of nursing is to sit on the patient's 
 chest ! " said Eldred laughing. " He was lying on mine all 
 the morning he found it nice and warm." 
 
 " He is a privileged person all the same he was the first 
 you recognised ! I am jealous of Phlumpie 1 " said Fate, 
 seating herself on the side of the bed and lovingly pulling 
 the counterpane quite awry. 
 
 " Not quite ! " breathed her husband almost inaudibly ; but 
 she heard, and their eyes met and forgot the rest of the world 
 for a minute. 
 
 It was the first time that Eldred had been allowed so many 
 visitors, and Patricia rose to leave before her usual hour, fear- 
 ing to overtire him. Usually she found him with Fate alone, 
 and Vaughan did not go up to talk to him until she had left ; 
 but he was so far advanced in his recovery that Miss Leroy 
 had left to prepare her home to receive him as a convalescent, 
 and he and Fate were to go as soon as the doctor would let 
 him be moved. 
 
 It was August when Eldred met with his accident, and now 
 it was October. Thanks to a sound constitution and the full 
 strength of his manhood he had come back to life more 
 rapidly than the most sanguine of his doctors had hoped. 
 The injury having been to the right side of his head, his 
 speech was hardly affected from the first, and the slight para- 
 lysis of the left side of his body had quickly passed off; but 
 for the first month he had not exerted himself much to re- 
 cover the difficult words that came slowly to his lips, and had 
 been like a child learning to think connectedly. The perfec- 
 tion of the comprehension between his wife and himself was 
 never more beautifully instanced than the relief with which 
 he turned to her from the very first, to express what he could
 
 234 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 not. She was his interpreter, and they seemed as by a 
 miracle to have but one mind between them. He had not 
 yet attempted to write or to read, but speech had become 
 habitual to him again, and with his renewed grip upon life 
 he was looking forward to the change of leaving the sick-room 
 for Miss Leroy's house in the country. In the meantime he 
 held court, and to-day his audience had been increased. He 
 was not even now really tired, and smiled up at Patricia as 
 she said good-bye, asking her to come as often as she could 
 and stay as long as she pleased. 
 
 "We are off next week, I hope!" he said. " Babs wants 
 you to come and help her to pack up." 
 
 " Of course I will. I shall be delighted. In fact my tears 
 at losing you will be mingled with my joy at helping you to 
 get away ! " 
 
 " I shall be glad to go. I am sick of lying here ! " he said 
 ingenuously. As Patricia stood, looking down on him, his 
 face seemed to her that of a pathetic boy, for his hair had 
 grown longer than its usual restricted down, and was rubbed 
 into a curl or two on his forehead, while his face had a little 
 colour in it. She looked at the blue eyes following his wife 
 contentedly about the room, and at the sweet firm lips, and 
 wished she had been his sister that she might have bent down 
 and kissed him. It was an absolutely pure-hearted impulse 
 that Eldred roused in many women, and of which Fate had 
 only need to be glad. 
 
 " You need not trouble to come to the gate, Mr. Vaughan," 
 Patricia remarked as she ran down the shallow staircase to 
 the little hall, and a hasty tread followed her. "There is 
 no occasion to pack me into the motor to-day ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " he demanded with a touch of resentment in 
 his voice. "Did I do it so badly last time? I am sure I 
 spread the rug over you and banged the door quite like a 
 professional footman." 
 
 " No ! no ! it is not that " 
 
 " Have I done anything to merit your displeasure, then, 
 that I am dismissed from your service in such an undeserved 
 manner ? " 
 
 "You need not labour with all those elaborate phrases!" 
 said Patricia drily. " It is simply that there is no motor to 
 pack me into. I came by train." 
 
 " By train ! " He stared at her for a minute, then caught
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 235 
 
 up his hat deftly from the hall-table as he followed her. 
 " Very well I shall see you to the station ! " 
 
 "No, do not trouble. There is no necessity." 
 
 " There is every necessity because it pleases me," he said 
 quietly. " How do you think Eldred looks ? " 
 
 " Much, much better. It is Fate who needs attention now. 
 She looks fagged." 
 
 " Ramsey, the nurse, is doing his best in that way. He 
 runs after her all day with glasses of port wine and biscuits." 
 Vaughan spoke with faint satire. 
 
 " I am very glad indeed to hear it," said Patricia decidedly 
 all the more decidedly because she fancied that in his 
 manner she detected jealousy of anyone else who looked after 
 Mrs. Leroy in competition with himself. And this was pos- 
 sibly true, because however honestly a man may turn his back 
 on a stage of mental feeling, it does not follow that he will 
 eliminate all the habits of it at once. 
 
 " I shall be very glad when they are away, and with Miss 
 Leroy again. I was sorry she had to leave, and throw the 
 housekeeping on to Fate's shoulders," said Patricia thought- 
 fully. "Mr. Leroy told me they hoped to get away next 
 week." 
 
 " Yes," said Vaughan absently. He was not, at the 
 moment, thinking of either Eldred or Fate ; he was looking 
 in a sidelong fashion at the fine lines of the figure beside 
 him, and noticing how well this woman walked. Patricia 
 generally wore cool linen gowns when she went to Sunnington, 
 as long as the mild autumn allowed her, partly because the 
 severity of the white was less ostentatious than other clothes, 
 and the quiet of the " Dead Season " in London made her 
 fear to be remarked in any way. Patricia's linen gowns, how- 
 ever, cost as much as many women's silks, and it was at any 
 time unlikely that she would be passed in a crowd. During 
 May or June she had been but one woman a little more 
 beautiful and better dressed than a multitude of others. In 
 September and October she would have been painfully 
 apparent at least to herself. Vaughan was not unapprecia- 
 tive of a thing because he chose to cavil at it. He had 
 always, in his heart, loved the perfection of Patricia's clothing 
 and the nobility of her build. A long experience of walking 
 on cobbles in Funchal had trained her to a certain light firm- 
 ness of step, and he experienced the same pleasure in walk-
 
 236 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 ing with her that he would have done in riding behind a well- 
 stepping horse. 
 
 " Fate has asked me to come and help her to pack up ! " 
 said the object of his thoughts suddenly, with a little mali- 
 cious desire to assert her intimacy in the household out of 
 which he would once have thrust her. 
 
 " Yes, she has asked me too ! " he returned calmly, taking 
 the wind out of her sails. " They are shutting up the house, 
 and sending the cat to the home at Battersea. Of course it 
 makes a good deal to do, with packing things away." 
 
 " Poor Phlumpie ! " said Patricia, to cover her defeat. " I 
 suppose they will be gone some months ? " 
 
 " Eldred has three months sick leave from now, and prob- 
 ably an extension if the doctor advises it. His chiefs are 
 treating him well," said Vaughan with grudging justice, for 
 he did not believe in government officials having bowels of 
 compassion. 
 
 " Oh, well, of course, I am going to help Mrs. Leroy with 
 her personal belongings," said Patricia in a tone of supe- 
 riority, recovering her lost advantage. That it was a point 
 gained to her was proved by the heat with which he answered. 
 
 " She could almost do that for herself, I should think ! It 
 is the extra arrangements the packing up at home, in which 
 she really requires help ! " 
 
 " Oh, no she wants someone to pack for her, so that she 
 need not leave Mr. Leroy. I am going to be her maid ! " 
 (Patricia was exultant. Vaughan could not, at least, be Fate's 
 maid !) 
 
 " Yes, of course," he assented unexpectedly. " Leroy will 
 want his things put in too. I shall offer to be his valet ! " 
 
 The humour of the situation overcame Patricia's sense of 
 a jealous right in Fate Leroy. She raised her lambent eyes 
 suddenly to his face, and laughed out. She was woman of 
 the world enough not to be afraid of the sound of her own 
 laughter. 
 
 " At this rate they may just as well sit side by side without 
 moving a finger, until we actually dress them and put them 
 out of the house ! " she said. 
 
 " I have no doubt it will come to that if you are so deter- 
 mined to make a slave of yourself ! " said Vaughan, unjustly 
 carrying the war into the enemy's country. 
 
 " Well, we need not bicker over them, poor things ! " said
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 237 
 
 Patricia more mildly. " Let us at least part in amity here 
 is the station." 
 
 " I never intended to part in anything else ! " he returned 
 loftily. " There is your train in now, but you need not hurry 
 you have exactly two minutes before it starts." 
 
 " I wish you had not said ' exactly,' it makes me much more 
 nervous than if it were actually moving out ! " Patricia com- 
 plained, avoiding a carriage containing a baby and biscuit 
 crumbs, and narrowly escaping a smoking compartment in 
 consequence. The next instant she found that she need not 
 trouble to look after herself, at least. With one hand 
 Vaughan opened the door of an empty carriage, and with the 
 other under her elbow assisted her in. As she thanked him 
 the train began to move, but the last she saw before she 
 turned from the window was his raised hat, and the refined, 
 cross face beneath, with quick, cold eyes that lingered oddly 
 in her memory ; there was not even the gentleness of approval 
 in them, and yet they were not unkindly. 
 
 " I wonder," she said to herself as she sat back in her 
 lonely seat, " why I like him ? " 
 
 At the next station her musing was interrupted by the 
 entrance of four people a gentleman and lady, who passed 
 up the carriage and sat in the two corner seats furthest from 
 her, and two younger women who entered severally, and 
 sat opposite to her side by side. Patricia observed them with 
 a quickened attention born of the past painful months. Her 
 experience had taught her to divide into Classes, where before 
 she had judged broadly as educated and uneducated. She 
 had learned the meaning of " Ourselves " in Lady Vera's 
 mouth, and the equivalent expression "One's own world" in 
 Fate Leroy's, though the two phrases meant very different 
 selections. Patricia was always seeking, whether consciously 
 or not, for that great Middle Class to whom she believed she 
 belonged by right of birth the workers of the world, but 
 not the mere labourers. It had become a pitiful pride in 
 her to divide herself from the family of Blais considered 
 typically by reason of that less thoroughbred Mornington 
 strain in her, and it was taking the place of the beliefs and 
 traditions of Lady Helen's day which had been so rudely 
 dispelled in Lady Vera's set. These people in the railway 
 carriage with her were the Middle Class, and it was in a fur- 
 tive study of them and their circumstances that she had of
 
 238 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 late discarded the motor and travelled dustily by rail. What 
 was it in these men and women that induced the atmosphere 
 of which she so honestly approved ? She looked at the first 
 comers, the gentleman and lady sitting furthest from her, and 
 found ordinary, comely faces, not lacking in intelligence, but 
 with a touch of anxiety in them that meant the same ex- 
 perience as Vaughan's in a different degree the seeking for 
 something bitterly denied, which was yet an education by 
 reason of its very denial. Of the two women opposite, one 
 was pretty and rather ill-dressed, the other quiet, neat, with 
 nothing that could be disapproved, but it was not so much 
 mere clothes, suited to their position or no, or the scraps of 
 very commonplace conversation Patricia caught, which meant 
 anything worth the pondering, to her mind. These were no 
 doubt dull people; well, she had sampled mediocrity and 
 even worse in Bertha Vaughan, though on the whole she 
 found Vaughan's step-sister more tolerable than Editha Blais 
 Heron and her follies. But in all this enormous majority of 
 England that she saw passing her in the street in the traffic 
 in fancy behind the solid walls of South Kensington there 
 was the same reserve of reliance, the same sense of 
 capability. They represented, to Patricia's mind, the sturdy 
 morality that made a safe foundation for other advantages, 
 even though it was professed in varying creeds. 
 
 " Some of us would say that we could not do these things 
 because it would lower our characters and some would say 
 that if we did them we should be afraid to say our prayers ! " 
 
 So long as the women of the Middle Classes were afraid 
 to say their prayers if they did not honour God, their neigh- 
 bour, and themselves, Patricia felt that their world was best 
 for her, and as clean as the fresh air after a sick-room. 
 
 It had been one of Lady Helen's tenets that if people were 
 gentlefolk they were both pleasant and profitable to know. 
 She had a natural preference for her own connections and 
 relations (they reached through half the peerage), with the 
 old, staunch adherence that belonged to her age ; but she 
 preferred them because they were of her blood, and not be- 
 cause they were of " good family " and held the hollow repu- 
 tation of coming from a blood stock. Lady Helen knew, 
 even in her own day, how often the baton-sinister should have 
 spoiled the escutcheon. Patricia had been brought up to 
 think all men and women her equals who could behave as
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 239 
 
 such ; but she had been but vaguely conscious of an outside 
 world, those people whom Fortune had sent in her way being 
 as a rule sufficiently moneyed or of a social position to meet 
 her with an introduction. Of all the immense mass of the 
 people in England, with lives outside the pale of her own, 
 yet with claims to her consideration, she had never thought. 
 Now she saw them consciously, toiling past her, living 
 anxiously but cleanly in their humdrum morality, a class so 
 extended that she could hardly say where it began or ended, 
 but each unit of which had suddenly become an individual 
 to her. 
 
 She had time for study and for thought in those days, 
 through the drone of the Dead Season, when not a soul she 
 knew appeared to be in London, and the great house in Picca- 
 dilly was given over to cleaners and whitewashers. At the 
 other end of its vast emptiness, miles away from her she 
 fancied, were those rooms inhabited by the personality she 
 called her father, and whose life was as locked to her as his 
 private doors. They hardly ever met, unless they en- 
 countered each other in the darkened hall, and she did not 
 even know when he left town at a week-end for Rye, or re- 
 turned for a purpose she had only divined through Lord 
 Lowndes the tacit watch for some service to be rendered to 
 the Duke of London. Yet it seemed to her as if in the 
 pauses of her meditation she were always listening for his 
 step, for some sign from him that should explain their curious 
 strained relations, just as the great white house was always 
 waiting for its long-deferred tragedy. In her own rooms, 
 still untouched by the cleaners' hand as they would be until 
 she joined the Harbingers, Patricia lived her life for those 
 quiet weeks that came like the blessed pause before the fighter 
 girds on his armour for a new and perhaps sterner effort. 
 John Bunyan in writing his Pilgrim's Progress made no finer 
 point than that rest by the wayside which he calls the Land 
 of Beulah, and which comes as a merciful breathing space both 
 to Christian and Christiana. It seemed to Patricia Morning- 
 ton, beset by doubt as to what she was going to do with her 
 life, and with a hideous sense of suspicion already beginning 
 to dog her footsteps, that she had found her Land of Beulah 
 in the half-closed house in Piccadilly and the sick-room at 
 Sunnington. In the one she meditated on her experiences 
 in the other; and, naturally enough, inextricably interwoven
 
 240 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 with all her peace and pleasure was that active and disturbing 
 personality called Gerald Vaughan. She could not dissociate 
 him from her few weeks of Beulah, during which she rested 
 from her struggle, any more than she could pass his pro- 
 pinquity by as a mere detail of the picture, an incident that 
 was finally merged in the anxiety and relief for Fate and 
 Eldred. Vaughan declined to be merged into any other in- 
 terest in her mind ; he stood out sharply, both on account of 
 his former belligerence and later amity. His companionship 
 had been so curiously forced upon her in their mutual faith- 
 fulness to Fate that she had accepted it unconsciously, and 
 now that she found herself reaching the end of the episode 
 she was aware of unexpected discomfort and rebellion. 
 When Fate and Eldred went away, her association with 
 Vaughan would naturally cease ; there was nothing to bind 
 them together outside the little house at Sunnington, and it 
 was impossible that without some decisive contest with fortune 
 that their lives could continue to enter into each other. Yet 
 it was with a feeling of impotent regret that was almost pain 
 that Patricia went down to Sunnington for the last time, for 
 some months at least, to help pack up for Fate, and to say 
 good-bye to all of them. In three months she knew, although 
 she thrust the thought from her, that a decision awaited her 
 which meant a totally new phase of her existence, and a final 
 disseverance from the least chance of meeting Vaughan 
 again. And though her vague desire to continue the ac- 
 quaintance was hardly an acknowledged thing, even to her- 
 self, the shadow of Caryl Lexiter loomed large behind 
 Vaughan's actual bodily presence each time she met him, 
 until it seemed like a cloud that would finally blot them out 
 from each other. 
 
 Vaughan was already in possession and engaged in packing 
 up when Patricia arrived. The first knowledge she had of 
 his presence was his bending figure in its shirt-sleeves, wrest- 
 ling with a large, untidy pile of music. She was amused to 
 notice, however, that though he had divested himself of a 
 coat he had retained his eyeglass. It remained, firmly fixed 
 in his eye, when he rose to his feet and shook hands with her. 
 
 " You have stolen a march on me ! " she said with a smile 
 somewhere in the eyes upraised to his. " But never mind ! 
 I shall work much harder than you, and accomplish more 
 after all."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 241 
 
 " You would find it difficult ! " he returned, smiling back at 
 her without malice. Vaughan's smile was apt to be tinctured 
 with irony and wryed his mouth. But it was evident that 
 to-day he was in a gracious mood. " I have been dusting and 
 packing away books," he remarked, passing an irreproachable 
 handkerchief across his moistened temples. " Did you ever 
 know that that was a heating process? It is a more con- 
 densed exertion than ten miles hard cycling, but it produces 
 quite as much effect." 
 
 " I packed most of a heterogeneous library when I left 
 Madeira," said Patricia, " because I would not trust the native 
 servants. Are you sure you dusted them first ? " 
 
 "Why this scepticism?" 
 
 " Because most men would think they had done their duty 
 in placing them neatly so as to lose as little space as possible. 
 The dust would pass unnoticed until they washed their 
 hands ! " 
 
 " I wish you would kindly disentangle me from the re- 
 mainder of your male acquaintance, Miss Mornington ! Why, 
 because they possess these dreadful vices, should you suppose 
 me their equal ? I assure you that I am a very tidy, thrifty, 
 admirable person with a respect for books ! " 
 
 " Well, we won't quarrel about it ! Your opinion of your- 
 self seems to be so good that mine is quite superfluous. 
 Where is Fate?" 
 
 " She is giving Eldred his beef-tea, or his hair-wash, or 
 his morning paper something happens to the poor invalid 
 every hour. It is no use your going to look for her, because 
 you will only be unwelcome." 
 
 " What am I to do then ? " 
 
 " You are to stay and help me ! " 
 
 " I will undertake the music, under those circumstances," 
 said Patricia, passing him promptly and swooping down upon 
 the pile. She lifted her clean linen skirt without embarrass- 
 ment, pinning it neatly round her, and leaving the silk under- 
 skirt to bear the brunt of the fray, knelt down and began 
 reducing the pile to order with strong, shapely hands. 
 Vaughan stood at her elbow looking down on the coils of 
 warm hair under her hat such hair! thick, and rich, and 
 bright with health. He did not attempt to go on with the 
 work of dismantling the room of Fate's private possessions ; 
 seeing which Patricia paused and looked up. 
 
 16
 
 242 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " I think you might perhaps carry that Venetian glass into 
 the dining-room and lock it up in the sideboard, if you do not 
 know of a safer place," she remarked. " I know Mrs. Leroy 
 values it." 
 
 " I am waiting to help you tie up that pile. You cannot 
 do it alone, and it has to be tied together, and laid on the top 
 of the piano, which will finally be covered with a dust sheet. 
 You see I have all my orders ! " (He did not add, because 
 it is to be hoped that he did not know, that Fate had thought- 
 fully apportioned work to her two helpers that would ordin- 
 arily have been done by her servants, for some Macchiavellian 
 reason deep down in her feminine heart, finding it rather 
 hard in reality to invent a probable employment.) 
 
 " So it seems ! Well, where is the string ? I am quite 
 ready with the music." 
 
 Vaughan knelt down beside her at her self-imposed task, 
 and began to tie up the pile as she suggested. Once his hand 
 touched hers, but he did not make the mistake of an apology, 
 ignoring it with finer taste. They were simply two workers, 
 brought into juxtaposition to help their friends. Such at 
 least was their mental attitude whatever Mrs. Leroy's might 
 have been. 
 
 " How well Eldred sings that thing of Marzial's ! " he re- 
 marked, looking down at the upper sheet of music which bore 
 on its title-page " Ask nothing more." 
 
 " Yes ! " said Patricia with a sigh. " I wish he were well 
 enough to sing again, as well for my own sake as his." 
 
 " Are you so fond of music ? " 
 
 " I am very fond of Mr. Leroy's singing. There is some- 
 thing that appeals to me in its very simplicity." 
 
 " It is not a passionate voice ! " 
 
 " No but so true ! " 
 
 " Oh, the two things are not incompatible," he said a trifle 
 impatiently. "I have heard voices no more beautiful than 
 Eldred's, yet which thrilled me more because they were not 
 so lifeless." 
 
 " Lifeless ! " said Patricia indignantly. " You call Mr. 
 Leroy's voice lifeless when he sings such songs as ' Ask no- 
 thing more ' and his wife is in the room ! " She paused and 
 looked at him full, with amazed brown eyes. He did not 
 answer. Something seemed suddenly to communicate itself 
 to her, and she wished she had not even touched a theme
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 243 
 
 which to her had been almost sacred. In the recesses of her 
 memory many a dusky evening in this very room was thrilled 
 through by Eldred Leroy's voice singing to his wife in an 
 unknown world of which Patricia knew that she only caught 
 the echo in the music: 
 
 ' ' Once to have sense of you more 
 Think you and breathe of you, sweet ! 
 He that hath more let him give 
 He that hath wings let him soar ; L 
 Mine is the heart at your feet 
 Here that must love you to live !" 
 
 " Passionate voices are so often throaty ! " she remarked 
 prosaically, turning from Vaughan even as she spoke. His 
 silence, she could not tell why, had filled her with a double 
 pain. She felt the wrack of the storm in him, and did not 
 realise that the storm was past. 
 
 " Is yours not a musical household ? " he asked, rising also 
 and leisurely following her across the room to the mantel- 
 shelf from which she was carefully lifting the Venetian glass. 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Neither is mine," he said briefly. " I think we have a 
 great deal in common, you and I." 
 
 Now it was her turn to be silent, for that needed no answer 
 that she could give. The work of clearing the rooms of 
 anything which they knew that Fate or Eldred held dear, 
 went on between them with hardly another personal word, all 
 the long sunny afternoon. Fate herself appeared once, and 
 told them to come up to Eldred's room for tea; but she 
 seemed satisfied to leave them to themselves, and remained 
 contentedly with her husband while they busied themselves on 
 her behalf. 
 
 " I feel like a Sultana at least, issuing commands and not 
 stirring a finger myself," she said, when her friends at last 
 presented themselves in the sick-room. "Eldred, isn't it 
 nice to see other people wearing themselves out like this in 
 our service ? " 
 
 " I am afraid you must be awfully tired," Eldred said, from 
 the easy chair to which he had been" promoted. He had not 
 tested his strength by going downstairs as yet, but he walked 
 about the upper rooms leaning on Fate's arm. 
 
 " Mr. Vaughan is in the last stage of exhaustion, I think," 
 
 16*
 
 244 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 said Patricia gravely. " It is because he would begin before 
 me. But I am quite fresh, and shall finish up after tea." 
 
 "You really need not do any more, Patricia! Marion 
 Rodney promised to come to-morrow too, and see the last of 
 us. We leave by the morning train, and she is going to take 
 Phlumpie to Battersea. How will you like that, Mans ? " she 
 added to the white ball of fur cuddled down on Eldred's knee. 
 
 " But I really should like to just finish putting your china 
 away ! " said Patricia with an eagerness of which she felt 
 ashamed the next instant. " You cannot leave all that old 
 Derby out for three months, and at the mercy of any char- 
 woman you send in to clean up ! " She had a subtle reluctance 
 to own that she had finished all she could do, and to go home 
 to the empty house that waited and listened. It seemed to 
 her the borders of the Land of Beulah that when she left 
 Sunnington to-day she left behind her one period of her life, 
 and a vague, sweet possibility or sense of happier circum- 
 stances. Vaughan also seemed as inclined to go on working 
 as herself at least he accompanied her down to the lower 
 rooms again, but instead of doing anything on his own 
 account was more inclined to follow her about and criticise 
 her efforts, if she would not let him assist her. 
 
 " I suppose you also are leaving town ? " he said suddenly 
 as Patricia slowly turned the key in the last cupboard, and 
 acknowledged, even to herself, that it was all done. 
 
 " I am going to some friends very shortly," she said, 
 "They have a house-party for the shooting, I believe." 
 
 " Ah ! " The old envious vision of the life he would have 
 liked rose up before Vaughan, and brought the carping tone 
 back into his voice. " That is the pleasantest holiday after 
 all better than going abroad to some overcrowded French 
 place, or the Italian Riviera. Are you going to Scotland ? " 
 
 "No, to Chilcote Lord Harbinger's place in the Mid- 
 lands." 
 
 " I hope you will enjoy yourself ! " said Vaughan conven- 
 tionally. Then, unexpectedly, the real side of the man broke 
 down the guard that barriers the sexes, and he spoke to her 
 simply what was true. 
 
 " I wish I were going to be there too ! " he said. " I should 
 like to be one of a house-party with you." 
 
 And Patricia paid him a great compliment, for instead of 
 meeting it with her usual composure, she " suddenly, sweetly,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 245 
 
 strangely blushed," though her voice was merely courteous 
 as she said, " I wish you were, too." 
 
 That was their real good-bye, because the brief time that 
 passed while she was still in the house, and even when he 
 walked to the gate with her, held nothing that she cared to 
 remember. She was not going by train to-day; the motor 
 was again in requisition, and Vaughan put her into it as 
 usual. There was one moment indeed when he stood with 
 his hand on the door, and looked at her, his lips parted as 
 though he were going to speak. But in the strange pause 
 wherein her heart stood still as with a sweet surprise, he 
 closed his lips again and drew back. All the way home, 
 through the mists of the early autumn evening, she thought 
 of that subtle restraint. Had it been Caryl Lexiter at the 
 carriage-door, he would have spoken.
 
 246 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "The Great Gods pity thee, when Time's reverses 
 Have shown the end of all their loving-mercies ! 
 And thou shalt pray them rather for their curses." 
 
 Benison. 
 
 THERE is a despair which does not interfere with ordinary 
 avocations, and which is of so still a quality that it is not 
 apparent until in some supreme moment it arises to prove 
 mightier than all the overlying outward aspect. Neverthe- 
 less, it is always there, as in Giles Mornington's case, at the 
 root of things, and forms the foundation of some lives that 
 seem passed ordinarily enough amongst hopeful men. There 
 was nothing of tragedy about Mornington, even his pre- 
 maturely grey hair passing notice; and he was accounted a 
 pleasant enough fellow at his Club the more so in that he 
 said so little while his being a shrewd financier was never 
 called in question. The relations of his domestic life, which 
 took Lady Vera to the Continent and himself to Rye, were 
 so common that they were merely expressed in the usual 
 remark, " They don't hit it off that's all." And then every- 
 one who knew Lady Vera pronounced her a fast woman, and 
 regarded her estrangement from a mere husband as the only 
 rational outcome of her temperament. 
 
 When he was at Rye, Mr. Mornington became simply a 
 golfer, just as in town he was to the majority simply a finan- 
 cier, the whole energies of the man being absorbed in his 
 occupation of the time, whatever that might chance to be. 
 This gift of concentration had made him a successful finan- 
 cier because he had begun in the heat of his youth; but it 
 had not made him a really great golfer, though he was a
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 247 
 
 medium player. His caddy sometimes backed him, privately, 
 against another member of the Club, when he was in form, 
 but more often adverse judgment was pronounced on Morn- 
 ington by the infallible statement of the man who carried 
 his clubs, and that is the sternest tribunal of the Royal Game. 
 
 " Mr. Mornington 'e can drive at times, and 'e can put, 
 and 'e can approach. But I'm blessed if 'e can do all them 
 things together at the same game. 'E 'as 'is driving morn- 
 ings, and 'is putting mornings, but there's times when 'e can 
 no more 'ole a ball than a six-months' learner. 'E'll get a 
 good straight drive, and then 'e'll foozle 'is approach. Now 
 that may be good practice play, but it ain't Golf ! " 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Mornington never seemed to weary of 
 his pursuit of perfection, and most week-ends saw him at the 
 Marsh Grange, from which he drove down to Rye and went 
 out to Camber. When Lord Lowndes joined him in October 
 they played a match together, but he was a much better 
 player than his guest. Lord Lowndes had not the necessary 
 concentration for golf, and, like Mornington, he had come 
 to it too late in life. 
 
 " If it were chess, my dear fellow, I would give you a 
 knight ! " he said with his genial laugh, as they started for 
 the links on the Sunday morning. " But as it's golf, you 
 must give me a stroke a hole to make anything of a game." 
 
 " If I revenge myself for the licking you gave me in the 
 billiard-room last night it will be only fair," said Mornington, 
 gathering up the reins with a carelessness that made his 
 companion vaguely uncomfortable. Lord Lowndes was too 
 good a driver himself to be careless. He might risk a pace 
 or a shave that other men would not dare, but it was merely 
 the sureness of experience, and he was never reckless. The 
 dog-cart had been waiting at the door for some minutes, and 
 the mare was fresh. She was trying to pull Mornington's 
 arms out of the sockets, but though he was strong enough 
 to hold her, he did not bestow much notice upon her, and 
 the minute she quieted down he drove with the lax wrist 
 that was culpable to the horseman at his side. Lord Lowndes 
 secretly slipped his strong hand round the side rail to hold 
 on, and wished with all his heart that Mornington would 
 allow him to change into the driving seat. 
 
 " I was in wonderful form last night," he said absently. 
 " I don't know when I've made a break like that second one
 
 248 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 of mine. By the way, Mornington, doesn't your daughter 
 ever come down here ? " 
 
 There was no perceptible hesitation before he received an 
 answer. 
 
 " Patricia has only been in England since March, and I 
 don't think she has found time to come down as yet." 
 
 " Oh ! I asked because I know she is still in town, and I 
 rather expected to find her here." 
 
 Perhaps the wish was father to the thought, for he appre- 
 ciated ladies' society, and thought Patricia " a charming 
 creature ! " That Mornington did not reply escaped his 
 notice from the fact that they were descending Rye Hill at 
 a smart pace, and he honestly expected any moment to be 
 flung out of the cart. Mornington's attention, too, seemed 
 concentrated on his horse, to whom he remarked "Whoa, 
 mare ! " and pulled her in before the turn towards the Town 
 Salts which lies below the Landgate. It was a sad-coloured 
 October day, and the windless Marshes were green and grey 
 and sunless. They seemed to run on and on for ever, and 
 to absorb and deaden every other feature of the landscape. 
 Here and there a far-off patch of sheep grazed against the 
 green levels, but even the tram-lines and the ugly black 
 engine and carriages were but as specks in the enormous 
 insistence of Romney Marsh. It affected Lord Lowndes, 
 who was always sensitive to climate and surroundings, with 
 a sense of resignation that he found infinitely depressing. 
 
 " I should think you must find it dull enough to cut your 
 throat when you are down here alone ! " he said, as they 
 trotted over the little bridge and jerked up, as by a miracle, 
 at the station. " God bless my soul ! I should fill the house, 
 if I were you ! " 
 
 " I am afraid the Grange hardly offers enough diversion 
 to attract a house-party ! " said Mornington drily. His eyes, 
 half stealthily, went out to the quiet Marshes as if they found 
 something there that understood his secret mind. The broad- 
 breasted river with its red-sailed boats broke the stretch of 
 land in the foreground, but even here the extreme flatness 
 gave that same passive air of offering no resistance. The 
 banks were as low and unbroken as those of an Egyptian 
 canal, and the river wound away like a broad, bright riband 
 and was lost amongst the rich green pasture lands. Far off 
 on the abrupt cliff-side he could see the chimneys of his
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 249 
 
 house among the dark patches of timber, and immediately 
 below the cliffs that the woods only invaded when the sea 
 left them, began the Marshes. They had meant something 
 to him for so long, the whole place had become such a single 
 haven of peace in his jaded life, that it was no wonder he 
 looked to their vast flats disappearing into distance as if there 
 were some secret understanding between them. Something 
 of the resignation of the scene which had oppressed Lord 
 Lowndes was in the quiet figure of the man who was merely 
 the ordinary golfer, keen on the game, to the world at large. 
 But Lord Lowndes' very natural enquiry had drawn a shadow 
 between him and the Marshes the shadow of a girl in a cool 
 summer dress, with brown eyes that were so ready to help 
 and to sympathise, if only they had been able to read through 
 the silent barrier he held between her and him. She was 
 standing at the foot of the great staircase in his huge, loveless 
 house that was no home ..... she had always stood there 
 in his mental fancy ever since. 
 
 As if the thought communicated itself by some process of 
 telepathy, Lord Lowndes harked back to his former subject. 
 
 " Does your daughter play golf, Mornington ? " 
 
 " Horses are rather Patricia's hobby," said Mornington 
 composedly. " She rides a good deal." 
 
 "Are they? Sensible woman! They are mine too. But 
 it's an odd coincidence " Lord Lowndes laughed without 
 the least intentional malice. " Do you know that she was 
 nicknamed ' Sceptre ' at the sporting clubs? Sceptre was the 
 most masculine mare ever foaled, and the men found some 
 sort of likeness to your daughter in the quality." 
 
 " I should hardly have described her as unfeminine ! " 
 
 " My dear man, pray don't mistake me ! It was a compli- 
 ment rather than any detraction that was intended. There 
 is an absence of feminine pettiness about Miss ' Nougat ' that 
 makes one think of her as having the same breadth as a man. 
 Sceptre was the same magnificent sort of creature among 
 horses a daughter of Persimmon, too ! " 
 
 He had forgotten that old scar of a story that should have 
 warned him off the indiscretion. His ready laugh betrayed 
 that he thought himself paying another compliment in liken- 
 ing Mornington to the Royal horse. But a most extra- 
 ordinary change crossed Mornington's face at the words, as 
 if all the facial muscles contracted faintly under excruciating
 
 250 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 pain. Lord Lowndes was, happily, not aware of his own 
 blunder, and when Mornington turned his face to him the 
 wicked mask of pain was gone. In the same instant a new 
 vision of Nougat had crossed his mind she was still stand- 
 ing there, that tall girl with the kind eyes, and her voice 
 rang in his ears: 
 
 " I want you to do me a favour. Will you ask me to Rye ? " 
 
 He had not asked her to Rye, but the suggestion that he 
 should do so was so obvious that Lord Lowndes had noticed 
 the omission. If he left the situation unexplained, it might 
 seem too significant to be just to her, and drag her into the 
 established estrangement with his wife. He had at least 
 been scrupulously just to her throughout her life, though it 
 had blighted his own. He lied now, slowly and intentionally. 
 
 " The Harbingers are in town this week, passing through 
 from the Continent. Patricia stayed in order to see Lady 
 Harbinger, who is a great friend of hers she did not want 
 to leave, even to come to Rye for a few days. Here's the 
 train, late as usual." 
 
 Lord Lowndes was not a keen golfer, but he played with 
 the momentary energy and enthusiasm he brought to all 
 things he attempted. His drives were his best performance, 
 his square figure being chiefly remarkable for its strength, 
 though he wasted some of his energy upon the ground. The 
 morning passed uneventfully enough between the grey-green 
 down and the sand dunes, with the smooth inaccessible sea 
 lapping under the low cliff on the one hand, and the great 
 Marshes on the other. By lunch time, Mornington was 
 " dormie " at the fifteenth hole, and the sixteenth resulted 
 in a half ; so the game was finished, and Lord Lowndes found 
 himself beaten without much regret on his own part. It was 
 difficult to disturb his casual indifference to the result of a 
 game unless he lost heavily over it in money. 
 
 " We will go and lunch, if you don't mind, and get some- 
 thing to eat before those other fellows," said Mornington 
 carelessly, leading the way along the left-hand valley between 
 two ranges of sandhills, instead of skirting the ground. He 
 was taking a short cut to the Club House, not seeing, 
 apparently, that some of the players left on the course had 
 reached the high seventeenth teeing ground, where he might 
 cross their line of fire. Lord Lowndes was a trifle behind, 
 guarded by his host's figure, and was speaking.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 251 
 
 " Who was that man who passed you just now ? " 
 
 " I don't know someone down for the week-end, I expect. 
 He is not a member of this Club." 
 
 "He reminds me of Ineaghsleigh not the present man, 
 but the last holder of the title Look out, Mornington ! 
 Good God ! " 
 
 They had not heard a warning " Fore ! " if it had been 
 given, and the very man of whom they had been speaking 
 had made his drive, and pulled the ball, as he certainly did 
 not intend, so that it swerved through the air towards Morn- 
 ington's figure. Perhaps Lord Lowndes' exclamation startled 
 him instead of fulfilling its intention, for without ducking 
 he stood still, almost as if awaiting the accident, and the ball, 
 passing his head by a few inches, curved downwards and 
 found a resting-place some yards away. 
 
 " Heavens ! what a narrow escape ! What was that ass 
 doing ? " said Lord Lowndes excitedly, taking his host by 
 the arm and walking him out of danger hurriedly. " You 
 might have been killed ! " 
 
 " I fancy I was in the wrong. I did not hear them call 
 ' Fore ! ' and that ball was certainly pulled very badly, but I 
 should have kept off the course," said Mornington, in a 
 curious level tone of voice. He looked down at the little 
 white ball as they passed it with an inscrutable expression ; 
 it was almost new, and its excessive hardness and weight 
 made themselves very apparent to the eye of the expert. The 
 deadly little missile seemed to absorb all his attention, for he 
 took no notice of the angry expostulations of the stranger 
 who had nearly caused the accident, and did not even answer 
 the question punctuated with bad language as to why he 
 had got in the way? 
 
 " My dear fellow, it turned me quite sick ! " said Lord 
 Lowndes seriously, and indeed his hand shook as he took 
 the whisky and soda he promptly ordered in the Club House, 
 and his face was paler than its usual healthy red. 
 
 Mornington's hand did not shake ; he smiled in a curious, 
 mirthless fashion, and talked even less than was usual to him. 
 
 Whether it were the shock of the averted accident, or that 
 he soon tired of the game, Lord Lowndes would not play 
 again after lunch. Mornington was going to have another 
 round, but he invited his guest to drive back to the Grange 
 if he felt disinclined for more, and leave him to follow. The
 
 252 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 cart would be at the tram terminus, by his orders, in case 
 either of them wished to return. 
 
 "I think I'll take your offer," Lord Lowndes said with 
 secret relief. " I have had about enough, and I am not nearly 
 good enough at it to give you a decent game. Don't go 
 walking about the links when other men are playing, though, 
 Mornington ! " 
 
 " Oh, that is all right," responded the financier carelessly. 
 "I often take a short cut to the Club House, and nothing 
 comes of it." 
 
 " It is the old story of the pitcher going to the well when 
 there are such uncertain players about ! You don't want to 
 commit suicide, I suppose ? " 
 
 Mornington laughed without answering. It was a real 
 laugh of such obvious amusement that Lord Lowndes laughed 
 too. Nor did it occur to him until he was in the tram, that 
 it was the first time in all his experience of the man that he 
 had ever heard him laugh. 
 
 " He's a queer fellow," he mused, as he was rattled back 
 across the sad flat fields where the cattle stood munching 
 the rich grass. " And not a lively companion. I think I'll 
 go up to town to-morrow take the morning train, and see 
 how Pic is getting on. I would much rather drive myself 
 home than let Mornington drive me, anyhow ! " 
 
 The mare behaved better with his firm hand on the reins, 
 and as if she recognised a master with the intuition of all 
 horses. Lord Lowndes enjoyed the lonely drive, and the 
 sense of security after his anxiety of the morning, and decided 
 to think twice before trusting his> bones to Mornington's tender 
 mercies again. His host did not return until it grew too dusk 
 to play, and the intervening hours Lord Lowndes spent in 
 yawning and talking to the authorities of the stables, his 
 determination to leave on the morrow strengthening as time 
 passed. The Grange was not a pretentious house ; it had 
 some twenty bedrooms, and six or seven sitting-rooms, but 
 save the billiard-room none of these were large. The stables, 
 however, were more modern than the rest of the building, 
 and capable of accommodating many more horses than were 
 in stall there. Giles Mornington kept sufficient horses for his 
 use at Rye, and no more. Lord Lowndes and the grooms 
 agreed that it was a pity to see so much good space empty. 
 
 " I should buy some of Loftus' stud, if I were you," he
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 253 
 
 advised his host confidentially before leaving on the morrow. 
 " He got rather dipped over Africa, and I hear they are going 
 up to Tattersall's. They are sure to be worth having there 
 never was a Lexiter yet who was not a good judge of a 
 horse ! " 
 
 " I have enough for my use, and if one of them is sick, I 
 send down into Rye and hire," said Mornington simply. " It 
 is not as if I kept a big establishment here as I do in town." 
 " But, my dear fellow, to sit behind horses hired down 
 here must be the devil ! " protested Lord Lowndes. " And 
 you have all that great stable standing nearly empty ! " 
 
 " I have sometimes thought of having another horse and 
 trap," Mornington said ; he spoke rather slowly. They were 
 standing side by side on the steps again, waiting for the cart 
 that was to take Lord Lowndes to the station. It struck the 
 latter, as he glanced at his host, that he was inwardly amused 
 at some thought he did not express. " But it hardly seems 
 to me worth while," he ended indifferently, as the cart 
 appeared. " Good-bye ! I am sorry we could not travel up 
 together." 
 
 " Oh, so am I and sorry that my time here is up ! Been 
 most delightful visit," said Lord Lowndes, who was always 
 most effusive when boredom had driven him into inventing a 
 desperate excuse and leaving before the appointed date. 
 " But I suppose you'll not be staying here straight on, will 
 you ? " 
 
 " Oh, no I shall be back in town towards the end of the 
 week," Mornington said deliberately. " I have business 
 that will bring me back." 
 
 He had not offered to drive his guest to the station this 
 time, to Lord Lowndes' very great relief. Looking back 
 on his week-end at the Marsh Grange, when he was once 
 more in London, he was conscious of a vague discomfort, 
 the sense of communication with a being as much out of tone 
 with him as if he had been a total stranger, or still more some 
 foreigner who could not even speak the same language. It 
 was as if Mornington had suddenly become detached from 
 the normal, comfortable world of every day, and were looking 
 at him across a great gulf, though he had no definite reason 
 for the impression. And as he had alwavs liked the man, 
 little as he had known of him, and had felt no such discom- 
 fort in his presence before, he could only suppose that his
 
 254 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 early life and atmosphere still lingered and divided him from 
 the class which was Lord Lowndes' natural element. A 
 casual meeting at the Club might not reveal this, but when 
 he came to stay in Mornington's house it made itself felt. 
 Afterwards he remembered that sensation of discomfort, and 
 changed his mind as to its cause ; but at the time he could 
 find no other reason. 
 
 He looked in at his favourite Club before driving round to 
 Piccadilly to enquire for the Duke, and there, in the nearly 
 empty smoking-room, he encountered a tall man with his arm 
 in a sling, which diverted his mind from Mornington Caryl 
 Lexiter, in effect, and evidently in the wars. 
 
 " I'm an invalid ! " he explained in answer to Lord Lowndes' 
 enquiry. " You know that red stallion of my brother's ? He 
 comes of the Bete Rouge stock. He was to be sold, and 
 Loftus asked me to look him over, but when I went into the 
 stable the brute got his teeth into my arm. I am up to see 
 Sir Richard about it, as our local doctor advised me to do so." 
 
 "A horse-bite is a nasty business," said Lord Lowndes, 
 with a glance of no particular liking at the weary, handsome 
 face. Lexiter looked graver and more lined than usual, and 
 the beautiful, self-indulgent mouth was rather set, in spite of 
 his perfect composure. " It ought certainly to be attended 
 to." 
 
 "I know. I await Sir Richard's decision as to whether I 
 am to lose my arm." 
 
 " Not so bad as that, I hope ! " said Lord Lowndes, with a 
 feeling that was more shocked than admiring. Yet Lexiter 
 spoke without any bravado, and was simply facing facts. One 
 virtue at least he had, by inheritance and training the quiet 
 physical courage that was a tradition in his family. Lord 
 Lowndes admitted him plucky but then, of course, all men 
 decently born and bred were plucky. If they had been less 
 game than the racehorse, who owns the same qualities, he 
 would have suspected a flaw in the pedigree. What dis- 
 gusted him in Lexiter was a certain flippancy that he always 
 detected even when Caryl appeared most serious. 
 
 He left him going to Harley Street to learn his fate, and 
 himself drove to the Duke's house, where he found he 
 was not the only visitor, Patricia Mornington being already 
 in possession of the familiar sitting-room. She was the bearer 
 of good news, for the Duke had that day been pronounced
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 255 
 
 sufficiently convalescent to leave his bedroom and come and 
 sit in his invalid-chair for a time. Providence had seen fit 
 to bestow a timely thunderstorm upon the village of Hyde, 
 whereby a hayrick had caught fire, and a man been killed, 
 and much damage done ; but Sir Richard Burford and 
 Maunders offered up private thanksgivings, for the disaster 
 attracted the Duchess back to Dorsetshire irresistibly, after 
 one brief half hour spent by her husband's bedside, during 
 which she cheerfully warned him not to trust to his improve- 
 ment, predicted a relapse, and likened him to Ahaziah. She 
 took her protege^, the footman Henry, back with her to Hyde, 
 his pasty face suggesting to her that what he wanted was 
 change of air, and homoeopathic remedies, but she left the 
 short-legged retriever in town as a companion for the invalid. 
 Patricia had been waiting for his Grace, with as much patience 
 as if it were a royal audience, for half an hour already when 
 Lord Lowndes arrived, and they sat down together to expect 
 his appearance. 
 
 " Why, this is capital ! " said Lord Lowndes, beaming. " I 
 had no idea that he would be up for weeks yet. The old 
 rascal ! he must have been shamming worse than he really 
 was. And how are you, Miss Nougat? I left your father 
 only this morning. He is too devoted to the golf-links to 
 come up for a day or so." 
 
 " Ah ! You have been at Rye ! " 
 
 "Yes. Surely you know that? He told me why you 
 couldn't come stayed in town to see Lady Harbinger, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 Patricia looked at him with an expression he did not under- 
 stand in her brown eyes. " Ah h he told you that? " she said 
 slowly. " Yes, Chiffon is in town this week passing 
 through, of course. No one who respects themselves stays 
 in town now, except such vagabonds as myself and the Duke." 
 
 " Someone else is in town, and on a very nasty errand," 
 said Lord Lowndes. " I stumbled over a pair of long legs 
 at the Club and found Lexiter. He has had a bite from one 
 of his brother's horses, and is up to see Burford." 
 
 " How horrible ! Is he much hurt ? " 
 
 " He doesn't know, but it's always a risk. He takes it 
 very coolly told me he was going to learn this afternoon if 
 he must lose his arm or no." 
 
 " I never doubted his physical courage, did you ? " said
 
 256 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Patricia quietly, with a little added colour to her face. She 
 did not get an opinion from Lord Lowndes, however, because 
 at that moment the door opened to admit Maunders with the 
 Duke, who was supporting himself partly by his servant's arm, 
 partly by his well-worn stick. He moved very shakily, but 
 the fine face was blurred to Patricia through a sudden rush 
 of tears, and she could not judge of the effects of his illness 
 she only realised, when she saw him again, how dreadful 
 her anxiety had been, and how fond she was of htm. Behind 
 his master came Fat, walking very slowly on his broad spatu- 
 late feet, his affectionate wet nose just touching the Duke's 
 trousers. Even the sight of Lord Lowndes did not lure him 
 away on this occasion. 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Duke with a little smile for both his visi- 
 tors. " Now this is very nice ! It's my first day out of that 
 stuffy room, and you've come to celebrate it. Maunders, 
 move my chair a little so that Miss Mornington can sit beside 
 me. No! no! don't be an ass! That's the wrong way." 
 
 " Yes, your Grace ! " said Maunders submissively, and if 
 his carefully restrained face had been allowed to express any- 
 thing it would have looked as if he were delighted to be 
 abused again in his master's usual fashion. He helped the 
 Duke into his chair and arranged the little table near him 
 with an attention that was more like a woman than a man, 
 placing the cigarettes and even the spirit stand before he 
 condescended to assist Patricia at all. She stood by smiling 
 in a rather whimsical fashion, while Lord Lowndes took up 
 his usual attitude on the hearthrug, planted very squarely on 
 his feet, and Fat lay down in the centre of the group with a 
 little sigh of content that sounded terribly human. 
 
 " I don't believe you were ever very bad, Pic you skulked 
 just to give us a fright, and make Miss Nougat pay you more 
 attention ! " said Lord Lowndes genially. " The Duke is a re- 
 gular fraud, you know," he added to Patricia. " That's how I 
 always describe him to my friends a regular fraud ! In 
 fact, fronti nulla -fides ! " 
 
 " Oh, this Latin ! " groaned the Duke. " It's the only sign 
 of learning ever apparent in Lowndes, Nougat, and so he 
 harps upon it to make us believe that he was properly edu- 
 cated. When he lets himself go, he naturally talks horsy 
 slang, don't you know ! " 
 
 " I see ! " said Patricia gravely, stooping to pull Fat's
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 257 
 
 Astrakhan ears through her gentle fingers. " I shall beware 
 of you both as gigantic frauds ! By the way, Duke " (there 
 was a twinkle in her eye), " I wonder that the Duchess left 
 Fat with you. She seemed resentul of your influence." 
 
 The Duke began to laugh also. " She finds it useless to 
 try and counteract it, I think," he acknowledged. " She 
 objected to my checking his growth in the first instance, and 
 then I used to tell people he was a Turkoman dog, and that 
 his large feet and short legs were the result of a particular 
 breed which were accustomed to run for miles over the hard 
 sand and stony country of Persia. Wonderful how they be- 
 lieved me, don't you know ! " 
 
 " The poor Duchess ! I am sure she thought your romances 
 wicked and deliberate story-telling ! " 
 
 " Yes, she used to contradict and explain that he would 
 have been a retriever, if it had not been for my inhuman 
 treatment. So I thought I would prove that I had not killed 
 the retrieving instinct, and I taught him to fetch all sorts of 
 things, and bring them to me, quietly. And one day we had a 
 luncheon-party the last I remember to have had at Hyde 
 and all the women present wore tight shoes, of course, and 
 kicked them off under the table as soon as they had sat down. 
 So I got Fat up by me and sent him under the table without 
 anyone seeing, and he retrieved all the shoes and piled them 
 under my chair. You should have seen those women's faces 
 when they wanted to leave the table ! There was such a 
 scramble ! " 
 
 Fat opened one bright hazel eye, and thumped the floor 
 with his feathery tail. He had caught the sound of his own 
 recurring name, and seemed to feel the Duke's mischievous 
 humour in the air. Patricia laughed as she patted him. 
 
 " Have you heard from the Duchess since she left town ? " 
 she said. " I am glad she took Henry, and left Fat behind 
 her." 
 
 " I had a letter from her this morning five pages ! I have 
 only read two as yet. Read it for me, Nougat, and tell me 
 what is in it." 
 
 He offered the many sheets to Patricia, and she accepted 
 them with a little smile, reminiscent of the Duchess' per- 
 sonality. It seemed that she was bound to be voluminous. 
 
 "Were you really as ill as Burford made out, Pic?" asked 
 Lord Lowndes more seriously. "We have all been clamour- 
 
 17
 
 258 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 ing for bulletins and wearing ourselves to shadows over 
 you." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said the Duke scornfully. " I was never very 
 bad. But I told Burford to say I was, and keep you all out. 
 I wanted to be quiet." 
 
 " You ought to take care of yourself, my dear fellow ! " 
 
 " I knew that Alicia was here, too ! " added the Duke 
 thoughtfully, and in a lower key. " I can't think why women 
 always consider it necessary to come and afflict their menkind 
 when ill and helpless. One bears it much better in ordinary 
 health." 
 
 " Oh, come ! I think the good lady meant it kindly I do 
 her that justice, though she hates me worse than a cock- 
 roach!" 
 
 "What is the good of meaning well if the result is ill? 
 That's the kindness that kills. A good trained nurse is 
 preferable every way to a wife or sister or any relation. You 
 can say what you like to a nurse, but you can't question her 
 authority. See what I mean ? " 
 
 "Who is Mrs. Morrison?" asked Patricia, from the third 
 page of the letter. 
 
 " Oh, an awful animal a great friend of my wife's. She 
 married Morrison Langton Morrison and he died of it, 
 poor chap, and I don't wonder. Does Alicia talk much of 
 her?" 
 
 " She has not talked of much else as yet ! " 
 
 " I shall skip all that part," said the Duke with a sigh. " I 
 generally begin at the end, and read the postscript. The 
 postscript of Alicia's letters is very like the index of a book 
 if there is anything I must know I always find it there. 
 What does she say of the Morrison woman ? " 
 
 " The last remark she has made is that being a daughter 
 of Sir John Sedlon, of course she is a lady! I am afraid I 
 am a Radical, for it is a corollary that never convinces me." 
 
 " Oh dear ! " said the Duke. " I know so many ladies, and 
 so few gentlewomen ! " 
 
 The words recurred to Patricia many times after that visit, 
 and seemed to her a shrewd truth of the social life around 
 her. Neither she nor Lord Lowndes stayed long, for, in spite 
 of his assertions to the contrary, the gathering lines on the 
 Duke's face betrayed that he was tired. They left him turn- 
 ing with a sigh to the task of reading his wife's letter ; but
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 259 
 
 Patricia, who had already waded through it, looked forward 
 to the next time of meeting him and his comments on the 
 tangle of parochial functions, charities, platitudes, and 
 wandering accounts of her acquaintance. 
 
 As she entered her own door, the deathly silence of the 
 great house, after the cheerful chatter in the Duke's room, 
 seemed to take away Patricia's breath. She forgot the 
 pleasure of the afternoon in the sudden spasm of fear that fell 
 upon her all at once. At the foot of the stairs, in the very 
 spot where she had stood and talked to Mornington, she 
 paused and listened. There was no sound, save the distant 
 movement of the workmen who were not yet gone home. 
 Patricia shivered a little, and went slowly up to her own 
 rooms, past the white pillars that looked ghostly sentinels 
 in the dusk, and the empty niches where the palms no longer 
 stood. A winged figure of Mercury, holding an electric 
 lamp, made her nearly start back and cry out, though she 
 had passed it hundreds of times before. Perhaps the heat 
 and the enervation of London during August and September 
 had told on her after all, though she had laughed at the idea, 
 never having experienced them before. She was glad, any- 
 how, to get into the comfort and order of her own lighted 
 rooms, where a servant was already laying her solitary 
 dinner. 
 
 " You will dine upstairs still, miss, I suppose ? " she said 
 unexpectedly, as Patricia entered. 
 
 " Of course," said Patricia in surprise. " Why did you 
 ask, Mary ? " 
 
 "Because Mr. Mornington is back, miss he wired after 
 you went out to-day, and has just arrived." 
 
 " Did he suggest my dining downstairs ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, miss ! " 
 
 " I will leave things as they are, then. I expect he is 
 tired, and will dine in his own room, or at the Club." 
 
 She took off her hat slowly, thinking. Not two hours ago 
 Lord Lowndes had told her that her father would not return 
 for some days ; yet here he was suddenly in his own house, 
 arriving like a thief in the night. She felt a return of the 
 terror which overtook her in the hall, without being able to 
 give the least reason for it. Yet Mornington's presence was 
 in some sort a relief to her, for it lent her a sense of protec- 
 tion, and ever since another item of news from Lord Lowndes 
 
 17*
 
 260 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 she had had an uneasy consciousness that Caryl Lexiter's 
 being in London might result in their meeting, and then 
 
 The beautiful face under the loosened crown of chestnut 
 hair was graver even than its wont and there was a stamp 
 of a noble sadness on Patricia always when she sat down 
 to her dinner. Mary, who waited upon her, looked with 
 some concern at the shadowed eyes, and discussed it after- 
 wards with the diminished remnant of the household left in 
 the kitchen. 
 
 " Miss Mornington looks for all the world as though 'er 
 young man 'adn't come up to the scratch ! And she might 
 'ave the pick of London. Well, some girls don't like their 
 good fortune when they get it." 
 
 But Patricia, watching a sordid section of the London 
 World drift past under her windows, was thinking of sadder 
 things than the momentary pin-pricks of a love affair.
 
 26 1 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ' ' If your name at table by chance arise 
 
 The men have nought to say, 
 And the virtuous women turn their eyes 
 And look the other way." 
 
 Bloom de Ninon. 
 
 THE Harbingers were in town, as Mornington had said, but 
 only on their way to the Midlands. Patricia went round to 
 Park Lane the morning after she saw the Duke, to see 
 Chiffon and find out their plans, and also from a restless 
 desire to talk to someone sufficiently feminine to understand 
 innuendoes. Had Fate Leroy been still at Sunnington she 
 would inevitably have gone to the older woman rather than 
 Chiffon, partly because Fate was a stranger to the central 
 figure in her dilemma. But it was just the ending of her 
 sojourn in the Land of Beulah which forced her reluctant 
 feet once more into the path of difficulty, and the warning 
 of Lexiter's presence in town drove her at last to that decision 
 from which she had flinched for so long. Chiffon and she 
 were old friends at least ; that their social life had estranged 
 rather than drawn them together was perhaps but a momen- 
 tary shadow on their intimacy. 
 
 The blinds were down in the upper windows of the Har- 
 bingers' house, and the door was opened by an unliveried 
 footman ; but such a lack of state seemed more familiar to 
 Patricia from the dismantled rooms of their own house than 
 if she had found things as usual. She was shown into the 
 smoking-room that anomalous apartment which the Har- 
 bingers most affected, and which might equally well have 
 been styled the library. Lady Harbinger was out, the foot- 
 rnan thought, but his lordship was in, if Miss Mornington 
 would wait?
 
 262 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Pray don't disturb Lord Harbinger," said Patricia, with 
 a haste she hardly realised herself. " I will wait until Lady 
 Harbinger comes in, if you will tell her that I am here." 
 
 " Very well, Miss." 
 
 The man deferentially arranged some illustrated papers on 
 one of the small tables, with a view to calling Patricia's 
 attention to the suitability of the " Queen " and the " Ladies' 
 Field." It was evident that Chiffon had been studying 
 fashions or the golf tournaments in the train yesterday, but 
 Patricia made a small face at the literature offered to her, 
 and as soon as the servant had gone she leisurely made her 
 way to the bookcase, pushed the broad divan aside, and 
 insinuating her tall figure between the curtains and the hidden 
 piece of furniture, began to take stock of the Harbingers' 
 most cherished books the books that they professed to love, 
 and kept almost inaccessible save to so determined an assault 
 as Patricia's. 
 
 It was evident, at least, that when they did take down a 
 book they did so with easy familiarity, and had no settled 
 place for their favourites. There were no rows of library- 
 bound, uniform backs here, but rather such editions and stray 
 volumes as they bought going easily along with the world, 
 and obviously guided by individual taste. The Racing 
 Calendar and a book on Motoring were side by side with 
 Dickens (Lord Harbinger would no more have read Dickens 
 than the Duke, who protested that the characters in his books 
 were of a class with which he did not care to associate he 
 had quite enough of that sort of thing if he happened to get 
 a rude cabman !), and further down the shelves Patricia re- 
 cognised a battered volume of Swinburne's Poems which 
 Chiffon had secreted at the Convent and had appreciated in 
 secret. The sight of the well-stained blue and gold brought 
 a queer mist before her eyes, and a sudden passionate regret 
 for the time when she and Chiffon were merely schoolgirls, 
 on the look-out for forbidden knowledge and mischief of any 
 kind, no doubt, but with boundless possibilities before them. 
 The possibilities had ended in Chiffon's case in marriage at 
 nineteen, beyond which the result of too much physical ex 
 perience with too little to balance it mentally, seemed to 
 Nougat inevitable. While for herself she found that life was 
 spelling disillusionment. She took out the volume as one 
 takes something grown precious with the past, and noticed
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 263 
 
 a grease mark on the cover where a guilty candle had dripped 
 to betray their midnight study. Then she began idly turning 
 the pages, looking half unconsciously for the " Oblation," 
 which she had read so recently from the pages of Marzial's 
 song, with Vaughan looking over her shoulder. 
 
 "Ask nothing more of me, sweet, 
 All I can give you I give. 
 Heart of my heart, were it more, 
 More should be laid at your feet 
 Love that should help you to live, 
 Song that should spur you to soar 
 Ask nothing more of me, sweet 
 Ask nothing more nothing more ! " 
 
 The book had opened easily at the poem that she wanted, 
 and she now saw the reason. There was a folded paper lying 
 between the pages here, and Patricia on turning it over was 
 struck by a strange word and read it, unconscious that she was 
 doing so. 
 
 " Mummy lulovuve " 
 
 " The Lully Language ! " exclaimed Patricia under her 
 breath. She was too contemptuous of the trivial nonsense 
 even to smile, but she wondered for an instant, blankly, if she 
 would be expected to learn its intricacies, supposing 
 
 Breaking the thought she went back to the poems, decipher- 
 ing no more of the folded paper and intentionally forcing 
 herself to understand what she was reading, so that after a 
 minute she became really absorbed so absorbed that she 
 did not hear anyone enter the room beyond the curtains where 
 she stood hidden, though had they looked at the divan they 
 could have seen that it was moved from its usual position. 
 
 " For love has no abiding, 
 But dies before the kiss," 
 
 read Patricia, feeling how little she had understood the 
 tragedy of the lines in those far-away Convent days. 
 
 " So hath it been, so be it ; 
 For who shall live and flee it ? 
 But look that no man see it 
 
 Or hear it unaware ; 
 Lest all who love and choose him 
 See Love, and so refuse him 
 For all who find him lose him, 
 But all have found him fair."
 
 264 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Oh, you shouldn't have come ! Why did you come ? 1 
 didn't know you were in town 
 
 " If you had you must have known that I should come. 
 Chiffon, darling, don't struggle so kiss me, and be sweet ! " 
 
 The words mingled so with the last lines of the poem, 
 which she comprehended the more fully of the two, that 
 until they were spoken, Patricia did not know that she had 
 heard them. When they reached her consciousness, she was 
 still standing with the book in her hands, nor did she even 
 close it or stir. She stood absolutely still so still that each 
 breath she drew seemed to her an actual noise, and the 
 Universe to darken round her and grow hideous with treachery 
 and suspicion and the base side of human nature which is 
 too vulgar to name. If they found her now, she would come 
 out from the curtains and face them, she knew not how ; 
 but if not she would not make one movement to confound 
 them For the voices were Chiffon's and Lexiter's. 
 
 " I wish you hadn't come ! " whispered the woman's softer 
 tones but how cruelly the whisper carried to the ears of the 
 maddened eavesdropper ! " Bobby will think something if 
 you are not careful." 
 
 " Pooh ! Have you turned coward, Chiffon ? Bobby never 
 thought anything on Carberry's yacht. Why should he 
 now ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I have turned coward, perhaps ever since 
 that day that we drove together " 
 
 The whisper died into a silance of enfolding arms. A 
 sense of physical nearness made Patricia's face suddenly 
 flame, as it had not flamed even when this same man's fingers 
 touched her neck. She had never come so near passion be- 
 fore, even though given to another. It seemed as if the shock 
 and the shame of it awoke her womanhood. With racing 
 pulses she felt the woman's form creeping closer to the man's, 
 the little sunny head that she knew and loved so well, resting 
 just above his heart scarcely higher. Why, Chiffon was 
 such a little girl, and Lexiter's height and strength seemed 
 suddenly forced into masculine contrast by her weakness ! 
 Weak in more senses than the physical, poor Chiffon ! poor 
 little Chiffon, held too closely in arms not her husband's ! 
 
 " What shall I do with you ? " said Lexiter's tender voice 
 through the meaning silence. " You are so small and sweet 
 and I love little people ! "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 265 
 
 " 1 shouldn't have let you, Caryl, only that you were a 
 wounded hero ! " (The caressing tone had tears and laughter 
 in it at the same time. Were Chiffon's arms round his neck ?) 
 " Your arm is an unfair advantage! Does it hurt you now? " 
 " I am not at all sure if saying No means that you will 
 treat me less kindly ! By Jove ! it was a near shave that 1 
 had an arm left at all. A little more mangling and it must 
 have gone." 
 
 " Don't I feel sick when I think of it ! Are you sure 
 Sir Richard said that it was all right ? " 
 
 " He said it would be if 1 were not contradicted at all, 
 and allowed to have my own way ! " 
 
 " You always do eventually ! " said Chiffon with a sigh. 
 " Not by a long way not since that drive together. 
 Chiffon, you must manage to come to me once, soon " 
 " Hush ! Bobby is calling us ! " 
 
 Even the sound of the retreating footsteps did not seem to 
 restore the power of motion to Patricia. She moved stiffly, 
 and with a deliberation that was quite independent of her 
 own agonised desire to hurry, and before leaving the room, 
 she pushed the divan back into its place and rearranged the 
 curtains. Then she walked out of the room and through 
 the hall, with a dull feeling of surprise that she should be 
 so lucky as to see no one about. Somewhere in a room near 
 by she heard Lexiter laugh, and Lord Harbinger's voice, but 
 she opened the front door quietly and made her escape with- 
 out their having seen her. 
 
 The solid ground did not fail her in Park Lane, though 
 she might feel that the bottom of her universe had fallen out 
 morally; she walked steadily, enjoying the faint air across 
 the Park with one side of her nature, it seemed to her, even 
 while the other side was still stunned and bewildered beyond 
 the right appreciation of anything but a sense of trouble. 
 The physical enjoyment of the October wind appeared to be 
 separate and totally detached from the soreness of heart that 
 ached for Chiffon even above and beyond its consciousness 
 of outrage. The most vivid sensation which her discovery 
 had aroused in her was not anger not even disappointment. 
 The revelation of a more lawless emotion than she had ever 
 known had forced the realisation of its possibility in herself 
 on Patricia, and she trembled. For Chiffon's voice had had 
 a note in it she did not know, and the answering depths of
 
 266 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Lexiter's made her hot to remember as if she had intruded 
 on something so secret that she felt the shame in herself 
 which did not belong to them. Chiffon was in love with 
 a loneliness of heart that was for herself and not for her 
 friend, Patricia recognised that here was an experience she 
 could not gauge. She almost thought, with a pang of regret 
 that hides in the depths of every feminine heart, that she 
 never could gauge it, for what man's arms would dare to hold 
 her closely as Lexiter's had done ? It occurred to her, with- 
 out any sense of the ludicrous, that her height was against 
 such an experience ; no man could feel the longing to protect 
 and fondle a tall woman who bore the capability of taking 
 care of her own self in every one of her inches. 
 
 " What shall I do with you ? " said Lexiter's voice in her 
 memory. " You are so small and I love little people ! " 
 
 In the foolish love-words it seemed to her that he urged 
 sufficient excuse for his own lapse from righteousness. 
 
 The whispering voice said something more yet ; with a 
 sudden reaction she felt it proclaimed her freedom, and she 
 gasped from the discovery that she did not care for the owner 
 of the voice, though the shrine being empty she had nearly 
 set up a false god for lack of a true. She had not loved Caryl 
 Lexiter, but he possessed, and always would possess, the halo 
 of the "half-god" to her; and for this reason, perhaps, she 
 judged him more leniently than she would have done other 
 men, for Patricia was one of the rare women who are not more 
 exacting but more generous to those who have acquired a 
 claim to their tenderness. Women had a way of being in- 
 dulgent, even in judgment, to Caryl Lexiter, it is true but 
 they were apt to put on the Black Cap as soon as they were 
 not themselves the temptation which he pleaded. The un- 
 feminine in Patricia, which men had recognised in nicknaming 
 her " Sceptre," made her charitable, even though she gently 
 closed the shrine to Lexiter's image from henceforth. 
 
 "" Heartily know 
 When half -gods go 
 The Gods arrive ! " 
 
 And who was to be her god? With a natural resentment 
 she was almost inclined to cry "Let the shrine stand empty 
 for ever ! " and to deny a second memory of another voice,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 267 
 
 very different to Lexiter's, yet which in its kinder tones had 
 lain in the background of her mind as a pleasant thing at 
 least, and one worth treasuring. It was not so musical a 
 voice as Lexiter's, and it had a little croak in it. What it 
 was always saying to Patricia was, " I hope you will enjoy 
 your house-party I wish I were going to be there." It was 
 a coincidence that the one man should once more have re- 
 called the other to her, while she pronounced them totally 
 dissimilar, yet it was a fact that Lexiter had several times 
 brought Vaughan to her mind, though Vaughan had rarely 
 if ever recalled Lexiter. She began to see, slowly, that pos- 
 sibly they both belonged to an original type, altered in both 
 their cases by excess of circumstances, and to be grateful for 
 Vaughan that the very drawbacks which had seemed to con- 
 strain and narrow his life had only guarded it from the indul- 
 gencies of Lexiter's. Women of Patricia's mould are not 
 attracted by violent opposites. The same innate qualities 
 that she looked for in Vaughan had been in Lexiter. Only, 
 in the one man they had been developed, though crabbedly, 
 under a self-restraint that was power, in the other they had 
 been gradually overlaid by the self-indulgence licensed by his 
 class. She was inclined to cry out with Fate Leroy again, 
 that the panacea for all ills is Work. 
 
 " Heartily know 
 When half-gods go 
 The Gods arrive ! " 
 
 The half-god Lexiter had gone from the instant that his 
 voice spoke love to another woman in Patricia's ears. She 
 was not of the clay that makes jealousy, but she was regally 
 incapable of sharing her dominion. It must be all or nothing, 
 and it was her intuition about Fate that had at first thrust 
 Vaughan beyond the pale to her, and that still made the 
 thought of him a pang of hurt pride. Had she loved Fate 
 less she might have felt her influence in Vaughan's life as an 
 injury, seeing that she was so rich already in her married 
 happiness. Curiously enough she did not resent Chiffon's 
 piracy in the same way, but she wanted to laugh and cry 
 together at the situation. Poor little Chiffon ! it seemed a 
 jar in the order of things that anything so light and slight 
 should suffer. Yet the very discovery of her folly lent her a
 
 268 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 certain dignity and development. Love even lawless love 
 that involves a risk of smug self-advantage is a better re- 
 fining fire than mere prudent virtue. Patricia remembered 
 with a revelation her own comment to Chiffon on Editha 
 Blais Heron " How can she meet a man secretly, when she 
 cannot do so openly ? I should feel like a housemaid ! " and 
 Chiffon's answer " I would rather feel like a housemaid 
 than not meet the man I loved ! " It was not little that 
 Chiffon was risking for Lexiter's sake her social position, 
 her husband's anger, the misery of a woman who is " found 
 out " they meant infinitely more to Chiffon's praise-loving, 
 affectionate nature than they would have done to her friend. 
 After once passing the rubicon of her own pride, Patricia 
 would have found the world well lost for love ; Chiffon must 
 have shuddered many a time at the possible shattering of her 
 whole world, which lay in social traditions. Yet Chiffon had 
 loved well enough to hazard what she prized most, for the 
 sake of the forbidden fruit. That it might not be a great 
 sacrifice intrinsically this petty approval and acceptance of 
 a narrow circle in which she sunned herself was nothing; 
 we can only give our best for love, and the gods judge by the 
 value we set, ourselves, on a soap-bubble, rather than the 
 market-price of the Koh-i-noor. 
 
 " Truly Chiffon is more generous than I ! " said Patricia, 
 almost bitterly. " I could not have given an equivalent for 
 what she has staked ! " 
 
 She sat down in her own rooms to write to Lady Harbinger 
 a note that was merely a decent lie. Chiffon would hear 
 from the footman that she had called, and might guess 
 
 That must not be. Patricia had already decided 
 
 that unless an ugly confidence were made to her, her shrink- 
 ing senses might pretend comfortable ignorance. 
 
 " Dear Chiffon," she wrote. " I called on you this morn- 
 ing to hear your plans, but your servants warned me that you 
 were out, and though I intended to wait for you, I soon wore 
 out my patience and came home. The footman will think 
 that I am the vanishing lady, for I let myself out, and forgot 
 to leave a message. Will you come round and have tea 
 with me, or make a solemn appointment to see me which 
 even a call from a dressmaker shall not break ? I suppose 
 you have enquired for the Duke and know that he is much
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 269 
 
 better? I saw him yesterday, and feel much refreshed in 
 consequence. He looks ill still, but his caustic wit is by no 
 means impaired ! 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 " NOUGAT." 
 
 It was nearly two o'clock as she folded and directed the 
 note, for she glanced at a little silver clock on the table near 
 her as she did so, thinking that she would wait until the after- 
 noon before sending one of the servants with it to Park Lane 
 Patricia was invariably considerate for the household. 
 She had told them that she was lunching out, in all prob- 
 ability, having thought to stay with Chiffon, and had left 
 orders that they were to bring no luncheon until she rang. 
 Now she wondered, with the old wistful desire for inter- 
 course, if that other lonely personality in the vast empty 
 house had lunched in his own rooms, or had gone to his Club, 
 and wished that for once they might have broken bread to- 
 gether like friends. She had not yet encountered Giles Morn- 
 ington, though they had been under the same roof since seven 
 o'clock the evening before. It seemed to her that there was 
 no actual reason why they should meet at all, unless she made 
 another desperate bid for fortune and forced herself upon 
 him. She rose from the writing-table with the purpose half 
 formed in her mind, and, crossing the room, laid her hand 
 on the bell. 
 
 " I will tell them to take my letter, and ask Mr. Mornington 
 to speak to me if he is in the house," she said, with a quick 
 breath at her own resolution. " At least he cannot refuse 
 
 She was stooping to lay her hand on the bell, when she 
 suddenly shot up to her full height, and stood quivering. 
 Something that had no place in the quiet humdrum of every- 
 day life had happened a mere sensation of fear at present 
 that conveyed nothing more definite to her brain. She only 
 knew that she had heard a sound that her instinct resented 
 as a violent shock in a world of safety. 
 
 Her own door was standing open the glass doors that 
 shut off her corridor from the rest of the house must have 
 been open too ; for up the empty, echoing spaces had come 
 a short, muffled report, the sharp, undeniable crack of fire-
 
 2/o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 arms, that no distance or closed double doors could quite 
 disguise. 
 
 Patricia never rang the bell, or gave her letter to be sent 
 by hand to the Harbingers' house. The next she remembered 
 was the rush of the air in her face as her feet flew down end- 
 less uncarpeted stairs, the impatience of feeling that the 
 house was too large, and its space would not yield fast enough 
 to her hurrv.
 
 2/1 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 "And so maybe, there will come a day 
 
 Living at strain 
 When the power goes, and you lose your way 
 
 But the verdict will be ' Insane.' 
 You ask forgiveness of some few friends 
 
 Brief words and blotted, and so it ends ' 
 
 When the devil breaks is it God Who mends ? 
 Living at strain ! " 
 
 Wild Oats. 
 
 THE secret of Giles Mornington's success as a financier was 
 said to be his quickness of decision he made up his mind, 
 and dealt rapidly, though in millions, where lesser men were 
 still hesitating over thousands and so hesitating were lost. 
 In this, as in most other details of his character, the outside 
 world was entirely mistaken, but he had acquired a reputa- 
 tion which no betrayal on his part had contradicted. As a 
 fact, he had never made a hasty decision in his life ; he came 
 to conclusions very slowly, and weighed all sides of a question 
 where others judged with one-idead haste. The real secret 
 of his success was, that he began to think out his plans long 
 before other men would have conceived them, and was men- 
 tally long-sighted to a degree that brought the far future into 
 immediate range of vision. 
 
 As an instance of this, there was one conclusion of his to 
 which it had taken him three and twenty years to arrive ; but 
 each painful step had never been retraced, nor did he once 
 hesitate over his decision when he had made it. He had, 
 indeed, only reached its culmination on the day on which 
 Lord Lowndes left him at Rye to return to town, and the 
 alteration of his own plans, which subsequently caused him 
 to follow his guest, was merely a slight divergence from an 
 original intention, and did not alter the intention itself at all.
 
 272 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 It was a small thing that changed his purpose even thus 
 far, but sufficiently potent. When his guest disappeared 
 round the curve of the drive, he turned also to go back into 
 the house ; but, as he turned, his eye was caught by the open 
 gate of the little copse stretching behind the house, which 
 was supposed to be kept closed from the inroads of the dogs 
 who went a-hunting there. Mornington mechanically stepped 
 aside to latch it, with a mental note that he would report 
 the circumstance to the men who were doubtless at fault, 
 and then, without any more definite intention, he passed 
 through the gate into the copse and closed it behind him 
 instead of before. There was a narrow pathway through 
 the trees, and he followed it aimlessly, without any con- 
 scious goal, until he emerged on to the cliff itself, beneath 
 which a tangled vegetation leapt down from shelf to shelf 
 as if to mock the tradition that the sea once tossed white 
 spray up here .... and then, suddenly, below him lay the 
 Marshes. 
 
 He had always loved the Marshes. The sad green levels 
 had drawn him many a time, when life felt intolerable be- 
 neath his impassive exterior, and he would stand, as now, 
 gazing with fascinated eyes over the endless stretch of green 
 grazing land and narrow water-ways, out to a vague horizon 
 where the sea might be imagined. He did not draw a defi- 
 nite likeness between its hopeless monotony and his own life ; 
 he only knew that its utter resignation suited the most final 
 of his moods. It seemed to him that the land, knowing that 
 life and movement and the salt keen flavour of waves would 
 visit it no more, had settled down into mere dull passivity 
 and become fodder for cattle. He also had found his uses, 
 and he did not recognise that any further experience could 
 drive him into action, or that despair is not paralysis .... 
 Now, within a short time since, he had found that even his 
 nerves were not sufficiently dead for him to feel no pain, and 
 with his acquired deliberation he was setting himself to soothe 
 them in the only way he knew. He had meant to do it this 
 afternoon, but the chance stroll through the copse and out 
 on to the cliff side, had brought him face to face with the 
 Marshes, and a revulsion of feeling made him think that it 
 would jar on his conception of the place. He would not do 
 it at Rye he had always loved Rye. It was the only senti- 
 ment in which he had indulged for more than twenty years ;
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 273 
 
 and besides, he had waited so long that he could afford tc 
 put it off until to-morrow. 
 
 He went back to the house, and ordered the servants to 
 pack up for him, as he was returning to town. An inherited 
 instinct, perhaps, had made him object to having a special 
 attendant about him, and one of the men generally acted as 
 valet without the danger of his growing dependent on an in- 
 variable servant who waited upon him. There was no train 
 at the time he wanted it, but he sent a message ordering a 
 special, and caught an express at Ashford. The only 
 emotion in his mind all through the miles he traversed back 
 to town was a regret at seeing the Marshes no more of 
 having said good-bye to the one place which had been a haven 
 of refuge from the life to which he was going back, as spectres 
 may go, looking on the place of it once more with alien eyes, 
 and a cold surprise that it could once have had a power of 
 ill over him. As he walked a trifle heavily up the familiar 
 steps, he almost groped in his own mind for the old loathing 
 and dread ; but the hall was a dead horror no longer the 
 background to a daily tragedy that had grinned at him foi 
 four and twenty years. For the first time it was merely a 
 house to him, and not an emblem of ironical wealth wasted 
 on a place miscalled Home. He regarded it now as a 
 shelter at least, a useful possession, where a man might lay 
 down his load at last. If it held any other memory, it was 
 that of a white figure at the foot of the broad staircase, a 
 very beautiful woman's face with brown eyes that wanted to 
 help 
 
 Looking back over his life, it seemed to him a series 
 of such disastrous failures as might justify any man in 
 throwing it up altogether. As a boy he had wished, like 
 Eldred Leroy, to be a sailor ; but a reserved nature and the 
 practical necessity of the Middle Class had decided that he 
 should follow up the pioneer steps of the father who had 
 laid the foundations of a fortune by invention. The son's 
 genius was the management of money rather than its acquire- 
 ment by original methods. He was a financier, bred if not 
 born, and he had handled and turned the money already in his 
 grasp so that he was a very rich man when still fairly young. 
 At five and thirty he was called a millionaire, and took a place 
 of honour upon Boards of Directors, where his practical know- 
 ledge counterbalanced the amiable qualities of such men as 
 
 18
 
 274 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Lord Ragby. It was owing to such a Board, and meeting 
 his coadjutors, that Mornington had been introduced into the 
 historical house of Blais, and learned his first lesson of its 
 conservatism. As he sat quite alone in his own room at the 
 back of the house in Piccadilly, shut off from the rest of it 
 by double doors, he suddenly broke into a grating laugh of 
 extreme amusement, but the sound did not frighten him as 
 it would have done anyone who had overheard. He had 
 reached that place in his memory where he first met Lady 
 Vera, and was reviewing his impressions of her with a sense 
 of the ludicrous that was devilish. She had been a very 
 beautiful girl, with a tawny beauty that had always somehow 
 reminded him of a chestnut horse. Something of the racer's 
 breed was perhaps discernible in her long slim limbs (at that 
 age she gave the impression of being corseted as little as 
 Patricia did now), but he was too dazzled to pass a deliberate 
 criticism. She had married him in a gown whose price he 
 subsequently learned when he paid the bill, with a Blais to 
 hold up her train, and a Blais Heron amongst the brides- 
 maids, and Blais's to fill the front pews and whisper amongst 
 themselves of family secrets and jokes that shut the rest of 
 the world outside until even the wedding partook of the 
 effect of a family party. The sense of his own withering 
 unimportance beside that of the meanest Blais had entered 
 into the bridegroom's soul long before the bride believed 
 him capable of a faint glimmer of intuition. Lady Vera was 
 a well-bred woman in all essentials of an everyday world; 
 she never insinuated that her husband's birth made him in 
 a different clay to herself, far less did she say so by spoken 
 word, even in a passion. But she lived it. There came a 
 day when things drifted quite inevitably to a comfortable 
 estrangement that suited her very well indeed, and she went 
 her way as a pretty woman who was emancipated by marriage 
 rather than trammelled by it, and with leave to be extrava- 
 gant. There came a night, too, when all experience that was 
 personally distasteful to her ceased, leaving her only with a 
 whetted appetite that she looked to satisfy elsewhere; and 
 she lived her own life, unwifed, but trusted by the fool whose 
 womenkind were bound by the traditions of a creed she had 
 forgotten. 
 
 From that night and it was a nameless horror, a hurt 
 pride of manhood that he never faced again in memory
 
 AS YE' HAVE SOWN. 275 
 
 Mornington lost the sense of his wife as anything but a name 
 and a tiresome responsibility, beneath the burden of whose 
 possible indiscretions he writhed. He had lived his life since 
 without any personality in it, gradually withdrawing from 
 vivid intercourse with any human soul, until he was left 
 stranded on the boundaries of existence and all men looked 
 to him like shadows. It is a dreadful thing to have no vital 
 interest in another human creature which is strong enough to 
 make them seem alive to our senses as well as our intelligence. 
 Personality is the real cause of all the mental pain and 
 pleasure in the world ; it can hurt as no mere selfish dis- 
 appointment can do, but it is the life-blood beating in an other- 
 wise colourless world. Mornington was afraid of allowing 
 anyone to become real to him in the new universe which cir- 
 cumstances had developed round him the least spark of an 
 interest which he detected in himself he rigidly put out, for 
 he had learned the torture pang which can be inflicted 
 through this close attraction to another soul which means a 
 
 knowledge of their personality, and he was afraid 
 
 afraid ! To be absolutely disillusioned is really a 
 
 first-class Hell. 
 
 Twelve months after his estrangement from his wife, there 
 was a child born, under his roof, and bearing his name. He 
 remembered that it was the family physician who first com- 
 municated the touching possibility to him, and the memory 
 made him wince. But he did not care to remember, either, 
 the woman's face when they met after he knew. Even a race- 
 horse may show craven fear perhaps the more craven for 
 its high tension and natural excitement. Let us be pitiful ! 
 
 The child had first made its existence really known to him 
 three or four years after its birth by a cry that had caused 
 his heart to stand still, for the shock penetrated through all 
 its acquired numbness. He had always had a secret 
 sympathy for dumb things, and a pity that was championship 
 for anything smaller and more helpless than himself, if in 
 fear or pain. And this was fear deadly fear, and prospec- 
 tive pain. He did not laugh at this point in his reminiscence, 
 but he smiled grimly as he recalled his warning to the woman 
 who bore his name. She would not be warned, because she 
 could not, self-control having passed beyond hope of posses- 
 sion of Vera Mornington since it had never been learned by 
 Vera Blais. Then had come the day when he had taken the 
 
 18*
 
 276 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 piteous small thing abroad, out of reach of such fear as 
 caused those cries, and placed it in pure, generous guardian 
 ship. Mornington did not think that he believed in a 
 woman's goodness, but his one interview with Lady Helen had 
 made him more inclined to do s>o. She was of a type which 
 hangs in most of the picture galleries in big historical houses 
 in England a woman whose pride is so subtle that it is an 
 essence in her rather than an obvious and distinctive thing. 
 Lady Helen's pride was her inheritance, as much as her small 
 flat ears, and rather long features. But she was proud in the 
 right way, and of the right things, rather than of those which 
 had roused Giles Mornington's bitter sneers in his wife's circle 
 af acquaintance. He always thought of Lady Helen as a 
 stately figure in a full black gown, and with a lace scarf thrown 
 over her grey hair, because she had appeared so on the day 
 svhen he brought Patricia to her Quinta at Funchal. He 
 never saw her again ; their one interview settled all the 
 business that was necessary, and left each of them with a 
 secret respect for the other. Giles Mornington left the little 
 white-frocked child he had brought amongst the begonia and 
 the bougainvillia of Funchal, the bright blossoms rousing the 
 grave little face to smiles already, and went back to the colour 
 less life out of which he was so laboriously draining the 
 savour of existence. 
 
 N T ow, after twenty torpid years, it threatened him again, 
 this keen relish of personal interest, and he was afraid 
 horribly afraid of the pain that he dared not even remember. 
 The danger had come in the presence of a woman grown from 
 the child he had saved from the inherited instincts of the 
 Blais's, and menaced him by a daily contact he could not 
 quite avoid. At first when Patricia came home, he had 
 looked at the triumphant, unconscious beauty of this new face 
 with a cold curiosity, to see what his experiment had done to 
 develop the child he had placed in safe keeping. Gradually 
 he saw and acknowledged that Lady Helen had made a very 
 different woman out of the unpromising material he considered 
 his supposed daughter, to what might have resulted had she 
 remained at home. He felt the quick shock of sympathy 
 between them when the eager brown eyes sought his own. 
 and recognised that the intolerable life which he had forced 
 himself to endure was intolerable also to Patricia. Across a 
 room full of chattering, vacant men and women, whom he
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 277 
 
 despised, he would sometimes find her looking at him, and 
 know that the same thought was in both their minds the 
 futility of a social system which gathered people together and 
 entertained them without the least personal desire or attrac- 
 tion. At last he found himself furtively looking for her to 
 understand him and to agree without their having exchanged 
 a word. It was then that he began to be afraid. Had he 
 gone further he knew that she would become a personal 
 necessity to him a real thing, with all the vivid pains and 
 pleasures that he had sternly thrust out of his life. 
 
 Women were not an unknown quantity to Mornington, even 
 after his experience of marriage. He had had mistresses, 
 and had satisfied the masculine animal in himself as a matter 
 of course. But it was a mechanical thing that passed and 
 left no trace upon his finer self or inner life. Unlike most 
 of his fellows, he did not confide in the women who had no 
 claim upon his confidence. They were as much a physical 
 comfort as his bath, or his wine at dinner nothing more. 
 He considered them a necessity, and indulged under this 
 satisfying tradition. But now he wanted something more than 
 physical gratification from the opposite sex; he wanted 
 sympathy, and had begun to long for it in a shy, savage 
 fashion that threatened to overwhelm all his acquired in- 
 difference. It had come upon him afresh in all its force when 
 Lord Lowndes had suddenly suggested Patricia's presence at 
 Rye a very natural suggestion, but one which Mornington 
 had ignored when the girl herself pleaded for it. Suddenly 
 it had become an overpowering temptation the thought of 
 Patricia, apart from the nightmare of life in Piccadilly with 
 which he forced himself to associate her just Patricia and 
 himself, as friends, perhaps intimates, with the sympathy be- 
 tween them for which he had starved all his life ! If she had 
 been his daughter it might have been so. The bitterest hurt 
 that Vera Blais had done him was not only the loss of faith 
 in all humanity through herself, but in depriving him of any 
 right to Patricia. Even as things were the result of a miser- 
 able system which made adultery a forgiven sin for the sake 
 of false decency he still found that he coveted Patricia. He 
 wanted the daughter who was not his flesh and blood, and yet 
 by some strange bond of spirit seemed his all the same. For 
 one breathless moment he had thought of unlocking the 
 closed doors between them, throwing open his house to her
 
 278 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 welcoming foot, and, perhaps, also opening the long-locked 
 doors of his heart a little way one day. Then, with the 
 memory of the past, had come the reaction. The soul into 
 which the iron has entered, does not become purged on this 
 side of death. That miracle is only possible in Heaven. . . 
 
 The room in which Mornington was sitting was the one in 
 which he usually took his meals when he had them apart from 
 the rest of the household. It was panelled, like the large 
 dining-room, and the small paned windows above the wood 
 were faintly stained, the glass, however, hardly darkening the 
 apartment. Over the mantelpiece were a curious collection 
 of old weapons more especially Japanese. His eyes 
 wandered desperately about the place as if to distract himself, 
 and lit on a graceful sword, the handle beautifully inlaid. 
 As if the thing drew him with a kind of fascination, he got 
 slowly out of his chair and crossed the room, walking stiffly 
 like a man who has tramped many weary miles and nears the 
 end of his journey. Lying on the mantelshelf, below the 
 weapons, was the charged revolver he had placed there half 
 an hour ago, after his arrival. He took it up mechanically 
 and handled it deftly, seeing that it was in working order. 
 There was neither fear nor recklessness in his face, but he 
 looked very weary, and all the secretiveness had left his eyes 
 giving them a curious, childish expression. 
 
 "I wonder," he said half aloud, "what comes next? It 
 cannot be worse than this has been. I wonder who will find 
 me?" 
 
 He remembered the only other person in the house, save 
 the servants, and her face was before his eyes in a vivid flash. 
 But he saw two likenesses in it now, and with a movement 
 like a terrified child's who flies to shelter, he caught the 
 revolver and set it between his teeth. Any way to avoid that 
 eternal memory the shame of it the pang 
 
 The shock of the report was caught up and passed through 
 the doors he had left carelessly open, as if all need to close 
 them were past. The lingering echo wandered out and 
 seemed to fill the quiet day. There was a sound of running 
 feet, and a sharp question. 
 
 The great house had heard at last the sound for which it 
 had been listening and waiting for twenty-four ominous years.
 
 279 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " My mother was a Lady 
 
 Who was married to a Lord, 
 
 But she lost her place in Heaven 
 
 For the glamour of a sword. 
 
 " My father was a soldier 
 
 My mother called him friend ! 
 An Officer a Gentleman, 
 Where may such friendships end ? " 
 
 The Ballad of the Bar Sinister. 
 
 " YES, sir," said the butler, with the patient courtesy of a good 
 servant, " her ladyship is coming, but she has not arrived 
 yet." 
 
 " I thought perhaps I could wire, or do something," said 
 Lexiter, his long loose figure and concerned face looming 
 over even Curtice's stately proportions. That functionary 
 noticed the arm that still hung in a sling, and tucked the fact 
 away in his memory to find the cause by and by. It chanced 
 that he went out on business and rode on an omnibus later in 
 the day, and the driver had married the sister of one of the 
 housemaids in Lord Queensleigh's house in Portland Place, 
 and knew all about it and rather more. This is how authentic 
 news of the upper classes is really transmitted in London; 
 the " social columns," even in the best papers, may be doubted, 
 but the verbal report of the Servants' Hall, never. 
 
 " Miss Mornington sent a telegram at once, sir," remarked 
 the butler in a tone of polite information. He was quite 
 decently grave and depressed, but he knew how to make social 
 conversation. 
 
 ' How soon is Lady Vera expected ? " 
 
 'To-morrow, I believe, sir or next day." 
 In the meantime " 
 
 ' Lady D'Aulnoy is here, sir ! " 
 
 'Oh, is she?" said Gary), with the relief in his tone which
 
 28o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 some people's names always seem to bring. "Look here, 
 Curtice, will you ask her to speak to me for a minute? ' ; 
 
 " Certainly, sir. The household is of course rather upset, 
 but if you will come into the dining-room " 
 
 " I'll wait here," said Lexiter in his off-hand fashion. A 
 servant always recognised the master in him and consented 
 to that manner. The tall figure was just on the spot where 
 the butler had left him for he had not even sat down when 
 Lady D'Aulnoy appeared and approached him. There were 
 traces of tears on her handsome face, and her eyes had that 
 distressed look of shock which violent death gives to a kindly 
 nature. Caryl remembered seeing it once before when a 
 great specialist had broken it to her as gently as only a doctor 
 could, that her own days were probably numbered and her 
 heart fatally diseased. 
 
 " My dear Caryl," she said in a tone that the house seemed 
 to have hushed, " what a terrible affair, is it not ? So incon- 
 ceivable his doctor can account for it as little as I ! Won't 
 you come into the dining-room ? " 
 
 "No," said Caryl, with brief imperiousness. Then he 
 smiled down on her to excuse it. " I do not want to keep you 
 more than a minute you are wanted here, I have no doubt. 
 Is there anything I can do ? " 
 
 " I don't think so at present." 
 
 " Send round to my Club if there is, will you? I am stay- 
 ing there." 
 
 " Yes thanks. I am glad you are in town. It is such 
 a comfort to have a man in the family to appeal to." 
 
 "The Harbingers are up too, you know." 
 
 " Yes, but dear Bobby She smiled deprecatingly. 
 
 " I know they are here, of course. Chiffon came round this 
 morning, terribly upset; I was really rather relieved she did 
 not see Nougat." 
 
 " How is she ? " 
 
 " Nougat ? I don't know. I really do not. The shock 
 seems to have been greater to her than I should have ex- 
 pected, considering how little they knew of each other. You 
 see she found him." 
 
 Caryl's beautiful mouth closed a little tightly. He had a 
 certain sensitiveness about his womankind, that made such a 
 situation really horrible to him. His eyes did not for the 
 moment meet Aim6e D'Aulnoy's concerned face.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 281 
 
 " Have you the least idea of any cause ? " 
 
 " None ! Absolutely none ! Nougat asked me the same 
 thing she said, rather pitifully I thought, that she was so 
 ignorant, even of his obvious position in the business world, 
 that he might be on the verge of ruin and it would never reach 
 her. Of course, I know very little, but I do not think that 
 there was anything that could cause it financially." 
 
 " Poor devil ! " said Lexiter under his breath. 
 
 " Of course, the obvious explanation is overstrain, and that 
 might easily be the case with his enormous interests, and the 
 power he held in the Markets. But it is a dreadful affair, 
 altogether." 
 
 " How does Nougat look ? " 
 
 " I have hardly seen her. She met me when I came, and 
 explained all that had happened and what she had done. I 
 was in the Midlands when she wired to ask me to come, and 
 of course I got off the minute I could, but it happened twelve 
 hours before I reached her. She is perfectly controlled, 
 but I am afraid the strain will tell on her later. She obviously 
 prefers to be alone, in her own rooms, and you know ! she 
 is not a girl whom one could insist on rousing for her good. 
 She is a woman, and one no one could intrude upon ! " 
 
 " H'm ! " Caryl threw tip his handsome head like an im- 
 patient horse. " Well, I won't keep you. You might go to 
 her and tell her I have been here will you ? and if there is 
 anything she wants done I will do it." 
 
 " I will." Lady D'Aulnoy smiled at him kindly. His 
 attitude was so obvious, she thought ! " Good gracious, Car ! 
 I have never asked all this while what have you done to 
 your arm ? " 
 
 " A horse of Loftus's bit me," said Lexiter indifferently, 
 turning away. He shook hands a trifle absently, and walked 
 out of the house, thinking. Giles Mornington's death had 
 obscured his plans a little. The inscrutability of the suicide, 
 now, after all these years of apparent complaisance, made hire 
 feel as if he were groping in the dark. Would it affect 
 Nougat, he wondered ? His mind would hardly be reassured 
 until he had had a talk with Lady Vera. 
 
 Lady D'Aulnoy rang for the lift to take her to Patricia's 
 portion of the house, with some slight reluctance. She 
 agreed that it was desirable to tell her that Lexiter had 
 called, and of his willingness to serve her; but she always
 
 282 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 entered that corridor beyond the glass doors with the feeling 
 that a swimmer has before the plunge into possibly cold 
 water. She never had been, and felt that she never could be, 
 met with anything but the most perfect courtesy and welcome. 
 Nevertheless, the feeling was always there. 
 
 She met Patricia's maid in the passage, and sent her on as 
 an emissary. Patricia herself came to the door of her 
 favourite sitting-room and asked her cousin in Lady 
 D'Aulnoy had the claim of Blais blood, fortunately diluted 
 with a kindlier strain. Save for the gravity of her face a 
 gravity with a certain wonder in it she looked far the more 
 collected of the two. 
 
 " I came up to tell you that Caryl has just come round to 
 see if he could be of any use," said Lady D'Aulnoy, with an 
 unconscious apology for her presence. 
 
 " Yes ? I knew he was in town," Patricia remarked quietly. 
 She added, after an instant's pause, "Lord Lowndes told 
 me he had seen him the last time I went to call on the 
 Duke." 
 
 " Poor fellow, he is in the wars ! " remarked Lady 
 D'Aulnoy, sitting down in one of the easy chairs. " A horse 
 of Loftus's bit him in the arm, which is in a sling still." 
 
 " A horse-bite is a nasty thing," said Patricia, remember- 
 ing, as if it were many years ago, her glow of acknowledg- 
 ment to Lexiter's pluck. 
 
 " It is a certain satisfaction to know that Car is at hand,'' 
 said Lady D'Aulnoy, simply. " There are so many details for 
 a man to manage, and Bobby Chilcote is a dear good soul, 
 but he affects me just like a policeman. I always feel a 
 policeman so hot when he does anything for me ! Something 
 in that stuffy blue cloth they wear, I fancy." 
 
 " Lord Harbinger is rather apt to become official the 
 minute he gets beyond slang," acknowledged Patricia, " Did 
 Caryl" her voice suddenly failed her to her own surprise. 
 The stunned sensation, which had made her impassive 
 ever since she forgot to ring her bell because of the report 
 of a revolver, seemed to give way to another dull ache the 
 pang that came immediately before the more horrible shock. 
 She wondered if Caryl had mentioned anything about the 
 Harbingers it seemed to her now impossible to dissever him 
 from Chiffon. She hoped her face did not fail her as her 
 voice had done.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 283 
 
 " Yes, he wanted to see you," said Lady D'Aulnoy, catching 
 at the obvious ending of Nougat's sentence. " I suppose that 
 is only to be expected." 
 
 There was only the vaguest suggestion in the words, but 
 Patricia suddenly and gravely forced it to its final meaning. 
 She turned her large reflective eyes on Lady D'Aulnoy and 
 spoke quite deliberately. 
 
 " Do you mean that Caryl has any personal feeling for me 
 that would make his sympathy an intimate thing? " 
 
 Lady D'Aulnoy, driven to bay, took refuge in her training. 
 
 " I mean no more than you do, Nougat, dear ! It was an 
 idle speech." 
 
 " I think you are mistaken," said Patricia, still in the same 
 thoughtful tone. " I do not believe that Caryl has, or ever 
 could have, any real feeling for me I mean that he is not 
 in the least in love with me," she added plainly. " I am 
 afraid of your having any misconception over this, and treat- 
 ing him with too much confidence as one of the family that 
 is all." 
 
 What it was her sharpened senses really feared she could 
 not say. The feeling of dread, or discovery of a reason for 
 that awful figure she had found face downwards on the floor, 
 kept her strung to breaking point night and day. She seemed 
 still to be waiting for a fresh shock to follow on the last, and 
 the thought of sharing the dead man's secret with an un- 
 licensed outsider who had crept in under false pretences, was 
 abhorrent to her. Mornington was still her father to her 
 mind, and she was guarding his undiscovered secret jealously. 
 Lexiter should not chance upon it through any false claim on 
 her. But with a very feminine impulse to unburden her 
 overwrought heart, she longed to ask a desperate question of 
 Lady D'Aulnoy as to the lesser grief. Was it an open shame, 
 or had she only stumbled upon it ? Did all the world smile 
 covertly at Chiffon, and know that Lexiter was her lover? 
 
 " He seemed .very really concerned about you to-day ! ' ; 
 Lady D'Aulnoy said feebly. She had the same uncomfortable 
 feeling from Nougat's bald statements as she would have done 
 faced with nakedness, being long accustomed to clothes. 
 
 " He has an invaluable manner ! " said Patricia with the 
 first hint of bitterness she had shown. 
 
 " But, Nougat, tell me " (there is a certain fine curiosity 
 
 even in the best women. Lady D'Aulnoy was really a little
 
 284 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 consoled for the discomfort of plain speaking by the chance 
 of fresh discoveries.) " Why do you assert so positively that 
 the man does not care for you ? We have all known no one 
 could help knowing ! that he was more serious than anyone 
 has ever well, I mean that you had only to hold up your 
 hand and say ' Come ! ' ' 
 
 " Other women have only had to make the same movement, 
 however, have they not ? " Patricia's words never came fast. 
 But she weighed each one so anxiously now that they seemed 
 to herself to drag. " And they also have said Come ! " 
 
 " O-oh ! " A long breath of extreme surprise escaped Lady 
 D'Aulnoy. She was genuinely fond of Patricia, and had 
 fancied that she understood her better than most people ; but 
 this mental attitude was decidedly new. Had it been a 
 younger woman, a girl, such objections might have been ex- 
 pected. But Patricia was four and twenty, and seemed so 
 tolerant of life, that scruples over a man's past life were the 
 last that Lady D'Aulnoy had expected. She found herself 
 hurrying into expostulation. 
 
 " Oh, these things are so exaggerated ! And the poor man 
 is the victim of his own charm. What can you expect with 
 the manner you acknowledge invaluable ? Of course the 
 world says he is irresistible to women. Well, one knows 
 what that means obvious success, and other men's envy. 
 Don't be jealous, Nougat ; take my advice. It's never worth 
 while." 
 
 "I do not think I am jealous," said Patricia slowly, and 
 still in that guarded tone. " I was not generalising either 
 I was thinking of one particular instance. Have you heard 
 any one name mentioned with Caryl's more than another?' 
 
 Had she been looking at Lady D'Aulnoy she would have 
 seen a horror of dismay in her eyes disproportionate even to 
 such plain speaking. But Patricia's own saddened face was 
 turned to the window, where, beneath the already falling 
 leaves from the Green Park, the respectable dull World 
 bustled by the Middle Classes that go about their business 
 from year's end to year's end, until it seems that the less for- 
 tunate among them never have a holiday. 
 
 " Of course one hears all sorts of things," gasped Lady 
 D'Aulnoy, in a low voice. "Things one can't discuss, 
 Nougat ! " 
 
 " I am not asking you to discuss them ! " said the younger
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 285 
 
 woman quickly, her brown eyes coming back with a flash 
 from their distant survey. " It is the last thing I intend. 
 But I ask you to put yourself in my place would you, under 
 the circumstances, think of Caryl Lexiter again in any capacity 
 save as a friend for whom one has to feel a great resent- 
 menti I see that you know the case of which I was think- 
 ing ! " she added, and the disheartened tone was for Chiffon. 
 But to Lady D'Aulnoy's horrified ears it meant something 
 widely different something incredible in Nougat's clean 
 mind, which could be saddened by sins other than her own, 
 but was not yet soiled by them. " Yes, I know a good many 
 people know, I am afraid ! " said the older woman desperately. 
 " But, dear Nougat, one can't discuss that with you ! How 
 on earth you ever heard ! But people are worse than in- 
 discreet ; they are brutes ! And then you must remember 
 that it all happened ten years ago when you were a child at 
 school. To rake that up now is so unnecessary. It ought 
 to have died a natural death. I suppose finding him so 
 intimate here surprised you ? Of course to a new-comer it 
 might seem odd. I suppose we have all got used to it!" 
 She ended with a brief impatient sigh, and really to the warm- 
 hearted womanhood under her acquired indifference to other 
 people's sins, she felt a momentary impatience that such 
 things should be. It seemed hard to drag a nice woman 
 like Nougat in the dirt track left by old chariot wheels .... 
 Throughout the whole of that long, rambling speech, 
 Patricia had not made a movement. But she had, appar- 
 ently, fallen back into her former state of apathy. She 
 .looked, when Lady D'Aulnoy raised her eyes, as if she had 
 turned to stone. There was no added compression of the 
 lips, no betrayal in the drooped eyes ; nevertheless, a mask 
 of actual secrecy had suddenly fallen upon her face. To 
 Lady D'Aulnoy's relief she began to speak of something else, 
 as if by chance reminded of it, and the conversation drifted 
 to other topics before Aimee D'Aulnoy was summoned away 
 to answer some question for the household, leaving Patricia 
 unworried by the small detail. 
 
 " If you would just tell them for me " she said, and 
 
 Lady D'Aulnoy was glad to have some definite help to give, 
 for an uneasiness of the past discussion still haunted her 
 mind. 
 
 When she wai alone, Patricia rose rather suddenly and
 
 286 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 went to the window. She put her two strong hands on the 
 sash and wrenched it up, clinging to the woodwork, however, 
 as if she needed support. A hideous thing had happened to 
 her a thing more hideous even that that mangled figure 
 downstairs. What was this that they said what was this? 
 
 " A good many people had known it Seeing him 
 
 so intimate here you thought it odd? But we all 
 
 got so used to it, I suppose ! " What was this that they said 
 that they meant ? It had come like a shock of revelation, 
 when that poor, kind-hearted woman had unconsciously 
 hinted at a grisly secret. 
 
 " It all happened ten years ago when you were still at 
 school ! " Yes, and at school with Chiffon. It was not 
 Chiffon, then, of whose shame many people knew. It was 
 who? 
 
 There are some things one cannot face even in one's own 
 mind in the first keenness of knowing them. Patricia stood 
 still a long while, with only that grip of her hands upon the 
 window to tell of the tension of her mind. Her eyes were 
 following the tired, sordid stream of people below her, and 
 she was forcing her mind to follow a little way further on 
 into their lives, in order to avoid thinking what ? 
 
 Gradually gradually the wicked thought crept to her 
 and clung, revealing itself like a snake, until she almost fancied 
 it a material, loathsome thing, gliding towards her across the 
 room, and shuddered where she stood at the window. It 
 touched her now, calling her attention to a dozen things that 
 bore witness of its ugly truth. The inevitable intimacy that 
 she had vaguely resented between Lexiter and the woman 
 who was her mother, spoke suddenly with a shrill accusation. 
 She had condemned it without questioning its source, as the 
 result of certain manners adopted by the Blais family ; several 
 men were " friends " of Lady Vera's, and had shades of the 
 same manner, though none were of the exact quality of 
 Lexiter's. There was a deep familiarity that cropped up in 
 his intercourse with Lady Vera, that Patricia had thought 
 must be the outcome of years ; now it seemed the outcome of 
 something more harmful. There were allusions, jests, half- 
 checked reminiscences once or twice that explained them- 
 selves now, while she marvelled that they could have been so 
 reckless, or have found it possible to laugh above the grave 
 of such a secret. Most people are under the impression that
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 287 
 
 the breaking of the Seventh Commandment is a tragic thing, 
 or at least a solemn act to the passion-ridden transgressors. 
 This is a mistake engendered by never knowing of them until 
 they are in the guise of penitents, because found out. It is 
 usually a sin provocative of some amusement, unless it is a 
 single offence with elements of violence in it that make it 
 partake of the hideous quality of murder. The sinners who 
 slip into sin more daintily and gradually, come to regard it as 
 pardonable under the title of Unlawful Love, and have 
 generally some memory of laughter left them with the after- 
 taste of tears. If one could compel truth from a woman who 
 had often lapsed from virtue, she would be bound to confess 
 to ludicrous incidents that, at the time at least, conferred an 
 aspect of comedy on the affair. Don Juan in Julia's bed is 
 after all a laughable object, and the witticisms of the " Contes 
 Drolatiques " undeniable ; but there is nothing comic in 
 Lucrece or Tamar. 
 
 But Patricia could not recognise the situation as anything 
 but criminal, and in consequence the lightness with which it 
 now seemed to her that they had treated it was but one more 
 proof of their mental and moral degradation. Caryl Lexiter 
 and her mother! Caryl Lexiter, the man this mother had 
 tacitly encouraged to marry her daughter, if she had not done 
 so plainly. Probably she had done so to him ; it was a bar- 
 gain between them the old mistress marrying her sometime 
 lover to her daughter, as a last indifferent favour with a 
 fortune tacked on ! The cruel blood rose to the girl's very 
 forehead and burned her beautiful face until it was not good 
 to look upon. She could have cried out under the degrada- 
 tion offered her, and the bitter hurt which seemed to be in 
 her very soul. And then for the first time hurrying suspicions 
 began to throb in her brain until they threatened to drive her 
 mad. Why did they all hold her so cheaply? What was 
 the reason for Lady Vera's complaisance in marrying her to 
 a man no longer young, with a reckless past and an indifferent 
 future? Self-interest (Patricia scornfully denied her any 
 kindlier reason, in her fierce anger) suggested that she might 
 have made a better bargain, and contrived a more brilliant 
 match, for her own aggrandisement. Had the man a hold 
 over the woman, that she had not attempted it? Did he 
 know of some other shame besides his own intrigue, to force 
 her to use her influence on his side, and, if so, how many
 
 2 88 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 scandals were there to make her mother's name too vile to 
 take between clean lips ! 
 
 Her grasping hands left the window suddenly and went to 
 her full white throat as if she were choking. Was this the 
 reason of that figure on the floor, face downwards, that she 
 had found ? And had he felt it intolerable after twenty-five 
 years alas ! no wonder that patience was outraged at last ! 
 Perhaps there was some new shame he knew of perhaps 
 that party at Alassio 
 
 Patricia turned from the window and walked uncertainly 
 into the middle of the room. In a few hours that woman 
 whom she had never liked would be in the same house with 
 her, stripped for ever, to her knowledge, of her pretence of 
 decency. She had no doubt of the discovery on which she 
 had stumbled through Lady D'Aulnoy's mistaking her half- 
 confidence too many things confirmed it for her to doubt. 
 But one thought remained to her to give her comfort, and 
 was as a rock to her feet when the solid support of her tra- 
 ditions seemed to be torn away. 
 
 " I am not only born of that woman," she said to herself, 
 in feverish assurance. " There is not only lying, traitorous 
 blood in my veins. I belong to him too the poor, poor man, 
 who was her victim also, and who doubted me because I was 
 her child. He, my father, brought me a better inheritance 
 in a descent from honest men and decent women. I am no 
 thorough-bred, thank God. The racehorse is crossed in 
 me with the dull serviceable roadster. I also am of the Great 
 Middle Class !" 
 
 High up on the wall above her head, there was a portrait 
 of Lady Helen Chilcote. It was done in crayon, and was 
 very much as Mornington had known her. A fine face, so 
 fine as to be almost severe, with a lace scarf thrown over the 
 grey hair and folded about the neck. The proud pictured 
 eyes looked down on the tempest-tossed reality of that living 
 figure below them with inscrutable sadness. Something in 
 the portrait gave people who saw it for the first time a feeling 
 of being checked almost as if the haughty old face were a 
 perpetual type of denial. 
 
 * I must I am ! " said eager flesh and blood. 
 
 " You will not you will learn the meaning of No ! " said 
 the portrait.
 
 289 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " Her spirit haunts the Earth to prove 
 
 The impotence of Womanhood. 
 With eyes that never look above 
 She tortures with her human love 
 God's dream of good. 
 
 " And still, wherever Nature wreaks 
 
 Her vengeance for her thwarted plan, 
 The Magdalene in Woman speaks 
 She seeks no Christ, she only seeks 
 A very man." 
 
 The Magdalene. 
 
 LADY VERA did not appear in Piccadilly until after the in- 
 quest, on the day before the funeral, when she arrived on 
 the doorstep with an escort, the last remnant of the Alassio 
 party, who bade her good-bye with a somewhat craven haste, 
 and retreated to his Club. Ten minutes after her mistress, 
 arrived the maid, fagged with the responsibility of much 
 luggage, and wearying for tea. The gods favoured her, and 
 before she reached Lady Vera's rooms still hugging a jewel- 
 case and a cloak she encountered Patricia, by no means too 
 absorbed in the crisis of the moment to see that human 
 nature is sometimes over-driven like cattle. 
 
 " Good afternoon, Selfe," she said kindly. " You have had 
 a long journey, and are tired, I am afraid." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, Miss Mornington ! I am thankful to get 
 home at last ! " said the woman, with faint resentment of her 
 burdens. The diamonds never weighed amongst Lady Vera's 
 reddened locks (though she pronounced the tiara a leaden 
 beast !) as they did on Selfe's mind. 
 
 " You will want your tea," said Patricia. 
 
 " I was going to see if my lady wants anything unpacked 
 
 19
 
 290 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 at once " Selfe hesitated. Consideration was not a 
 
 tenet of the Blais' creed. 
 
 " I have not seen Lady Vera yet. I am going to her now 
 you will have time to get a cup of tea while I am talking 
 to her," said Patricia quietly, and turned to her mother's door 
 before she heard the woman's murmured, but really genuine 
 thanks. 
 
 " Come in ! " said Lady Vera impatiently, and the note of 
 aggravation in her tone betrayed the strain on her mind to 
 Patricia. She looked up with a slight start as her daughter 
 entered, and for a second she hesitated. The last time they 
 had had an interview was when Patricia had declined to go 
 to Alassio, but her own galling defeat was not now in Lady 
 Vera's mind. Her thoughts were darkened with new fears 
 and ugly possibilities, and there was a touch of desperate 
 pluck in the way she faced the situation. For that silent, 
 speechless figure somewhere in the great house (she did not 
 know where her dead husband was lying yet) was a worse 
 menace than he had been in life. Then she had learned a 
 kind of reckless security ; after all these years she was certain 
 that he would not speak. But now his very action, the closed 
 lips that had shut once and for ever, might be an accusation 
 that would reach the intelligence of this antagonist who was 
 her daughter. After that second's hesitation, she made a 
 movement forward and kissed Patricia's smooth unresponsive 
 cheek. 
 
 " My poor Nougat ! How terrible for you all this must 
 have been ! " she said in a properly shocked tone. 
 
 Patricia looked at her for a moment with something that 
 was almost curiosity in her great eyes. It is very difficult 
 for eyes of that shade of brown clear colour, with a dash of 
 chestnut in them to look cold; but Lady Vera was resent- 
 fully conscious of feeling as if a glacier had looked at her. 
 
 " Do you want to know any details ? " said Patricia com- 
 posedly. " I found him, you know. He was in the pan- 
 elled room, lying 
 
 " Don't ! " Lady Vera put two white hands up to her ears 
 with an exclamation like a scream. There was a cowed pro- 
 test in her angry eyes. " How can you think I want to 
 know ? " she said furiously. " It sickens me even to think of 
 it. Don't tell me ! I detest ghastly details. I should think 
 of them for ever after. It is a hideous thing altogether."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 291 
 
 " Yes, it was a hideous thing," said Patricia, in the same 
 composed manner. " A thing to be thrust out of one's easy 
 life and forgotten as soon as possible, is it not ? " She moved 
 a step nearer to her mother with a fearlessness that made 
 Lady Vera catch her breath and shrink again. "Do you 
 know have you the least idea what was his motive for doing 
 it now ? " she said. 
 
 " Now ! " Lady Vera repeated the word under her breath, as 
 one paralysed by sudden fear. " What do you mean ? Why 
 do you say now? He must have been mad, and acted with 
 a sudden impulse probably he overtaxed his brain with 
 schemes. He was always scheming and calculating ! The 
 money drove him mad at last they always bring it in tem- 
 porary insanity ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes they always bring it in temporary insanity ! 
 They will say he became overwrought that his brain failed 
 under some vast speculation. Possibly they will put it down 
 to losses " 
 
 " Why ? " asked Lady Vera sharply. " Do you know any- 
 thing ? Has there been any rumour ? Had he made a false 
 step at last? I am so absolutely in ignorance I am in the 
 dark about all his affairs ! " 
 
 " I do not know," said Patricia indifferently. " I have 
 heard no rumour. I was merely suggesting that that was 
 what people would probably say. But the real reason why 
 he would not live any longer I want to know what that 
 was ? " 
 
 Lady Vera's glance was hard with suspicion. Suddenly 
 she turned away, shrugging her sloping shoulders. 
 
 " I know no more than you," she said" harshly, and all the 
 metal of her voice clanged defiance. " I was not in his con- 
 fidence, as you must know ! It was no possible secret that 
 we had become estranged years ago. If you lived in the 
 house there was no fiction about it. He went his own way 
 I went mine. You know as much as I do." 
 
 " Yes, he went his own way ! " said Patricia bitterly. 
 " Poor, poor man ! At last his own way was a safe one out 
 of it all." 
 
 Lady Vera's shoulders were again her mode of expression. 
 " I really don't know what has come to you, Nougat," she 
 said curtly. " You are taking a sentimental line in which I 
 am sorry I cannot follow you. I don't even understand what 
 
 19*
 
 292 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 you mean and I don't want any further explanations, thank 
 you ! " she added with sharp haste. 
 
 Patricia met the tawny, shallow eyes with a species of 
 hopeless scorn in her own. When people admired Lady 
 Vera they always described her eyes as brilliant. At the 
 moment it seemed to Patricia that they had one quality in 
 common with a wild beast's, for the light in them played 
 upon the surface and did not shine up and through the iris 
 as is the case with Humanity, and which may come from a 
 more developed soul granting the possession of such a dis- 
 tinction. The shock and horror of Mornington's death had 
 for the time dulled her remembrance of the horrible know- 
 ledge she had gained about her mother, and in a sense had 
 been an advantage in that it robbed their meeting of the 
 acute discomfort she might have felt. But she recalled it 
 all now with frightful suddenness, and turned her face from 
 Lady Vera with a shamed impulse. To Patricia's nicer 
 senses she stood revealed as a woman who was for ever 
 cheapened to a level she could not conceive as possible to 
 oneself however charitable one might be to sins in theory. 
 And there was not only the humiliation of multiplying her 
 slips from virtue in probability, but the added pang of the 
 destiny intended for herself to be the obliging wife of a 
 cast-off lover, a useful catspaw, disposed of with mutual satis 
 faction. Her pride writhed a little as she asked herself 
 fiercely, over again, why she had been used like this ! Was 
 there some darker reason even now not revealed to her, a 
 fresh degradation in store? 
 
 " Well, I think I will ring for tea, and ask Aimee to come 
 and talk things over with me you are hardly a cheerful com- 
 panion, Nougat! Curtice told me she was here." The 
 metallic voice broke in on Patricia's painful mental question, 
 and jarred upon her like a discord. 
 
 " Yes, she has been here since Wednesday," she said 
 mechanically. " I have had tea already, myself. Are you 
 dining in your own rooms ? " 
 
 " Oh, I suppose so. There is a certain dreary ceremony 
 we are bound to endure, I expect. I shall ask Aime"e to join 
 me, of course. If you like to come also, pray do." 
 
 " I think I will ask you to excuse me, thanks. I do not 
 know when I may dine I have some letters to write." 
 
 Lady Vera did not answer. She was standing, as she had
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 293 
 
 been ever since Patricia entered, and when the door closed 
 behind the girl she began to move impatiently from one object 
 to another, her restless hands and bitter lips a truer indication 
 of her state of mind than any words. Once she sighed im- 
 patiently, with a vehemence that made it almost a gasp, and 
 when she rang the bell the peal of it awoke forcible comments 
 in the servants' quarters, like a malevolent echo. As Lady 
 D'Aulnoy entered she was still fretting to and fro among her 
 possessions, but she greeted her kinswoman with obvious 
 relief. 
 
 "How are you, Aimee, dear? So good of you to come 
 and stay here ! I thoroughly appreciate it it is the kind of 
 thing I positively loathe doing myself. Yes, we had a 
 wretched journey, hot and hurried, and no time to breathe. 
 And this house is simply disgy vile ! It has the smell of 
 an undertaker's ! " 
 
 " Have you seen Nougat yet ? " said Lady D'Aulnoy as 
 they kissed each other the Blais family was always ready to 
 kiss and to use affectionate adjectives. 
 
 " Yes." Lady Vera's face darkened. " She has just left 
 me in one of her moods ! When she talks in that un- 
 restrained, morbid fashion of hers, it tries my patience. I 
 really think she is a crank at times! Helen Chilcote was 
 just the same." 
 
 " Nougat has had a very trying time of it," said Lady 
 D'Aulnoy. " She looks to me as if she were suffering from 
 the shock now." 
 
 " I daresay. I suppose it may have unhinged her. It 
 would have made me really ill with nerves." 
 
 " She does not suffer from nerves. When I came I found 
 her quite composed only there was that strained look in 
 her face. I think if she gave way a little more she might 
 suffer less." 
 
 " I have never understood Nougat. Chiffon is much more 
 like my daughter." 
 
 "Chiffon was here this morning they are staying on in 
 town for a few days. Bobby thought he might be of use, 
 and Car has been waiting to see you, too." 
 
 " I know less than they ! " said Lady Vera, in exasperated 
 anger. " When did Giles ever tell me anything ? After 
 after to-morrow I must go into his rooms and look among 
 his papers. I hardly know the name of his lawyers."
 
 294 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " You haven't heard from them ? " 
 
 " Not a line. I have looked through that pile of letters 
 already, expecting some sort of communication. I do not 
 know, beyond my settlements, how I am left." 
 
 " Oh, it must be all right he would not treat you badly 
 now, after all these years ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " The tigress in Lady Vera spoke fiercely 
 there was no pretence in her now, not even the decency of 
 an outward veneer. " Those silent, hard men are always 
 brutal. He was vindictive it was in his blood. Don't you 
 know how little one looks for generosity or gratitude from 
 servants ? As one goes a little higher in the social scale one 
 does not find a much broader spirit. He never forgave me 
 
 certain things. Aimee, I cannot be sorry that that 
 
 man is dead ! I own to you that it is a relief to me. I 
 dreaded his iron indifference, and I could never tell in the 
 least what he would do no, not after all these years spent in 
 the same house ! " 
 
 " Poor man ! " said Aimee D'Aulnoy, with an unconscious 
 echo of Patricia. She had liked Giles Mornington, and it 
 was a shock to her to hear the truth about his wife's feeling 
 for him, though she had known it, tacitly, for years. 
 
 " Poor me, rather ! " said Vera Mornington harshly. " They 
 have been living shadows on my life for the best part of it, 
 he and Patricia Patricia!" she broke off venomously, "do 
 you remember his insisting on my naming her that ? It was 
 one of his brutal ironies I hated him for it ! I have never 
 called her so I knew what he meant every time he used the 
 name ! " 
 
 " Vera ! " exclaimed Lady D'Aulnoy, shocked into a protest 
 that checked her kinswoman's reckless tongue. 
 
 The arrival of the mistress of the house seemed to awaken 
 it suddenly from its trance of silence to vulgar activity and 
 bustle again. Even on the day of the funeral people began 
 to come and go, and once that quiet figure was carried out of 
 it for ever, even the rooms where he had lain were no longer 
 sacred. The privacy which he had held with an iron hand 
 for so many years was invaded at last, and his carefully-kept 
 memoranda and papers ruthlessly disturbed for some sign of 
 the disposal of his property. It was significant of the little 
 that was known either of his wishes or intentions that it had 
 been an open question as to where he should be buried, and
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 295 
 
 no one could say with certainty that this or that place was the 
 fittest for the great financier, the whole of whose wealth could 
 only buy him six feet of turf now for his personal need. He 
 had never had a country property, save the small one at Rye. 
 His family and connections had drifted out of his life for so 
 many years that any association with a graveyard or tombs of 
 former Morningtons was unknown to those left in authority. 
 In Lady Vera's absence the decision lay with Patricia, and 
 she gave the word for Rye, or at least for the nearest available 
 spot. The arrangements were made even before Lady Vera's 
 telegram confirmed the choice, and so, after all, Giles Morn- 
 ington was taken back to the place he had called a haven of 
 refuge, and which he would not desecrate with violence. And 
 Patricia, sitting in her quiet room above the monotonous roll 
 and roar of Piccadilly, looked at the drawn blinds and 
 wondered piteously if she had divined his wish, or if she had 
 failed in this as in all else with regard to him. 
 
 The back-rush of life and stir after the quiet of death 
 hardly reached her at first in her own quarters of the vast 
 house, and she had time to think of the change this meant 
 in the household, and to foresee alterations pending. It 
 seemed to her that this second break in the chain of her life 
 was the fittest occasion for a change of the circumstances 
 which had been nearly intolerable before, and would be quite 
 so now. She did not think that her mother and herself could 
 live on side by side, as they had been doing. Some ex- 
 planation they were bound to come to, of the claims of Lexiter 
 if of nothing else ; and Patricia realised with a certain stern- 
 ness that the sooner their independence of action was settled 
 the more chance there was for the guarded peace which was 
 all that could be between them. The inheritance of Morn- 
 ington's millions did not more than cross her mind ; her life 
 was fortunately independent even of his money, owing to 
 Lady Helen having left her god-daughter the eight hundred 
 a year which was all that she had possessed. But before 
 many days were passed she became aware that the disposal 
 of Mornington's money was affecting all her world if not her- 
 self, and that it had a certain significance with regard to her 
 in her tortured, questioning mind, at least. 
 
 Lady Vera had sent for the solicitors usually employed by 
 the financier as soon as she learned their names; but the 
 courteous representative of the firm who waited upon her
 
 296 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 had little to communicate. They had made no will or disposal 
 of his property for Giles Mornington, and the minute search 
 and enquiry that followed only resulted in the gradual con- 
 clusion that one of the richest men in England had died 
 intestate. In the sanctity of her own room Lady Vera spoke 
 bitterly to Aime"e D'Aulnoy, and to her daughter, of this 
 amazing discovery, and her anger tricked her into indiscretion. 
 The Blais' temper had often been her betrayer, because it 
 was stronger than she ; it played her false now, as in other 
 crises of her life. 
 
 " He never meant to make a will ! " she said violently, in 
 retort to Lady D'Aulnoy's protest. " They may search till 
 doomsday, and they will find none. And all this worry and 
 delay and uncertainty might have been avoided by a few 
 words on a piece of paper ! He knew what he was doing 
 well enough ! " 
 
 " But it is so unlike him ! Do consider, Vera he was a 
 man who gripped his millions as firmly as most do their 
 pence. Was it likely that he would leave them to the chance 
 handling of other people ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " Unless he had a superstitious fear of dying if he made 
 a will ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Then how do you account for it ? " 
 
 Lady Vera's thin mouth narrowed to an unnatural red line, 
 and the hard eyes fell on her daughter with a sinister light 
 in them. Patricia was sitting in unresponsive silence, listen- 
 ing to the discussion with a mouth as closely set but less 
 drawn by passion than her mother's. Something in the large 
 gravity of her face and figure maddened Lady Vera. 
 
 " He had his reason," she said recklessly. " Oh, yes 
 these petty men with their narrow puritanism always have 
 a reason that they cling to, to the death ! He may have 
 thought that he would at least place me in a difficulty, and 
 gall and worry me with the delay of getting the money. (The 
 lawyers must advance me I cannot touch my share for a 
 year at least !) But that was not all his motive." Her 
 angry eyes darkened in their hard stare at Patricia, and she 
 laughed shortly. "He would not bring himself to leave 
 money to Nougat ! " she said, her voice panting with sup- 
 pressed rage. " He always hated her he would not write
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 297 
 
 the words ' My daughter, Patricia Momington.' Yet he 
 would not leave the money to me in preference to her. He 
 hated us both I don't know which the more." 
 
 " But then he might have left it entirely away from you ! " 
 Lady D'Aulnoy's tone faintly echoed the dismay that such a 
 course would have caused. 
 
 " No," said Lady Vera sullenly. " He would not do that, 
 either." 
 
 Still Patricia did not speak ; but in her great musing eyes 
 there stole the dawn of a horror that had lain hitherto as an 
 embryo in her heart. As it rose in her eyes it seemed to her 
 to take tangible form in the presence of day ; but her locked 
 lips did not quiver, nor did she look at the dreadful woman 
 whose very voice now seemed to make her shudder. She was 
 too strong to cringe outwardly before the pain of inward 
 trouble; but it is the greatest burden of such natures as 
 Patricia's that they must face their disasters with apparent 
 stoical courage in inverse proportion as they suffer in reality. 
 There was a thing coming to her, a threatened knowledge 
 that she must face, which made her long to cry out. But the 
 only physical acknowledgment she made was to rise leisurely 
 and turn from her mother with averted face. 
 
 "I am sorry that I do not care to discuss this subject 
 further," she said in a dead level tone. " My father's motives 
 of aversion can hardly be a satisfactory speculation now. 
 If you want to talk of the purely business side of the matter 
 at any time I will do so with you, but if you attack his memory 
 I must decline to continue the discussion." 
 
 " There is nothing to discuss," said Lady Vera, with a jar- 
 ring laugh. " As things stand, you take two-thirds of the 
 property, and I one-third, and we can neither of us touch it 
 for a year at least. After endless litigation and letters of 
 administration, you will find yourself the happy possessor of 
 about two millions, my dear, and I shall have half that amount, 
 if what the lawyers calculate is true. I can only congratulate 
 you had Mr. Mornington made a will, it might have been 
 worse for you ! " 
 
 For the first time Patricia's eyes met her mother's, and 
 the look in them might have shamed a crueller worn an. 
 
 " Worse ? " she said simply. 
 
 Lady D'Aulnoy glanced from one to the other with intense 
 discomfort. It was as impossible to calculate what Vera
 
 298 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 would say as what Patricia would do. She gave a sigh of 
 actual relief when a discreet tap at the door heralded one of 
 the footmen with a message. 
 
 " Lady Harbinger has called, and sent me to ask particu- 
 larly if Miss Mornington would see her for a little while ? " 
 
 Patricia turned rather wearily from the late scene and 
 followed him from the room. She would see Chiffon but 
 there was yet another cloud in her memory to spoil the inter- 
 view. Truly, her world was darkening around her, until it 
 seemed full of treachery and false friends ! 
 
 Lady Harbinger was awaiting her in her own room, a sober 
 little figure in black and white, which Patricia noticed half 
 vaguely, and with a weary wonder as to whether Chiffon had 
 dressed for the part of consoler in complimentary mourning ! 
 But her mind was relieved of this dread at least by her friend's 
 greeting. 
 
 " Oh, Nougat, I have been so longing to see you all this 
 while ! " Chiffon exclaimed, snuggling a soft cheek against 
 Patricia's taller shoulder. " You poor dear ! " (in a parenthe- 
 sis). " How dreadful it all is ! May I sit down and talk ? " 
 
 " Of course. That is the most comfortable chair, Chiffon, 
 though it does not look so that thing called the 'Monk's 
 seat.' Try it." 
 
 " No, because I want to sit close to you at your feet, in 
 fact. Nougat, I've not come to talk about you I've come to 
 talk about myself ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " 
 
 Lady Harbinger had seated herself as she desired, on a 
 low seat that enabled her to lean on Patricia's knee. Her 
 face was bent, so that all she showed to her friend was the 
 sweep of her loose golden hair and the inimitable line of her 
 brows and lashes. Chiffon's eyebrows were piquant and 
 intuitive and responsive. They made what was otherwise a 
 very pretty face into an irresistible one with personality in 
 it. Patricia did not draw away from the bright bent head ; 
 only, as she spoke that one thoughtful " Ah ! " she laid her 
 left hand steadily on the table beside her. There was a 
 little paper-knife there, made of the native woods of Madeira, 
 an inlaid thing of no value, with a carro and impossible 
 bullocks wrought in the handle. The figures had often struck 
 her as looking Egyptian. She took it up now in her strong 
 fingers, and looked at it as if with fresh interest.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 299 
 
 "Go on, Chiffon tell me." 
 
 " I have been a fool ! " The restless bright head turned 
 like a bird's, the eyes still remained lowered, resting on 
 Patricia's black gown, the voice was evidently controlled by 
 effort. " I have wanted to tell you ever since you came home. 
 Can you guess what I mean ? " 
 
 " I think I can." 
 
 How well she knew what was coming ! How impossible 
 that she could tell Chiffon what she knew ! The white hand 
 holding the paper-knife gripped it almost savagely. Patricia 
 had a feeling that Providence had played her many a sorry 
 trick of late. 
 
 " There is someone besides my husband," whispered Mag- 
 dalene, the more beautiful for the flame in her cheeks that 
 helped the admission. " You know, Nougat, women often 
 do the same thing, and come to no harm." 
 
 "Chiffon, don't! If it were anyone else, should 
 
 I care? I have learned to shrug my shoulders over the 
 Editha Blais Herons of this world, like the rest of us. But 
 for you to say that ! Does Bobby guess ? " 
 
 " I am afraid so. That is why I am so worried." 
 
 There was a pause that seemed summed up in the sigh 
 Patricia gave. "You had better tell me the whole story," 
 she said patiently. 
 
 " It began last year on Mr. Carberry's yacht. I never 
 thought that I was going to have a very good time, Nougat. 
 I didn't much want to go. But there were some pleasant 
 people, and amongst them do you know who it is ? " 
 
 " Not till you tell me," said Patricia deliberately. 
 
 " Caryl Caryl Lexiter. Oh, I know everything that you 
 can say ! " with a little restless movement of pain. " He is 
 not even a young man ; he is reported to have belonged to 
 half a dozen women before me what do I care ? You can 
 say anything you like ! " 
 
 " Indeed, Chiffon, I have nothing to say. I think him a 
 very attractive man he might be fascinating." She looked 
 at this fierce version of Chiffon, who was defending her own 
 choice and the man of it, and chose her words carefully. Life 
 was full of surprises to Nougat's slow, stable nature, and 
 women at least were constant revelations. 
 
 " At any rate, he proved too fascinating for me ! " said 
 Chiffon recklessly. " I had known him in town, of course,
 
 300 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 but not as I knew him then. That life threw us together, 
 and we got intimate with each other as you can't do in 
 London. There is nothing so intoxicating as getting to know ' 
 people to begin to watch for their little characteristics, and 
 to recognise them and love them ! " 
 
 The hand clasping the paper-knife bent and bowed it un- 
 consciously. Patricia's eyes darkened and widened with pain. 
 
 " It is the danger of Personality," she said, with stiff lips. 
 "Well?" 
 
 " There is no time to know people in London they have 
 no personality there, unless they are already too near and 
 dear! We simply seem to exist mechanically. But it was 
 different on board the Sprite I lived to the full in those 
 days, the stolen half-hours right up in the bows of the yacht, 
 watching the flying fish and the dancing sea, and the sunshine, 
 and feeling the great boat dip and rise, and rejoicing in the 
 motion and the colour and the fresh salt air 'skies had 
 colour and lips had red,' then ! And the episode was so soon 
 over. I wondered if the memory would be comparatively 
 short memory is generally longer than actual events. Then 
 there were a few morning walks ashore while we were at 
 Sicily, after poor cross old Bobby had gone off to the towns, 
 sight-seeing ! Those were stolen hours stolen out of life's 
 practical, conventional days that I shall always remember 
 with a laugh, to think how I enjoyed them, and a little sigh 
 to think how few they were ! I did not do much harm, 
 Nougat then." 
 
 " And now ? " said Patricia at last. 
 
 " Oh, do things ever stand still ? I was frightened, and I 
 meant it all to end there. He seemed to be wise also, for the 
 time being, or else something kept him away from me. I 
 did not see much of him this Season." 
 
 How strange it is that rumour seems so slow to reach the 
 people it will most affect ! Chiffon had never chanced to 
 hear any coupling of Lexiter's name with Patricia Morning- 
 ton's, apparently ; his constant presence at the house in Picca- 
 dilly had not reached her amongst other gossip constantly 
 poured into her ears. To be sure, the Harbingers had not 
 returned to town until the end of June, but Patricia could 
 understand that Lexiter's non-appearance in Chiffon's train 
 
 was accounted for by his being so often in her own 
 
 The paper-knife snapped and fell listlessly to the table.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 301 
 
 Patricia dropped the pieces and stirred in her chair for the 
 first time. 
 
 " That does not matter," she said almost hastily. " Never 
 mind the pause between you have taken it all up again, is 
 that so ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " The frightened voice was a whisper now. " I 
 was very foolish, and went out for a drive with him one day, 
 and he persuaded me into all sorts of things again. Then 
 he grew reckless and came to the house too much, and Bobby 
 began to get suspicious, and last night " 
 
 " Not at your own house ? " 
 
 " Yes Bobby was out, and Caryl only came round to have 
 a talk really and truly ! But we forgot the time, and he 
 stayed on and on, and Bobby met him walking away from the 
 house." 
 
 " What was the time ? " 
 
 "Between two and three I forget." 
 
 " Oh, Chiffon ! " 
 
 " Oh, don't scold me what's the use now ? Yes, I know 
 it was mad of us and Bobby is like a bear with a sore head 
 this morning. He had been playing cards at the Turf, and 
 then he went on with one of the members to his rooms and 
 played again, and lost money. If he had only been early, 
 it wouldn't have mattered so much he would have found us 
 together, but Caryl would have said that he waited to see him. 
 Nougat, don't you scold me too, or I shall break down ! " 
 And indeed the blue eyes were distended and magnified by 
 the tears that made them lovely. 
 
 " My dear, I was not blaming you it is Caryl Lexiter I 
 blame. He should never have been so selfish as to run you 
 into a compromising position." 
 
 " I know he is selfish all men are ! And the aggravating 
 part is that we hadn't been doing any harm that time ! 
 Well only just the ordinary things, you know." 
 
 Patricia's head rose a shade higher and her eyes were 
 blank. " I suppose you mean that the man made love to 
 you the details don't matter much, I presume." 
 
 " Indeed they do ! It is just the details that always damn 
 you. When I was being bullied by Bobby this morning, I 
 declare I wished there had been some cause for it. It seemed 
 so stupid to be found out for nothing, and one may as well be 
 hanged for a sheep as a lamb."
 
 302 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Chiffon, I wish you would give it all up ! I don't mean 
 just for the moment because Lord Harbinger makes it im- 
 possible for you to meet, but voluntarily. Put it straight out 
 of your life it is the only thing that will really get rid of it 
 for you." 
 
 Patricia spoke with a sudden impulse, her earnest face bent 
 over the one at her knee, while she touched the golden hair 
 lovingly. There was not the least soreness or resentment in 
 her heart now only the care for Chiffon, and a somewhat 
 contemptuous pity for Lexiter. She felt as if he stood at so 
 great a distance from her that he never could have been near. 
 
 " Why ? " said Chiffon, in a stifled voice. " If we did not 
 do any real harm would it matter ? " 
 
 " I do not think he is worth the risk," said Patricia slowly, 
 from the sadness of her knowledge. 
 
 Chiffon moved back from her, rose to her feet and stood 
 quivering like a creature at bay. 
 
 " I am learning a certain amount of wisdom, and therefore 
 am entitled to speak," she said, almost impatiently. " You 
 are too serious over things, Nougat for Heaven's sake take 
 life more lightly. I am trying that, and succeeding. Nothing 
 is serious but poverty and ill health. I, who have just been 
 through even fear, say this." Then the momentary hardness 
 that she was trying so hard to acquire, vanished as quickly as 
 it had come. Her face melted and quivered. " Nougat, I 
 can't give it quite up," she said " I know I can't I might tell 
 you I would, but I should not do so. It is the one thing that 
 keeps me real and makes life human yes, even the danger 
 and the terrible disaster that might follow it. Otherwise, I 
 am just the husk of a woman, wearing my gowns well, and 
 being a social success like all the rest of us. Am I to have 
 nothing in the world but this ? " 
 
 " Your husband and your child ! " 
 
 "Bobby bores me oh yes, he does! What's the use of 
 pretty decencies between you and me, Nougat? He never 
 got within an ace of me, never made me feel as the other man 
 does yes, and suffer. For the man who never caused a 
 woman pain will always be but a shadow to her." 
 
 " You thought you cared for him once ? " 
 
 " Thought ! Who thinks at nineteen, trained unconsciously 
 in a certain line of inevitable consequences? It is a matter 
 of course that a girl shall marry, and marry well. The neces-
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 303 
 
 sity is not forced upon us at all no enraged fathers and 
 mothers lock us up in dungeons nowadays, if we won't make 
 the alliance they have decreed. But they are far more subtle 
 in their methods they instill the principle into us with our 
 mother's milk. It is as much a part of education as the fact 
 that the earth is round and as uncontrovertible. If I 
 ' thought ' at all it was that I should like to be a Countess ! " 
 
 Back upon Patricia's memory came the faint ghost of the 
 thrill and shame she had felt behind the curtains in Lord 
 Harbinger's library. That had been real the sense of pas- 
 sion near her had been very real, or it had not swayed her so. 
 She felt the omniscience of Nature over Law, and faltered to 
 urge the triviality of convention not because she did not 
 believe in it, but because she had touched, and recognised, 
 something mightier. The earnestness died out of her face, 
 and a great blank of despair took its place. " Then I suppose 
 I cannot help you," she said quietly. "I have no right to 
 judge of what you say, for I escaped it all. You must go 
 your own way, Chiffon. Only God grant it won't be to the 
 precipice ! But if it is if it is, my dear ! you can always come 
 to me, whatever you have done or not done," 
 
 Lady Helen's portrait, serene and self-denying, looked down 
 on the two women locked in each other's arms, and with wet 
 faces pressed together for a moment. It was too brief an 
 embrace for hypocrisy, and too real for sentiment. And 
 there was no further word between them, save as Chiffon 
 turned to go. 
 
 " If you get a chance, will you tell him he must not come 
 and see me at present ? " she said. " It was this I wanted 
 to ask you. You are sure to see him sooner or later." 
 
 If Patricia hesitated it was only for a second. " You have 
 set me a difficult task, Chiffon ! '' she said in her heart. But 
 aloud she answered, " Very well." Then there was a flutter 
 of skirts, and the sense of something bright passing from the 
 room, and Chiffon was gone. The figure of the woman left 
 behind appeared sombre and heavy by contrast, as if with the 
 sense of tragedy still to come.
 
 304 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 " My father was of ancient house 
 What may his daughter claim ? 
 Nor lands, nor gold, nor high estate, 
 
 Nor even yet his name ! 
 ##*#** 
 
 " The fiends made me beautiful, 
 The devil made me clever ; 
 But they drew the Bar Sinister 
 Across my name for ever." 
 
 The Ballad of the Bar Sinister. 
 
 AT four o'clock in the afternoon his Grace of London was 
 accustomed to ring for Maunders and suggest whisky and 
 soda as his substitute for tea. With the exception of two 
 cups of the latter beverage at eight o'clock in the morning, 
 when he had his breakfast, this was his first drink during the 
 day, and he took it thirstily, swallowing the contents of the 
 glass and not drinking it by inches, as did other men. 
 
 It chanced that to-day he was alone, Lord Lowndes having 
 gone out of town again for a flying visit to a race-meeting, 
 and most of his friends being distributed in country houses 
 or on the Continent. There was no one in the room with 
 him save Fat, when he rang the bell as usual by a process of 
 his own which consisted in placing the end of his stick against 
 the electric button and keeping it there until Maunders 
 arrived. The end of the stick being cased with india rubber 
 to prevent it slipping when the Duke depended upon it for 
 support, the adhesive substance fitted over and clung to the 
 bell conveniently, and with imperative results. His move- 
 ment roused the dog, who was stretched upon the rug on the 
 opposite side of the fire (it was a chilly autumn day), and he 
 rose and stretched himself, thrusting a wet nose into the 
 Duke's disengaged hand, which made his master start
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 305 
 
 "Damn the dog! " muttered the Duke, his face contracting 
 with nervous pain. " Get away, Fat ! " 
 
 He thrust the offending animal away with his knee, of 
 which movement Fat took no notice at all, save to press 
 closer. An onlooker might have thought the repulse brutally 
 rough; only Fat could have told how carefully checked it 
 had been that it might not hurt him. He laid his well-bred 
 retriever head on the Duke's knee and lifted one of the short- 
 ened paws as if in reproach, whila his ungainly body wriggled 
 nearer. " Go away and lie down ! " said the Duke crossly, 
 and the next moment his crippled hand fell gently on the 
 dog's wise head and he was absently pulling the silky ears 
 when the door opened and Maunders entered. 
 
 " Oh, Maunders, my whisky and soda, please ! " he said 
 with charming courtesy. 
 
 " Yes, your Grace ! " said Maunders, with as civil an interest 
 as if receiving an entirely new order. He looked at the 
 turnspit-like proportions of Fat crouched against the Duke's 
 knee, and made a hesitating step forward. " Shall I take the 
 dog away?" he said. 
 
 "No! no! let him stay," said the Duke, as if half 
 ashamed of the consent but Fat's eyes had never doubted it. 
 
 Maunders was some time returning with the whisky and 
 soda, and the Duke was thirsty. He had said, " Where has 
 that ass got to ? " three times before the servant appeared 
 again and handed him the glass. 
 
 " Have you been out to buy it, Maunders ? " said the Duke 
 mildly. " Or did you drink the first glass you mixed your- 
 self?" 
 
 " No, your Grace," said Maunders, without moving a 
 muscle. " But a lady has called, and the footman wanted to 
 know if you would see her." 
 
 " A lady ? " said the Duke with suspicious interest, taking 
 the card lying on the salver and settling his glasses. " Is it 
 some begging female with a tambourine, Maunders, or an 
 old cat with tracts to sell ? " 
 
 " No, your Grace I think it is Miss Mornington." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Duke with a different inflection. He 
 looked at the card, which, under the lettered name " Patricia 
 Morninpton," had a pencilled line, " Please see me." 
 
 " Will you see her, your Grace ? " said Maunders, standing 
 in his old place at the Duke's elbow. 
 
 20
 
 3 o6 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " Yes ! " said the Duke, with some satisfaction in his tone. 
 " Yes, I'll see her. Is she alone ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes." Maunders knew his master's antipathy to Lady 
 Vera as well as anyone in the Blais' set. He carried off the 
 empty tumbler and the soda-water bottle, and returned to 
 announce Patricia, whose black figure made a sudden blot 
 upon the comfortable, familiar room. 
 
 The Duke was always glad that he had not had that whisky 
 and soda, when commenting on the situation afterwards. He 
 wondered whether he would have come through the interview 
 as well fasting, and thought not. For the moment, however, 
 as Patricia entered, he merely thought her appearance a 
 very natural one under the circumstances, for he had not 
 seen her since Mornington's death. Her mourning made 
 her look taller than ever, and as she came straight up 
 to his chair and took his hand before he could attempt 
 to rise, he felt as if she towered over the ordinary run of 
 humanity. 
 
 " Ah, Nougat, now this is very nice of you to come and see 
 me ! " he said, with his kindliest smile, and when the Duke 
 smiled people were apt to feel as if a beneficent sun had come 
 out for their especial benefit. " I am all alone, and so bored 
 with myself ! I should have gone to the Club to see if there 
 were a single member there besides myself, but I am all aches 
 and pains to-day, and I can't walk." 
 
 " Is your back bad ? " said Patricia, in the lower tones of 
 her voice that only those whom she loved ever heard. " I 
 am so sorry ! Let me sit here beside you where I can talk 
 I have come to talk to you, but if you are not well enough 
 you must tell me, and I will come another time." 
 
 " No no ! I am very glad to listen, at least. Maunders 
 shall get you that low chair that you like. Maunders ! " but 
 Maunders had gone, and Patricia quickly fetched a seat for 
 herself not a chair after all, but the broad stool that Chiffon 
 always claimed when she sat, as she said, at the feet of 
 Gamaliel and worshipped ! 
 
 " Maunders is an ass, ain't he ? " said the Duke with a sigh. 
 " Never here when I want him, don't you know, and always 
 doing idiotic things ! " 
 
 " I think he is the best servant in London I am sure you 
 could not have a better ! " said Patricia in kindly contradic- 
 tion.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 307 
 
 "Yes, he is a good servant," agreed the Duke, charmingly 
 inconsistent. " He suits me, too, don't you know knows 
 all my ways. Yes, I wouldn't like to part with Maunders. 
 Oh, my dear, you will be so uncomfortable on that stool! 
 Do take a chair I can't get up to find you one ! " 
 
 " Chiffon often sits here ! " said Patricia, with a shake of 
 her head. " It is only my extra inches that make you think 
 me uncomfortable. Please let me sit here I want to talk 
 to you about about what has lately happened, and I can 
 do it best here." There was hardly a hesitation in the grave 
 voice none at all in the eyes she lifted to his face ; but there 
 was a great pain in them, and as if to reassure herself, she 
 rested one hand on his knee, just as Fat had done his head. 
 The dog had lain down at last, at his own sweet will, and was 
 supporting his chin on the Duke's foot. 
 
 "Yes, I am so sorry!" said the Duke, and his voice was 
 the first that had not hurt Patricia a little even in its expres- 
 sion of sympathy. "All through those first days after it 
 happened, don't you know, people kept on coming to me and 
 saying, ' Have you heard ? ' until I really dreaded any more 
 details. I detest that sentence it presupposes that the news 
 is bad. No one ever said, ' Haven't you heard ? ' before tell- 
 ing you something good ! " 
 
 " It was all bad news," said Patricia quietly. " There were 
 no extenuating circumstances anywhere." Her voice and 
 eyes hardened ; she sat up a little, and the hand resting on 
 the Duke's knee pressed it unconsciously. " He threw away 
 his life because he found it intolerable," she said. " I found 
 that out by degrees. I am not quick at jumping to conclu- 
 sions. Now " she spoke deliberately, looking him fairly be* 
 tween the eyes, her own beauty frowning a little in her inten- 
 sity " I want to know why, and only you can tell me. I have 
 come to you to tell me, because I cannot trust anyone else. 
 I know I am setting you a hard task, but you are the only 
 friend I have made since Aunt Helen's death." She was 
 suddenly conscious, as she made the statement, of a voice 
 with a croak in it, and an irritable face that for all its hard 
 lines she knew she could trust. The Land of Beulah had 
 faded so into the background of her mind that she had hardly 
 realised that she kept a thought of Gerald Vaughan there, 
 much less that she named him with the few she called friends ; 
 yet he occurred to her now as the one other on whom she 
 
 2O*
 
 3 o8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 might have relied in her maddened adversity, had Fortune 
 placed him nearer to her. 
 
 " My dear, how can I tell ? " said the Duke rather help- 
 lessly. He laid his own hand over the one on his knee, and 
 looked with pitying eyes at the tortured face whose well-cut 
 features were becoming set like a mask. 
 
 " At the time of his death, when I found him, it merely 
 seemed to me a hideous kind of tragedy that had resulted 
 from his living such a lonely life," said Patricia, in the same 
 horribly composed tone. " For he was lonely ; I saw it day 
 by day, and felt as if I were always trying to reach him 
 through locked doors. I did not understand it at the time, 
 but now I begin to suspect that that also had its signification. 
 He did not mean me to reach him, to be in sympathy with 
 him. Perhaps he thought I had not the right." 
 
 The guarded tone was no lower, but the Duke winced a 
 little. He began to feel the difficulty of his position, and the 
 demand she was making on him, as she had acknowledged ; 
 but he did not know how to avoid it, with that relentless 
 young face forcing him to an admission that would be 
 horrible. 
 
 " He was a very reserved man how can we any of us 
 tell ? " he said. " I liked him, don't you know thought him 
 a nice fellow. But though we often met, I knew nothing of 
 him." 
 
 " But he was not a coward to throw up the sponge just be- 
 cause life had disappointed him," went on Patricia, pursuing 
 her own fatal line of thought and reasoning. " He had grown 
 a hard man, if you like, but not a weak one. I know more 
 now of what he must have suffered I know how far his pride 
 was soiled, and how his faith was cheapened ! " she said, in 
 an ugly whisper. " I know, too, what people have called my 
 mother of late years, and how she would have crowned all 
 her own sins by dragging me in the mire she had made. Do 
 you know," rang the young voice, suddenly raised to a fury 
 that made it almost as hard as the mother's she denounced 
 " do you know that she wished me to marry her cast-off lover 
 or possiblv the lover who had cast her off, for he holds such 
 ties as lightly as she Caryl Lexiter? I ask you if I am not 
 fit for some better fate than to be the mere convenience of a 
 worn-out passion ! Let alone the insult, is not the physical 
 degradation monstrous ? *
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 309 
 
 The blazing beauty of the face raised to his made the Duke 
 gasp. She spoke plainly, but it did not seem as if she spoke 
 too plainly. He saw her breast rise and fall with the tumult 
 of her youth and vitality, and he thought of the sordid sin- 
 ners who would fain have used her as a shuttlecock to the 
 battledore of their vices. He spoke sharply, and from his 
 conviction. 
 
 " Yes, it was a monstrous thing a thing that should never 
 have been thought of ! " 
 
 " Yet she thought of it schemed for it encouraged it 
 the woman who is my mother ! If she could deliberately plan 
 such a thing, she is capable of poisoning any honest man's 
 life, don't you think, until he finds the world distorted, seen 
 through his experience of her? It was enough to drive him 
 to suicide, but I do not think that the knowledge of his wife's 
 infidelities after all these years would quite do that. I think 
 that there was something more " 
 
 There was a silence through which the Duke heard his 
 favourite clock tick out thirty seconds, while he made up his 
 mind to face this thing that was coming. At last, with a 
 sigh, he mentally awaited his inquisition as quietly as Caryl 
 Lexiter awaited the doctor's possible verdict that he must 
 lose his arm. Cowardice, at least, has not been handed 
 down with the qualities of the racehorse, through the sons of 
 great houses. 
 
 " What do you think ? " he said gently. 
 
 " I think that I was not his daughter and he knew it," 
 said a desperate voice. For a minute Patricia's brown eyes 
 stared into the Duke's inscrutable face, seeking confirmation 
 or denial; then, with a curiously uncertain movement, she 
 put her hands up unsteadily to her head and drew the pins 
 out of her hat, tossing it away from her on to a table, and 
 pushing the heavy hair from her forehead, as if she would 
 gain time by any trivial means before she spoke again. 
 
 " Why do you think that ? " said the Duke gently at last, 
 and in the very tenderness of his eyes Patricia shuddered to 
 recognise her condemnation. 
 
 " I think it from many little things," she said rapidly, turn- 
 ing her head under his gaze as if in pain. " From things 
 that seemed nothing at the time, but went to prove the whole 
 black truth to me. Why was I brought up as I was, and 
 why, beyond saving me from my mother's violent temper, did
 
 310 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 he take no further interest in me? I never saw him until I 
 came home last year, and then he would not let me get past 
 the barrier he had set up. I tried and tried, and sometimes 
 I think I was succeeding, and that it was that as much as 
 anything else that drove him to what he did. He would 
 not trust again certainly not one of my lying blood ! Yet 
 we might at least have been friends I always felt it between 
 us. And he must have seen what my mother intended with 
 regard to Caryl Lexiter, and perhaps would not rescue me a 
 second time." 
 
 She had spoken fast and hurriedly, the words driven from 
 her by the strength and horror of her conviction. The Duke 
 sat silent, his hand clasped over hers, his kindly eyes a little 
 dim as they rested on her in her feverish youth and capacity 
 for pain. He had seen so much in his life, and grown so 
 cynical of his kind even desiring goodness, that the ugly 
 story on which she dwelt seemed an old repetition to him. 
 He had known scores of men tricked like Giles Mornington j 
 he had known, and did know, men bearing titles and inherit- 
 ing a celebrated name whose fathers had not held it before 
 them stolen honours, discrediting the long pedigree that 
 would solemnly declare them legitimate in the pages of Burke 
 or Debrett. He shrugged his shoulders mentally, and called 
 it Human Nature, with an unconscious slur on Humanity. 
 " Will you look for morality in a racehorse ? " said Fate Leroy. 
 But she would have set a higher standard for men and women, 
 educated to control themselves. 
 
 " He left no will," went on Patricia, in the same rapid tone. 
 " Yesterday my mother made a slip in her anger, and con- 
 fessed that he had always hated me I was one probable 
 cause of his dying intestate, because he would not acknow- 
 ledge me. ' My daughter, Patricia,' was a lie that he would 
 not write." 
 
 "But it was quite possible to leave you out of the will 
 altogether," said the Duke, with quiet reason. 
 
 " No, he was a just man he had had me brought up to 
 expect wealth, to be accustomed to wealth why should he 
 suddenly play me false like that? And he liked me in his 
 heart I know it instinctively, and I am glad and thankful to 
 know it. Something that is true in me God knows whence 
 it came ! reached something that was true in him, and he 
 would not behave like an enemy to me, whatever he might
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 311 
 
 have been to my mother. As things are, I couid, if I chose, 
 take two-thirds of the fortune he left, after all the litigation 
 is over; but there he did me wrong he did not understand 
 me unless he thought that I should never find out, which is 
 most probable." 
 
 "And you have not found out," the Duke reminded her 
 quietly. " All this is the wildest conjecture. You know 
 nothing, and can certainly prove nothing." 
 
 " I can prove it myself, morally I can assert the testi 
 mony of other people. I am going to prove it now," said 
 Patricia calmly, looking into his eyes. 
 
 He saw what she meant, and drew back slightly. " Nougat, 
 take my advice, and accept things as they stand," he said 
 " My dear, why should you worry about old mistakes for which 
 you are certainly not responsible, and which happened sc 
 long ago ? Let the dead past bury its dead. All this raking 
 up of possible wrong will do you no good it would only 
 make you unhappy, even if you could prove it, which you 
 can't." 
 
 " I do not know that yet. There may be some written 
 statement made by him. But it is enough for my purpose to 
 know morally, at present." 
 
 " And how are you going to do that ? " 
 
 " You are going to tell me." 
 
 The Duke leaned back in his chair abruptly. Over his 
 fine face fell the veil which all men of his training and tradi 
 tions have learned to draw when faced with a question relat- 
 ing to other men's sins. The expression went out of it en 
 tirely. He gazed straight across the room at the windows, 
 as if, did he think of anything, he thought of the world out- 
 side. 
 
 " If you do not," said Patricia, with a desperate warning 
 in her low voice, " I shall ask elsewhere yes, if I have to go 
 to every scandalmonger in London. One sometimes pieces 
 out the truth through lies. I have asked you, the only friend 
 I acknowledge, to help me, and to tell me the truth. Am 1 
 Giles Mornington's daughter or not? If you won't tell me, 1 
 can ask elsewhere. It was a story not confined to you: 
 ears, I am sure. Other people knew. They will be less 
 reticent." 
 
 The Duke's eyes came back from the window they seemed 
 to have come back a hundred miles and a hundred years to
 
 3 i2 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Jook into hers. There was no relenting there, but the pur- 
 pose in her face was not greater than the gravity in his. 
 
 ' Nougat, dear, don't ask me ! " he said. 
 
 " I must. I have a purpose. I will know. Am I Giles 
 Mornington's daughter ? " 
 
 " He believed that you were not." 
 
 " He knew that I was not ! " 
 
 " Well, yes, then he knew that you were not." 
 
 Perhaps until then some faint hope of uncertainty had 
 lingered in her heart; but she accepted this truth that she 
 had challenged, and there was no doubt existing in her mind. 
 As to whom the man had been who had stolen a daughter 
 from Giles Mornington, she did not ask herself the question. 
 That at least was a dead sin into whose ugly secret she need 
 not look. But she knew that it was an intimate of hei 
 mother's one approved to the racehorse instinct of the Blais' 
 breed and that could be no man of any resemblance to 
 Mornington. All her fancy that she had his blood in her 
 veins, and the sturdy inheritance of ignoble yeoman ances 
 tors, was torn from her at once ; and, ominously enough, she 
 had clung to the idea of belonging to a less exalted house 
 than that of Blais until it had become a support to her very 
 character, something to fall back upon like a faith. She had 
 cherished a vague connection with that great Middle Class, 
 in whom she had found some tiresome monotony and narrow- 
 ness, it is true, but traditions and self-culture painfully built 
 up through generation to generation. She had thought her 
 very nature dependent on their laboured virtues, and had 
 honestly gloried in it. It was a blow to her pride, that would 
 have been incomprehensible to the Duke, to know that she 
 gained a probably bluer blood by her illegitimacy. It is 
 certain that the Duke, though without acknowledgment, 
 would rather have owned his parentage to kings, though 
 marred by the sinister " Fitz " before his name, than have 
 shown generations of wedded yeoman set forth in a family 
 bible. But what he called a slip of legality, Patricia called 
 dishonesty. They spoke different languages, and could not 
 understand each other. 
 
 Though they were mentally at variance, however, Patricia 
 yearned out for a friendly human touch in her trouble. The 
 very loss of her belief in her parentage, which the Duke could 
 not comprehend, drove her into an expression of despair that
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 313 
 
 he could. She sat looking past him for a moment, with wide 
 eyes darkening with her trouble ; and then, as if a wave of 
 resistless force bowed her beneath it, she leaned forward, 
 shivering, and gradually laid her regal head down on his 
 knee, hiding her face from him. Even then Patricia's move- 
 ment was if anything slow; she did not fling herself down 
 with an impulse, as Chiffon might have done, but bent before 
 the storm of her own unhappy fate. 
 
 The Duke's face was a study in distress, and if he had not 
 been so kindly-hearted he would also have been embarrassed. 
 He laid his hand a little hesitatingly on the coils of Patricia's 
 burnished hair, and then, as she did not shrink from his 
 touch, it became more assured. He was not accustomed to 
 have young women literally throw themselves down before 
 him, and out of all the strange experiences behind his locked 
 lips he found Patricia's abandonment the one for which he 
 had least precedent. Women had raved to him, had wept, 
 had asked advice and begged help; he never remembered 
 anything so crushed by the stress of life as the childish atti- 
 tude and the hidden face. 
 
 " Nougat, dear ! " he remonstrated huskily. " I'm so sorry 
 for you ! Don't cry ! " His fingers unconsciously caressed 
 the beautiful waves of hair, and pushed it away from the girl's 
 averted face. He always remembered afterwards the bur- 
 nished light on the thick coils, and the way that the little 
 reddish curls grew in the nape of her full white neck, and 
 he declared that Patricia had the most beautiful hair of any 
 woman he ever met. She did not answer in words ; only 
 after a minute she groped blindly for his other hand and laid 
 her face against it. He felt the hot tears at last, and in spite 
 of his protest he let her cry. In the Duke's philosophy 
 women were always able to cry, and were happier so to weep 
 away their grief. He had faced worse troubles than Patricia's 
 with the silence of a man. 
 
 It seemed a long time before either of those quiet figures 
 stirred, save for the Duke's hand quietly smoothing and play- 
 ing with the girl's rich hair. Fat, with the instinct of 
 sympathetic animals, dragged himself a little closer to the 
 human being in trouble, and laid a huge, grotesque paw upon 
 her gown. Now and then his master sighed heavily, and once 
 it seemed that someone sobbed. At last Patricia raised her- 
 self quietly, lifted the hand against which her face had rested
 
 3 i4 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and kissed it in mute thanks. When the Duke saw her face 
 it was hardly tear-stained, but something seemed to have gone 
 out of it a look of youth and readiness for life that had made 
 it very vital. The beauty was harder, and there was an 
 added purpose that took the place of the former vitality. 
 
 " Don't get up, dear ! " he said in a low voice. " Sit still 
 and recover." 
 
 " I am quite recovered now, thanks," she answered steadily. 
 
 "You have been very good to me " She stooped 
 
 and gently disengaged herself from Fat's heavy paw, holding 
 it a minute in her hand, as if the tender hairy thing 
 were more welcome than a human touch, just now. She 
 knew quite well why she had found the humble head so 
 close to her, and the dog's anxious eyes looking into her 
 face. 
 
 " I ! " said the Duke. " I wish I could have done some 
 thing. I only hurt you." 
 
 " No you did just what I asked, just what no one else 
 would do for me. You told me the truth. I am going- 
 back, now. I want to think." 
 
 She turned quite composedly to the table where she had 
 flung her hat, and put it on, talking collectedly even while 
 she was arranging and pinning it. " I want you to under- 
 stand that this has been a great blow to me, and something 
 of a shock, though I suspected it. I should not have given 
 way otherwise; and I am not broken down now you will 
 see. I had built so much on being his daughter ! You do 
 not understand, but you see he was the one person I respected 
 in my present life ! " 
 
 " He was a nice fellow," said the Duke cordially. " I wish 
 I had known him better a thoroughly nice fellow." 
 
 Patricia's lips set a little closer, but they did not quiver 
 She was standing with her back almost to the Duke, but 
 suddenly she turned round on him, a momentary flame of 
 passion in her hardened face. 
 
 " How awful it is that women can do these things ! " she 
 said in a shaken voice. 
 
 " My dear, it is only human nature ! " said the Duke, with 
 his gentle hopeless cynicism. 
 
 " Yes, but to spoil a man's life to take away his faith and 
 hope in men and women is that human nature? And if it 
 is so, is it excusable on that score? I do not deny that we
 
 ^<^AS YE HAVE SOWN. 315 
 
 may be lower than the beasts which perish, but I cannot take 
 it complaisantly." 
 
 The Duke sighed. " It's such a long time ago, Nougat, 
 and you are not responsible," he said. "Why don't you try 
 to forget it? No one thinks about it now, and it is by no 
 means a singular instance, remember ! " 
 
 " No to our disgrace ! " she flashed at him. " No one 
 thinks about it now, you say but everyone must have known 
 at the time, all her world at least. And yet there was no 
 punishment for the woman, who just lived it down, while all 
 the blow fell upon the husband, who was a mere fence to 
 screen her ! Such things are too common to awake more than 
 a passing chatter, I suppose." 
 
 " You do not know what the punishment may have been, or 
 how she suffered," said the Duke quietly. " Usually the 
 poor woman is the one to bear all the blame, while the men 
 go scot free. I am rather glad, as a rule, if I hear of a 
 woman escaping justice ! Anyhow, we are not the judges 
 Don't look at me with that policeman's face," he added, 
 smiling. " The world is too old for you to set it to rights." 
 
 " One can enter one's little protest, anyhow," said Patricia 
 more slowly. " Otherwise, if no one protested, licence would 
 have no bounds at all. But I will not worry you with any 
 more of my theories we look at life from a different stand- 
 point. You have been very good to me," she .added simply, 
 with her usual manner. " More good than you know, per- 
 haps. Let me come and see you again." 
 
 " My dear, you are always welcome to come when I am well 
 enough to see anybody ! " said the Duke kindly. He took 
 the hand she gave him, and laid the other free one on her 
 shoulder as she bent a little above his chair. The kindly 
 eyes met hers with a tenderness that had gone to more 
 women's hearts than he knew or suspected. " Poor little 
 Nougat ! " was all he said. 
 
 The hard look melted out of Patricia's face for a moment. 
 Her eyes were warm and gentle, and had that characteristic 
 expression of hers that seemed as if they wanted to help. It 
 was still in them when she went away, Fat accompanying her 
 across the room as if he had half a mind to go too and take 
 care of her ; but by the time she re-entered her own rooms in 
 the house that had been Giles Mornington's her face had 
 altered again and the new purpose had come back.
 
 316 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 When the Duke was left alone, and even the sound >f 
 Patricia's steps had died away, he got out of his chair with 
 his usual difficulty, and stood upright for a moment bearing 
 the pain that a first movement always gave him. Then, with 
 the lines still between his brows, he walked slowly to the bell 
 and rang it. When Maunders appeared his master was still 
 standing, as if buried in thought, by the mantelpiece. 
 
 "Oh, Maunders," he said without turning round, "get me 
 another whisky and soda a strong one this time. Good 
 God ! " ho added under his breath, " I want it! "
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 From a single glance at your whites and reds 
 
 The men have much to say, 
 And respectable women turn their heads 
 And look the other way." 
 
 Bloom de Ninon. 
 
 Is Miss Mornington coming to dinner?" 
 
 " No, my lady, Miss Mornington begs you will excuse her. 
 She is dining in her own rooms." 
 
 Lady Vera shrugged her shoulders. " Then you and I are 
 iete-a-tete, Aimee," she said. " I wish I had thought of it, 
 and I would have asked Car to come in and enliven us. One 
 never knows, however, whether Nougat will choose to be the 
 death's head at the feast, or will entirely absent herself. 
 What I am going to do when you leave me, I don't know ! " 
 
 " I think Nougat is looking very ill," said Lady D'Aulnoy, 
 with unusual plainness. " And if she had to have a thorough 
 change, I should not be at all surprised. She is not at all 
 herself I have noticed it ever since I mean for days," she 
 corrected herself, avoiding the name of Death as people 
 always do instinctively avoid it when it has come near to them. 
 
 " I hope when she comes back to herself it will be a 
 pleasanter one to live with than usual, then ! " Lady Vera 
 retorted. " Helen Chilcote brought her up to be intensely 
 selfish." It was noticeable that Lady Vera always accused 
 others of the weaknesses which a cynical public had observed 
 most in herself. She described her maid as inconsiderate 
 and indifferent with regard to herself, her daughter as selfish, 
 her friends as unscrupulous. Lady D'Aulnoy's expression 
 was faintly amused, but she shrugged her shoulders. Ex- 
 perience had taught her the futility of arguing with Vera 
 Mornington.
 
 3 i8 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 "I am sorry you and Nougat do not get on," was all she 
 said. . 
 
 " Get on ! I am wondering how we are to live together, 
 if it comes to that. I suppose she will marry. I shall be 
 thankful to give her my blessing and wash my hands of her." 
 
 There was no reticence in Lady Vera. She hated with the 
 abandonment of all her uncurbed instincts, and it was 
 elementary hatred untempered by any judgment. Further- 
 more, she expressed herself as crudely as she felt. The 
 crisis of Mornington's death had somewhat shattered the 
 terms of armed peace between her and her daughter, and she 
 spoke out of the fury of her heart. 
 
 Patricia dined in her room without seeing her mother, and 
 she felt that it was well for them to be apart at present. She 
 had come straight in from her interview with the Duke, and 
 had ordered some food from the routine of habit. But she 
 was dully surprised to find that when it came she could not 
 eat it, and she sent the tray away, and gave orders that she 
 would not be disturbed to-night her maid could go to bed 
 when she pleased. Then she went into her favourite room 
 the room with the books and pictures and tried to think. 
 
 What the Duke had told her had only confirmed her own 
 conviction; and yet the bald statement was so much worse 
 than the thing suspected that it had hit her like a bolt from 
 the blue. Her pride was cut to the quick, and she felt her- 
 self a pariah even in a world she had fancied she despised. 
 Worse still, she had no right to that purer strain on which she 
 had based some of her belief in herself. She came of a bad 
 stock Blais' blood in her veins, Blais' passions in her nature ; 
 and instead of a counter influence, there must surely be a 
 darker blot yet, for she was the child of some poor sexual 
 impulse, only strong in the self-indulgence which risked a 
 broken law. In the first moments of her bitter degradation 
 she felt as if she could not even trust herself, with such an 
 inheritance. Surely her birth was bad in every respect, her 
 very blood tainted she, Patricia Mornington, who had held 
 her head so high, and thought silent scorn of the weak men 
 and w men round her, the Children of this World who were 
 not even wise in their generation ! 
 
 For hours the brooding figure hardly changed its position, 
 as Patricia sat there driving her reckless thoughts back into 
 the past and on into the future. The silver chimes on the
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 319 
 
 mantelpiece struck ten eleven midnight and still the 
 beautiful, furious face was clouded with dangerous thought, 
 until even thought grew intolerable with inaction, and she 
 rose and began to pace slowly up and down up and down 
 her loose silks trailing behind her, each hand clenched against 
 her side. Beware now ! for the Blais' passions in her nature 
 were indeed running riot. The loose rein of former genera- 
 tions was giving her present mood a chance to get away with 
 her, and made her for the time being a less governed woman 
 than even Lady Vera. She had never felt this surge of pas- 
 sion in all her trained and guarded life, and never realised 
 the dreadful force that lurked within herself. It frightened 
 her even at its maddest, and drove her to and fro, as if at the 
 mercy of some strong wind, her feet treading monotonously 
 up and down the room until long past midnight, her eyes full 
 of stormy anger and unchecked rage at fortune. What had 
 she done that she should suffer so for the criminal weakness 
 of one man and woman ? A hideous line from a stern creed 
 beat back upon her memory, to make her doubt that love was 
 ever in the world, or mercy possible combined with power : 
 
 " For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the 
 sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 generation of them that hate Me." She had sprung of gene- 
 rations that must have hated God, and had certainly served 
 Satan. She had no part and lot with the elect she was 
 illegitimate. The old scorn of the Baton Sinister that lurks 
 in all civilised races bred under the law, made her cringe 
 before the world ; for this also was in her blood, an inherited 
 instinct of shame at the blot on the 'scutcheon. Up and 
 down up and down went the unwearied feet, seeking to 
 tread down sorrow and to outpace despair. And darker 
 thoughts than she could put into words kept at her side 
 through the ghastly vigil. 
 
 Up on the wall, above the head of the restless living 
 woman, hung the portrait of Lady Helen, the self-denying 
 face and the calm pride that is proud for good reason. 
 Patricia never raised her face the beautiful Blais' face with 
 its triumphant passions but the contrast between that pic- 
 tured control and the real creature who was beyond it just 
 now, was none the less striking. She passed below Lady 
 Helen without heeding her, and with eyes and ears blind and 
 deaf to anything but the tumult of her own mind. If anyone
 
 320 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 had come upon her then even the terrible mother who had 
 given her birth they must have fled affrighted. 
 
 Two o'clock three. Below the great gaunt windows over 
 looking Piccadilly the stream of life faltered and flowed fit- 
 fully, until it finally died away into an empty silence. The 
 lights across the Park waxed dim, even the galaxy of Earth- 
 stars that meant Buckingham Palace seeming to fade in the 
 hour when life is lowest. Patricia wandered out of her course, 
 over to the window, and looked out. The leaves were almost 
 all off the trees in the Park, for the summer had been a dry 
 one, and far and far across the black spaces she saw lamp 
 after lamp guiding her to the Mall, and clumped together to 
 show where stood the Palace of the King .... did he 
 sleep now, reduced back to the mere elements of humanity, 
 a man and not a king, like the meanest of his subjects ? She 
 tried to distract her thoughts, to force them to something 
 which was not the old maddening reiteration of appeal against 
 
 the cruelty of her sentence Why? why? why? 
 
 Had God no sense of justice that he let men and women sin 
 for countless generations, and only visited His wrath upon 
 their descendants ? What had she done that she must suffer 
 so ? And that poor man the man who might have been her 
 father ! what had he done that a worthless woman should 
 befool him and wreck his life ? " It is not a singular case ! " 
 said the Duke of London, with the acquired cynicism of his 
 class and training. That was all the extenuation that could 
 be urged a fresh accusation of sin on others of this race, 
 " the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me ! " 
 
 The lumbering, solemn omnibuses were running no longer ; 
 a night hansom flashed by, its occupant invisible to Patricia's 
 dry hot eyes, but she guessed at some man returning from a 
 
 card-party, or worse Cards ruin men themselves, 
 
 but other vices may drag dowi women, and some unborn 
 Thing that must suffer in its turn, to the third and fourth 
 generation. Oh, why? why? why? 
 
 The sleepless woman, with the beautiful face which is the 
 Blais' boast, stood at her vigil, and felt the misused purpose 
 of life and the relentless fight of law and nature soul and 
 body. Such hours are like a burning fiery furnace to the 
 naked soul. Below, in the open roadway, all sorts of con- 
 ditions of men might pass by, but she heeded them not; 
 while for her, as for them, one night out of all Time was
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 321 
 
 folded up into silence, with its incidents and experiences that 
 are never quite the same as any other night in all Time. 
 Beyond, across the black Park, a cluster of lights showed 
 where the King slept, only a man, and like the humblest of 
 his subjects. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Lady Vera was not often troubled with interviews with her 
 daughter of late. Indeed, their intercourse was of the slight- 
 est, and the antagonism between them had become almost 
 avowed. She was really surprised when Patricia came com- 
 posedly into her sanctum the next morning and suggested 
 that they should discuss certain business, but her sharp glance 
 at the younger woman did not enlighten her. Patricia was 
 never highly coloured, but she seemed at the moment all the 
 whiter for her exterme composure of manner. Her face 
 looked more mature, too. " She has the atmosphere of a 
 married woman now," thought her mother shrewdly. "At 
 this rate she will soon look as old as I." For she had some 
 illusions left her yet with regard to herself, and one was that 
 she ranked with women of thirty. 
 
 " It is an unpleasant necessity that we must talk over our 
 position sometimes," said Patricia, with grave directness. 
 " Of course, it is always disagreeable particularly among 
 relations. Still we need not disagree." 
 
 Lady Vera stared. " There is no question of disagreeing, 
 as far as I can see," she said bluntly. " If you refer to the 
 way in which the money is divided between us, the lawyers 
 will decide all that. I take one-third and you take two, and 
 we can't touch a penny for a year, and there will be endless 
 worry and taking out of letters of administration even then. 
 There is nothing so selfish as a man who dies intestate and a 
 suicide." 
 
 Patricia did not wince from the ugly word, or show any 
 consciousness of having heard it. " You have not discovered 
 anything further, then ? " she said. " No papers of instruc- 
 tions or memorandum of what he wanted done ? " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! haven't we been hunting through papers 
 for a week, both here and at Rye? " said Lady Vera, in tones 
 that suggested exasperation. " Found anything ! No, not 
 the slightest clue, of course. He died intestate." 
 
 Patricia raised her eyes and looked at her mother delibe- 
 
 21
 
 322 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 rately. " Under the circumstances, then, I do not inherit at 
 all," she said quietly. 
 
 " Under what circumstances ? " Lady Vera's movement as 
 she swung round was so sudden that it was like panic. " You 
 inherit about two millions I do not know what else you want. 
 I should describe you as singularly fortunate, myself. I am 
 far worse off than many widows of rich men." 
 
 There was a momentary pause, like the hush before 
 thunder. Then Patricia spoke. 
 
 " I will not inherit any of Mr. Mornington's money, because 
 both legally and morally I cannot." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " The paint and powder could not 
 disguise the wicked red blood scorching Vera Mornington's 
 face, like the reflection of a shameful Hell into which she had 
 looked once, years ago. Her eyes were red, too, like those 
 of certain wild animals when they get angry, and they dared 
 the truth from Patricia's lips. But if she were dangerous in 
 her rising passion, she was far less dangerous than the still, 
 pale woman who was absolutely without fear or remorse, and 
 who was going to speak, though god or devil or man should 
 forbid her. 
 
 " You know you almost put into words the other day, the 
 reason that Giles Mornington made no will. He would not 
 acknowledge me as his daughter he knew that I was not. 
 You know it too, and at last I know it also." 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 The panting, sobbing whisper of a creature at bay is not 
 good to hear ; but Patricia had neither compassion nor hesi- 
 tation, even for a second. She looked at the woman who 
 would almost have killed her to escape her own fear, and who 
 would fight to the death the instant she knew her own ground. 
 
 " I have been gradually coming to the knowledge for some 
 time. Many people in London know it, it seems, and I have 
 had it confirmed by one of them. But that is not all. I am 
 aware that one must have certain proofs. If you do not help 
 me to arrange the matter quietly, I shall set to work to find 
 them. It is five and twenty years ago, but I have no doubt 
 that I shall not lack for witnesses." 
 
 Then Lady Vera suddenly laughed, though the sound 
 grated like a false note. "You are mad to insult me like 
 this ! " she said breathlessly. " Do you know what you are 
 saving? That you want to prove your own illegitimacy!"
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 323 
 
 "Not prove it, save to the world at large," said Patricia 
 coolly, " for I know it already, as did that poor man who would 
 not lie about me. It is only fair to give you warning that I 
 shall not flinch even from such a task, if you drive me to it." 
 
 " You are mad ! " 
 
 " Not at all. Look at me and see ! " 
 
 She raised her great burning eyes and looked at the lesser 
 woman, and for all the unbridled rage in herself, Vera Morn- 
 ington felt suddenly impotent against this more implacable 
 anger. She saw that Patricia would carry out her threat, 
 monstrous though it was ; and she saw also where her power 
 lay, for though she might encounter a difficulty on which she 
 had not counted, once she began to unravel that ugly secret 
 of the past she would inevitably drag others to light, and the 
 whole scandal was hideously inconceivable. 
 
 " Nougat ! " gasped the maddened woman. " Don't you 
 realise that you can't? That that I am your mother?" 
 
 Then the rage in the girl surged up almost to the height of 
 last night, when, in her terrible vigil, inherited passions and 
 lawless instincts had made a helpless thing of her among them, 
 and she had been a horror even to herself. " The old plea ! " 
 she said with a bitter sneer. " Or rather, a variation of that 
 older one that urges on a man you have wronged that you are 
 his wife bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, he is drag- 
 ging his own name in the dirt in dragging yours ! For the 
 sake of his name he must forbear to treat you as you deserve. 
 You calculate on it, you women who do such things. But 
 I " she sprang full height, glowing with a splendid rage and 
 indignation " I have no such handicap, you will find ! For 
 once you will meet your match, a woman as unscrupulous as 
 yourself in her purpose, and as fearless of public opinion as 
 you are of moral obligation. The fact that you are my mother 
 is my disgrace, perhaps, but certainly no deterrent to my 
 proving our joint shame ! " 
 
 The tigress in Lady Vera had never been more incarnate 
 than now, as, with cruel lips drawn back from her teeth, she 
 stood as if snarling helplessly at a stronger adversary. Her 
 long tightly-laced body writhed a little, as the beast's might in 
 lashing its tail, and her voice was the frighting cry of some 
 inhuman thing. 
 
 " You brute ! You damned fool ! " she cried, beside herself 
 with the unexpected disaster that seemed to have overtaken 
 
 21*
 
 324 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 her. " You have no sense of decency you are only fit for a 
 lunatic asylum, or a penitentiary. If you try to do what you 
 say, I will have you shut up as out of your mind do you 
 hear? do you hear? do you hear? " 
 
 The hot blood seemed to die down in Patricia's body be- 
 fore the senseless scream, but a coldness more invincible still 
 took its place. She looked straight at the quivering, passion- 
 swayed woman before her with open contempt, and there 
 was absolute indifference in her voice as she answered. 
 
 " I should not advise your doing anything so foolish. You 
 would certainly fail, and that would be unpleasant for you in 
 the results ! Understand me, I do not desire to blazon your 
 sins unnecessarily. If you will kindly accept the inevitable, 
 and not try to establish my claim to your husband's name by 
 forcing his fortune on me, I will not move further in the 
 matter. If you do try to make me acknowledge myself his 
 daughter by a tacit lie, I shall explain to the world your 
 world what I am and what you are. You can take your 
 choice. That is all I have to say." 
 
 She turned, without another look or word, and walked to 
 the door. There she paused for a minute and looked back. 
 
 " I have my godmother's money, which was left actually to 
 me," she said monotonously. " I think it is impossible for 
 us to live in the same house after what has passed, and I shall 
 arrange about going elsewhere as soon as possible. I have 
 eight hundred a year to live on, so your conscience, even at 
 this late hour, need not be uneasy about me. There is 
 another bitter wrong that you would willingly have done me. 
 but I need not speak of that now. The less that is said 
 between us the better." 
 
 She went out and closed the door gently, but the distorted 
 face of the woman she left in the room was better to see than 
 her own as she walked away from it. She had a nature to 
 which all things came slowly, even revenge ; but once arrived 
 to her they did not pass, but took root and bore blossom, fruit, 
 and seed.
 
 325 
 
 CHAPTER XX11L 
 
 " The Ideal went through the World of an Hour, 
 
 Gathering flowers of a million brains ; 
 And some were sown of beautiful things, 
 But most of sorrows and pains." 
 
 Kealim of Fancy, 
 
 THERE came a letter to Ashingham a week or so after the 
 Leroys' departure, which touched a secret mood of Vaughan's 
 and drew an answer from him. He was not a particularly 
 good or fluent correspondent, though he fancied that he was 
 both, and his love of argument met with a restraint on paper 
 that fretted his brain. Fate wrote of herself, like all strong 
 personalities, who, whether they describe a sunset or a 
 pudding, colour and flavour it by their own taste, and quite 
 irrespective of Natural Law. 
 
 " I am mistress of a restful silence," was the first sentence 
 in the letter. " Eldred has fallen most beautifully asleep, 
 and I am in want of a friend to talk to. Do you notice 
 that a good face is most lovable when asleep? All the 
 stains of day, that are only passing clouds on them, seem 
 swept away and leave the original nature like a pure 
 sky." (To her heart she also noted the little lock of 
 tossed hair that made him so boyish the flush on his face, 
 and the pathetic helplessness which makes a child of a 
 sleeping man, and proportionately dear to woman. But 
 being no fool she kept her life-portrait, to herself, and 
 generalised to the other man. Vaughan might also be in- 
 cluded in the lovableness of sleep if his face could be called 
 good.) 
 
 " It takes me back to his illness again, when I used to feel 
 quite sure that it was the last time I should watch by him, 
 because I was so afraid of being taken unawares, and the 
 years ahead were so appalling. For I know myself I should
 
 326 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 never have taken up my life and worked for others as I ought. 
 The years would slip by with so little done, and only my 
 jewel of happiness experienced to bear me up." 
 
 (He thought of that possible future on which he had turned 
 his back, and winced even now with the wrench of the effort. 
 They had seen the years ahead as differently as if they were 
 complete strangers to each other. He was glad of that now.) 
 
 " I depended very much on you to help me through, you 
 know-^-I am a very dependent person. It is curious, is it 
 not, how we take the benefits of a friend for granted and do 
 not even try to express ourselves as grateful ! Just because 
 we feel that they give us what no one else could give, we 
 seem to think that reward would be superfluous as perhaps 
 it would. And so I never even thanked you 
 
 " I am sitting at the window, rejoicing in a wide sweep of 
 cloud and wintry sky (it is something more than autumnal), 
 and at the edge a vivid golden streak of sun-touched vapour 
 that heightens the grey cold and stormy promise. Affection, 
 luxury, and culture, they seem to my mind position and 
 beauty, and, at the back of it all, trouble and the promise of 
 trouble. How it makes one ache ! Beauty defiled, perfec- 
 tion marred, and happiness incomplete. Wherever you go 
 you read the same, and I see it materialised in my wintry 
 landscape. It reminds me of Patricia Mornington, both in 
 its vividness of colour and the suggestion of trouble that 
 always seemed to be in her atmosphere. There was some- 
 thing of the Barmecide Feast in Patricia's life it looked a 
 gorgeous repast, and the best that fortune had to offer. But 
 when one came to examine it, it was but empty golden dishes, 
 and Patricia herself went hungry. I suppose you have never 
 chanced to see her since we left? She has not written to 
 me, which is quite natural, and makes me feel very injured. 
 I am less hurt with you, because I know the crooked ways 
 and stony places of your disposition, and no longer stumble 
 amongst them. Still, you might write and tell me a pleasant 
 lie as, for instance, that you miss us." 
 
 Fate was an artist. The interpolation of " us " for " me " 
 was no blind to anybody concerned ; but she would not spoil 
 her own pose. The letter brought back a reply from 
 Vaughan three days later. 
 
 " Do you know that you are very inconsistent ? Acknow- 
 ledging the justice of your friends' silence, you then demand
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 327 
 
 to have it broken with a ' pleasant lie.' I shall not lie to 
 you, however. A woman really assures herself past any asser- 
 tion or denial of a man. I might tell you again and again 
 that I missed you or the reverse but you would believe your 
 own opinion. 
 
 " No, of course, I have not seen Miss Mornington. That 
 is another unreason of yours. We were ' Ships that pass in 
 the night,' and, unless she refers to her log-book, the 
 occurrence is not likely to strike her memory. You take a 
 gloomy view of her prospects, and I wish that I could cordially 
 contradict it. I am afraid that you and I, probably the most 
 disinterested of her acquaintance, are helpless to alter one 
 fold of that grey cloud of trouble that you see around her. 
 And destiny having marked our paths East and West, we 
 should be fools to try and converge." 
 
 (" A restive touch of discontent in the apparent resigna- 
 tion ! " commented Fate. " I wonder ! ") 
 
 " Have you never heard of a Princess who was the owner 
 of what was supposed to be a most beautiful garden, but it 
 was all shut in by bright, hard walls of gold, over which no 
 man might see ? The Princess was certainly there, because 
 those who passed by under the walls could sometimes hear 
 her singing. But whether the garden was really full of jewels 
 and flowers, or whether it was a waste of great stones and 
 cruel thorns, no one could tell. 
 
 " Anyhow, there is no doubt of the flowers in the garden 
 at Ashingham. Autumn is a lovely season, and my beds are 
 full of triumphant colour no blue ribbons to spoil that har- 
 mony ! I wish you could see it all simply because, natu- 
 rally, I want to make you envious, your own horticultural 
 efforts being so lamentably bad. I have no personal inclina- 
 tion towards your figure as a foreground object to my flowers, 
 please understand." 
 
 To which Mrs. Leroy wrote back, " How obvious people 
 are ! I mean men people, of course. If you had simply 
 painted your garden-picture without dragging me into the fore- 
 ground, I might have believed in you. As it is, I have not 
 even the delight of uncertainty. 
 
 " I have but just escaped from the drawing-room, where the 
 lamps are lit and tea has been in progress for the benefit of 
 callers who will talk (from the safe home outlook, hampered 
 only by conventional drawbacks) about the undesirable people
 
 328 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 who have other or inferior circumstances of the people who 
 have stepped aside from the High Road, the women and men, 
 who, like David, have ways and desires calculated to cause 
 disturbances. Even Eldred's sweet and lovable little aunt sat 
 and purred approval, just as she would read a book per- 
 petuating the stupidities of small people and silly fashions, 
 so long as it did not deal with human passions, for it is 
 ' wrong ' to murder, and to make love to your neighbour's 
 wife. How narrow one is in danger of growing ! As if 
 vulgarity were not worse than immorality. Wrong may help 
 one to climb, but a vulgar mind has not enough of the Divine 
 to make it understand the desire to reach up, or to see the 
 beauty of perfect goodness. Finally the talk became domestic 
 in tone a queer mixture of prosperous contentment and 
 decaying brains, added to nursery indecencies. Then I 
 fled, and came to my own room for comfort. 
 
 " Is there no Prince in your fairy-tale, who loved the 
 Princess well enough, even for the voice that was all that 
 reached him, to climb the golden wall and see for himself 
 if she were happy? I can imagine such a knight-errant, 
 strong to risk his life, if necessary, for the great aim before 
 him, and then content to go away if the Princess were really 
 better off in her garden, and he found it full of flowers and 
 jewels. But if not if it were but hard stones and thorns 
 to break down the gates that guarded her, and ask her to 
 come out into the world with him. Poor Princess ! with no 
 one to care enough to make the effort ! " 
 
 " Of your morals I say nothing," wrote Vaughan, with a 
 hint of shocked earnestness under the jest, " for they are 
 obviously as bad as your gardening. But I must protest 
 against your scornful egoism in dubbing the rest of the world 
 ' narrow.' " 
 
 (" I didn't say that he was ! " murmured Fate over the fine- 
 written page. There was something scholastic in Vaughan's 
 handwriting. " But the chance shot evidently went home 
 where not intended.") 
 
 " Don't you know that narrowness is often only the outcome 
 of strength the resisting force which has been steadily 
 opposed to temptation for many dull years, until it hardens 
 nature into a groove ? Sneer, if you dare, at the narrowness 
 of men and women who have acquired it through self-restraint 
 and decency ! I cannot attain to their virtues, myself "
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 329 
 
 (" A lapse into the would-be Bohemian 1 " sighed Fate. 
 " Is there anything more self -deceptive than the pose of a 
 conventional man ? ") 
 
 " But at least I have the grace to admire them at a 
 distance. 
 
 " I began this letter intending to give you some news, and 
 then forgot it in the joy of arguing with you again, though 
 only on paper. To be brief, it is this I have been offered 
 an exceptionally good opening abroad, which I know I am 
 not justified in refusing. It is a beastly excellent offer, and 
 will take me to New Zealand. I know I ought to go. I 
 know also that to a man of my age and temperament it will 
 be a wrench. It is no use discussing it. If it must be, it 
 must. I am sufficiently of the philosophic mind to cry 
 ' Kismet ! ' 
 
 " No, of course, there is no Prince in the story ; or, if 
 there be one, he is inside the garden walls, making love to 
 the Princess confound him ! I hope at least that he is a 
 decent fellow. It's a dull world, in spite of the Autumn 
 glory. This time next year I may be Heaven knows 
 where ! " 
 
 " DEAR GERALD, 
 
 " Since when has this amazing thing happened to 
 you, and why are you so meagre with your details? I cannot 
 even congratulate you until I know that it is really the best 
 choice for you, and I see many difficulties in your way. What 
 will become of Bertha and of Ashingham? Eldred and I 
 are on the tiptoe of expectation to hear more about it than the 
 bald outline which is all you vouchsafe. I am simply and 
 selfishly disgusted to think that you may be removed to the 
 other side of the world, and lose touch with me. I cannot 
 bear frankly to lose you. And yet I am not so much of 
 an egoist (how ungrateful it was of you to call me that !) but 
 that I will try to be very glad for you if this is really the 
 Golden Opportunity of your Adventure. 
 
 " When the Prince who was outside the wall gave up hope 
 of scaling it, did he turn his back on the mere desire and 
 ride straight away into the wilderness? I wonder if he did 
 and what the Princess thought ! Of course she must have 
 known that he was there, and men always treat women like 
 puppets, without giving them a chance of even expressing
 
 330 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 themselves and their views. I don't know why you should 
 assign us neither courage or right of will, but it generally is 
 so in the most vital question of our lives." 
 
 " I am not running away from my own weakness, nor is a 
 hopeless love affair driving me to the Colonies," wrote 
 Vaughan two days later. " Men of my age are more swayed 
 by practical gain than private loss, I take it. The offer of a 
 partnership in a sound firm is the inducement in New Zealand, 
 and not the fact that I was thrown into a companionship which 
 was unfortunate for me, this Summer. There is no Golden 
 Opportunity of Adventure even things came about pro- 
 saically enough, and were not all startling. It is very com- 
 monplace and quite satisfactory, and without a single risk to 
 flavour it. Destiny is simply evolving my future in a different 
 way to what I expected that is all. Even Bertha has not 
 raised an obstacle, for by a miracle she is bitten with a desire 
 to leave her household gods and to travel! A certain Mrs. 
 Fisher a lady of platitudes and much intrinsic rustle has 
 persuaded her to join forces and go to Canada as a beginning 
 to seeing more of this marvellous universe. Can you fancy 
 Bertha ' doing ' the Canadian Pacific Route in the Spring, and 
 passing suitable comments on that magnificence of pines and 
 snow ? Thank Heaven, I shall not be here to listen to her 
 twitterings on her return. The Fisher (not of men, but of 
 views) is a good soul, who has never seen anything in her life, 
 though she has spent much of it in walking about the earth 
 and taking universal photographs of what she does not under- 
 stand. 
 
 " Everything is, therefore, falling into easy arrangement 
 for me, and, like a spoilt child, I am fretting over the lack of 
 difficulties to be overcome. I should enjoy it more if I might 
 but slay the Lions at the gate of the House Beautiful. But 
 who can find adventure in the fat, smug comfort with which 
 my plans have shaped themselves? I really feel like the man 
 who holds a dummy handle while the organ works itself. I 
 gather my only comfort from the hope that you will really 
 miss me that it will almost hurt a little, as it will hurt me a 
 great deal. I want that parting at least to be hard, a tangible 
 thing that cannot be swept away. Your ' simple selfishness ' 
 in wishing to keep me would once have made it worth while 
 to go but that was long since, when I was in love with you.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 331 
 
 Now that I have realised your real value I find that to lose 
 my friends for I cannot dissever you from Eldred even in 
 thought has no compensation. 
 
 " For the rest, I leave only memories behind me, as you 
 know. And so we may close the fairy tale " 
 
 " When were you in love with me, Gerald ? What a pity I 
 did not know ! I should have been so proud, and enjoyed it 
 so much ! " 
 
 (Dear hypocrites of women ! When had she not known ? 
 When did she not feel the cord slackening, and, in her loyalty 
 to both men, say that she was glad, even with a cheerful sigh ! 
 She knew always, as surely as she knew now that he would 
 never have told her did he not hold himself cured ; and also 
 that she would never be quite the same as another woman to 
 him, even in the most prosaic friendship, because he had 
 once set her in the empty shrine of his heart, to worship!) 
 
 " I have liked you so much," she went on, touching honesty 
 in the midst of coquetting with truth, " that if you had really 
 loved me, though only for a day, I should have counted it as 
 a clean honour. There are some people whose very thought 
 of love seems only to defile its object others by whom it 
 only crowns. 
 
 " As Eldred gets better and we go about together, I realise 
 what I nearly lost. Perhaps at the time I was mercifully 
 numb ; Nature is always her own salvation, is she not ? Now 
 that the sensation is returning to my nerves, I sometimes hold 
 my breath at the pain. And yet I laugh and talk, and even 
 joke over that time, as if I had no sense of awe. But one 
 does not speak of the sacred side of life, save in some crisis 
 that lifts one clear of self-consciousness. It is, perhaps, only 
 because I am writing to you that I can mention it if we were 
 face to face I should not dare to go back with you, even in 
 memory, to those first days when he lay there, unconscious of 
 
 me all the holiness of my life lies still on that altar 
 
 of my heart's oratory, and outside it my days seem such pagan 
 things 
 
 "I wonder that you have the nerve to upbraid me for my 
 strictures on dull people after your description of the Fisher- 
 woman. I can see her in my mind's eye, good worthy soul, 
 with her camera and her ' intrinsic rustle.' I am sure, for all 
 her respectability, that she is one of those who make gods of
 
 332 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 what she would call ' Our Aristocracy,' and would worship a 
 naughty duchess. This was a point I could hardly make 
 Patricia understand. She saw the thing immediately before 
 her with her large grave eyes, and that happened to be the 
 vulgarity of a certain set of so-called ' Society ' environing 
 her life, and the pleasanter circle I had drawn round myself 
 in contrast to it. Beyond this she encountered occasional 
 bores even outside her own family, and she loved the Duke of 
 London but these she regarded as exceptions to prove her 
 rule. She judged according to generality, and found the 
 drawbacks of Sunnington less than those of Piccadilly. As 
 to such excellent people as Mrs. Fisher, for instance, timidly 
 admiring the smart men and women of whom she thinks she 
 reads in the penny papers, Patricia would simply say that it 
 could only be the result of ignorance. And, perhaps, she 
 would be right in her own case at least, for vice to her was 
 merely a form of ill-breeding, and devoid of romance. 
 
 " Do not hurry on your preparations too much ! Eldred 
 and I will be back now in a week or so we will fix a definite 
 date, if that for your departure is fixed and we must see 
 something of you before you go. 
 
 "P.S. Were you really in love with me?" 
 
 The last letter but one that passed between them was 
 brief, being from Gerald Vaughan, already immersed in pack- 
 ing cases. 
 
 " Of course I was in love with you, but you see you never 
 even knew it, so I fell out of love again. It seems, does it 
 not, as if my genius decreed that I should always set my 
 worship on an absent goddess, and bow before an empty 
 shrine ? Heaven knows ! the devotion I bestow so unluckily 
 is not very well worth having 'A poor thing, Madam, but 
 mine own ! ' I wonder what my Princess would have thought 
 of such a sorry gift, could she in her wildest dreams have 
 conjectured my state of mind ! But it being nearly as 
 irrational to fall in love with a Princess inside a golden forti- 
 fication as with you who did not want me I have no doubt 
 but that my recuperative power will once more assert itself, 
 and I shall recover a second time. I had no idea I was so 
 susceptible in fact, I laugh a little, grimly, when I think 
 that I am often chosen by mammas with naughty charges to 
 be the butt of their allurements, being accounted absolutely 
 safe and fireproof.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 333 
 
 " At least this is left me, that in neither case of my weak- 
 ness have I anything to regret. I would not, indeed, part 
 with one pleasure or one pang of either experience 
 
 " Bertha asks me to give you her love, as she is too busy to 
 write. A contemplation of sublime scenery is evidently im- 
 possible without an unsuitable hat and a new sunshade. I 
 believe that women's desire to travel is only to find an excuse 
 for purchase. For myself, I shall not leave until your return 
 though I am not a sentimentalist, 'the claim of an old 
 friendship clings in the hand ' with me. I could not go 
 without bidding you both Good-bye "
 
 334 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " O I rose up and came away, 
 
 And the World went wailing by ; 
 But the past I left behind that day 
 Will follow me till I die- 
 Will follow me till I die ! " 
 
 Song from King Copheiua. 
 
 THERE is nothing so bewildering in choosing a spot to live in 
 as to have practically the round world from which to choose. 
 People fret that circumstances or obligation tie them to one 
 place, but as a fact to have no such ties and to be free to 
 choose is a far harder lot. It places the responsibility on the 
 individual instead of on Providence, and there is nothing we 
 resent so much as our own mistakes. Patricia had meant to 
 decide at once and off-hand the place of her immediate 
 future, and to wrench her life free of its present surroundings 
 while the impulse was still hot in her veins. She was in a 
 mood of violent action, the dizziness of a succession of events 
 in her life having shaken her mental balance a little, so that 
 she was still the victim of her own momentum like a material 
 body which goes on moving after the force which set it in 
 motion has passed. But though she was settled in her deter- 
 mination to leave the house in Piccadilly as soon as she found 
 another habitation, the finding of such was not so easy a 
 matter as it had appeared. She would have returned to 
 Madeira, but that she had found the place intolerable through 
 associations with Lady Helen, who had been the centre of 
 the life there to her. To stay in England meant a certain 
 discomfort as long as she remained in touch with any of the
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 335 
 
 people who had been a part of her brief experience there, 
 with the exception of Fate Leroy, and it was just on account 
 of Fate that she turned her eyes desperately on the map of 
 the country of which she knew so little, and lost herself 
 amongst its innumerable names, any one of which was merely 
 a speculation to her. Had Fate been at home, she would 
 inevitably have gone to Sunnington for a time while she con- 
 sidered ; but the Leroys were still away, the process of re- 
 turning to life having been a longer one in Eldred's case than 
 anyone but his wife expected. The projected visit to the 
 Harbingers was of course impossible under the circumstances, 
 and even had they not had a large party coming to Chilcote 
 for the shooting, Patricia felt a secret shrinking from im- 
 mediate association with Chiffon until time had worn down 
 the rough edges of her confidences. 
 
 So she lingered on in town, estranged from the few people 
 around her, and seeing little even of them. Lady Vera could 
 not leave Piccadilly for a week or so, however she chafed 
 against the great empty house and its dreadful memories ; 
 there were certain things to be settled, and an amount of 
 litigation involving her in its toils, as she had foreseen. There 
 was, however, no great difficulty as to an advance of money, 
 once the lawyers were convinced of there being no will, and 
 if she chose she could keep up the house in Piccadilly, and 
 live her life as usual, only relieved of the grip of fear which 
 that one sinister figure in its locked rooms had never quite 
 lost upon her. But Lady Vera was hindered from a final 
 decision by being unable to consult her co-legatee upon the 
 matter, and was obliged to temporise in consequence. Once 
 the immediate impression of the interview was off her mind, 
 she began to take a more indifferent view of Patricia's atti- 
 tude. The thing she had threatened seemed so impossible 
 that her mother came to the desired conclusion that it had 
 been done under the shock of finding herself stripped of name 
 and position legally, even though it was a supposed secret 
 socially. It was, no doubt, a bitter blow to Patricia's pride, 
 but Lady Vera decided that it was merely a question of time 
 to make her get over it and used to the thought, and that 
 to take things for granted was her safest course. If everyone 
 accepted her position as heiress to Mornington's wealth she 
 would find that she could not extricate herself. There is 
 nothing so difficult to combat as a settled tradition or belief.
 
 336 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Lady Vera knew the weight of general opinion, and the value 
 of regarding what she wished as already settled. She could 
 not conceive it possible that Patricia would make the stand 
 she had no doubt intended in the heat of the moment. Let 
 things level themselves. She did not press her daughter for 
 any opinion in legal matters that might compromise either of 
 them before the lawyers, and warded off a consultation with 
 her for the immediate present. In time she judged that the 
 mere sequence of events would bind Patricia hand and foot in 
 the toils of custom, and she would cease to struggle. She 
 smiled a little bitterly to think that she was fighting to force 
 the girl to accept two millions of money and a social position 
 which others would have lied and cheated to gain. But Patricia 
 was no more to be reckoned with just now than a mad woman, 
 according to her mother. The unlucky discovery she had 
 made had driven her to acting without self-interest and 
 there was no greater proof of insanity to Lady Vera's mind. 
 
 On her side Patricia, having stated her intentions, left her 
 mother to do as she pleased in the face of them. She did 
 not even wonder as to what explanation Lady Vera would 
 give of her refusal to inherit the money ; certain in her own 
 mind that she would not inherit, she left the details of the 
 matter to Lady Vera as a mere concession. She did not care, 
 herself, what people thought. It was the other woman to 
 whom it was of importance to gloss over an impossible situa- 
 tion. 
 
 Though the house in Piccadilly was still one of mourning 
 ostensibly, people seemed to come and go much after their 
 usual fashion. Lady Vera's set being so leavened with Blais's 
 she had always the plea of kinship in admitting them ; and 
 when by chance Patricia did appear in the more public rooms 
 she found some offshoot of the family present at least, who 
 appeared to be still stranded in town. The truth was that 
 the old bitter proverb of the carcass and the eagles is true of 
 all such women as Lady Vera and her household her para- 
 sites of relations clung to her and sucked her wealth if not 
 her vitality, and she invariably bought the popularity of which 
 she boasted. If not generous in the best sense of the word, 
 she was open-handed from the habit of her race, for her youth 
 had been accustomed to the reckless liberality and extrava- 
 gance of Ragby, where they boasted that they kept open 
 house though it was eventually paid for by other than Blais
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 337 
 
 money. There were few among her women friends who did 
 not borrow from Lady Vera, and there were some men in 
 whose memories were like debts by which they measured the 
 lowest point in their degradation. But wheresoever Lady 
 Vera was the eagles would be gathered together, even though 
 it were London out of the Season. 
 
 There was a certain grave courtesy about Patricia when she 
 chanced to encounter these parasites which did not encourage 
 the usual loud chatter that was their special characteristic, 
 and so no one talked to Nougat over much. She was sup- 
 posed to be feeling her father's death to a quite phenomenal 
 extent. It was not much that any of them saw of her, for 
 she contrived to withdraw herself without rudeness but quite 
 inevitably, and for a time it saved her from any personal in- 
 terrogation. But she strolled into the smoking-room on one 
 of these occasions, partly to escape a few people who had 
 lunched at the house and seemed likely to be augmented 
 during the afternoon, and having entered the room too far to 
 retreat she found that it had a solitary occupant with whom 
 she had been avoiding an encounter for some successful weeks. 
 A long figure rose out of one of the padded chairs, and a 
 grey head shot up a good five inches above her own. 
 
 " At last ! " said Caryl Lexiter. 
 
 When you are at a disadvantage it is as well at least to 
 look contented. Patricia advanced leisurely, with no appear- 
 ance of having had a thought of retreat and held out her 
 hand. 
 
 " I am running away from an influx of relations," she said 
 carelessly. " You must please not take that personally, as I 
 did not know that you were here. But the Blais Herons, 
 and Captain Blais, and Lady Harley, have all lunched with 
 us, and I feel a little choked with family ties. Are you 
 having a cigarette? Let me join you then." 
 
 He handed her his case silently, and watched while she 
 selected one and lit it. He did not attempt to put his hand 
 against hers this time, but merely struck the match and 
 handed it to her. She was trying to forget the last time she 
 had heard this man's voice a bodiless thing of mere typical 
 passion, beyond heavy curtains that still seemed to stifle her. 
 
 " Where have you been all these weeks, Nougat ? " he said 
 gently. " I have never been allowed to see you." 
 
 "I have seen as few people as possible," she answered 
 
 22
 
 338 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 steadily. " I wanted to be quiet. By the way, is your arm 
 quite recovered? I heard of the accident." 
 
 " Quite, thanks. You see I have got rid of the sling. It 
 only feels a trifle stiff. Who told you ? " 
 
 " Chiffon, I think or Lord Lowndes. I forget which.' 
 
 " You have seen Lowndes then and yet you would not 
 see me ! " 
 
 The reproach threatened her, and made her brace her 
 nerves for what might be coming. " I saw him before Mr. 
 Mornington died," she said quietly. " On the morning of 
 that very day, I think. I had gone to enquire for the Duke, 
 and he came in also and said he had met you at the Club. 
 He had been at Rye," she added with a bitter regret that he 
 could not follow. She remembered her plea to be allowed 
 to go down there, and Mornington's refusal. She understood 
 him at last. 
 
 " I know I heard he had been almost the last to see your 
 father," said Caryl, with a certain grave kindness, and a brief 
 touch of his hand upon her shoulder. It was so slight that 
 it was gone before she could shrink. " I am so sorry for you, 
 Nougat ! " 
 
 She did not answer, for she was trying to recall the time 
 when she had nearly loved this man, and it filled her with a 
 stupid wonder. So much had come between them ! It 
 was like talking to a ghost. 
 
 " I suppose you don't care for my sympathy 'm ? " He 
 made a little questioning characteristic sound with his lips, 
 and she felt his eyes drooped upon her face. The conscious- 
 ness was an irritation, but it could not move her now. She 
 lifted her own lashes and glanced up beautifully, but with the 
 indifference of a child. 
 
 " I am sorry to be ungrateful but it seems of so little 
 importance, in the face of the thing itself, that people should 
 be sorry for me. It meant so much to me, in many ways, 
 that I do not even care to speak of it." 
 
 The words came a little thoughtfully, and the eyes bent 
 upon her face altered from dreamy softness to a keener look 
 of speculation. He did not quite know what she meant, and 
 it was important that he should be able to follow her drift. 
 
 " Of course it will affect all your life, both present and 
 future, I understand that. Where do you think of going, 
 Nougat? Lady D'Aulnoy told me she thought you wanted
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 339 
 
 an entire change, and the Harbingers are out of the question 
 now, I suppose." 
 
 " I have not decided," said Patricia quietly. Her mother 
 had not taken this man into her confidence then, as yet; or 
 else he was playing a deep game of pretended ignorance. 
 
 " I. wish you would come to us. We are awfully quiet at 
 Queensleigh, for my father has an attack of gout, and Loftus 
 and his wife are going to Scotland. There would be only me 
 to plague you, and you should do just as you like." 
 
 "No, thank you," said Patricia with a gentle instant de- 
 cision. " I am not going away at present not visiting, at 
 any rate." 
 
 " What are your plans, then ? I know that if I once let you 
 go without telling me, you will slip away for months again, 
 and I shall never see anything of you." 
 
 " Very possibly," said Patricia, her eyes meeting his again 
 with steady comprehension. She hoped that he would un- 
 derstand her and say no more, but a long course of proving 
 irresistible to the opposite sex had made Lexiter incredulous 
 of failure. 
 
 " But that is just what I don't want,'' he said with a smile 
 beginning in the meaning of his eyes. " You know I don't 
 want to lose sight of you, don't you, Nougat ? " 
 
 " I know of no adequate reason why you should not." 
 
 " What is an adequate reason ? Is there one in the back 
 ground of your mind ? " 
 
 " Do you mean that I might be in love with another man, 
 and consequently indifferent as to whether I lost sight of you 
 or anyone else ? " said Patricia composedly. " No, I have 
 no ' adequate reason ' of that sort I think I never shall 
 have," she added slowly. 
 
 "Why, Nougat?" 
 
 There was some sort of movement between them, she 
 thought his hand touched her, and moved deliberately away 
 from him, her eyes on the blank windows through which she 
 could see the faint blue of the autumn sky and the delicate 
 skeleton of a tree in the Green Park, for the smoking-room, 
 like her own, overlooked Piccadilly. The stripped branches 
 gave her a vague sense of unhappiness and desertion. 
 
 " I do not think that I shall ever marry," she said with a 
 grave simplicity that proved a better barrier than any resist- 
 ance. " I have made certain discoveries about myself that 
 
 22*
 
 340 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 do not tend to marriage. I shall never take any man's name, 
 I think," she said, and her eyes met his again, adding what 
 her lips so carefully paraphrased. 
 
 A look of actual disturbance, or of discomfort at least, 
 flashed into his eyes in answer to hers. He understood 
 something ; but beneath the little soft tawny moustache that 
 looked so boyish contrasted with his silver hair, she saw the 
 set line of his beautiful lips and realised that she had silenced 
 them. He would not say any more now ; and her second 
 line of attack his own infidelities in the past and present 
 need not be called into action save for Chiffon's message. 
 That she must give, and if he saw any significance in it, it 
 would but be the final seal on the unspoken words between 
 them. She took in his whole face and figure for a moment 
 with a large grave glance, as something to which she said 
 good-bye the great height which made him remarkable, the 
 square shoulders and loose build, the thickness of his white 
 hair and the handsome, well-bred face beneath it. His lids 
 drooped a little and veiled the expression in his eyes, which 
 looked brown in this light, and she noticed carefully what a 
 well-shaped chin he had, square and strong. There was no 
 weakness in his face, and yet she knew him so unreliable, so 
 much the product of traditions and licence! Poor Gawain, 
 who was not worth a real sorrow, and for whom her feeling 
 was half pitying even now, and half a sad scorn. 
 
 " Light was Gawain in life and light in death ? " 
 
 She wondered whether Lexiter's death would be a real 
 tragedy to any woman to Chiffon, and others who were still 
 to come beneath his spell? Surely the many to whom he 
 was false in turn would easily console themselves, though they 
 would never find a more gracefully shallow lover ! 
 
 " I have a message from Chiffon for you in case you have 
 not seen her lately," she said quietly, and without pausing to 
 give him power to answer. " She wanted me to ask you not 
 to go to see her for a time, because it would make it very 
 difficult for her. You are sure to meet socially, of course, 
 but to avoid a breach you must be careful. Lord Har- 
 binger thinks he has cause to resent your presence in his 
 house." She did not look at him as she spoke, but she was 
 aware that he was standing very still. " Let us go up to the
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 341 
 
 drawing-room they must be having tea," she said with a 
 quiet finality in her tone, and turning from him as from a 
 book she had finished, or an incident that is closed, she went 
 out of the room and up the immemorial staircase where she 
 had pleaded with Mornington to let her come to Rye. The 
 memory of that day always haunted her whenever she set her 
 foot on the shallow stairs. 
 
 To her surprise and annoyance the drawing-room seemed 
 to be half full of people when she entered it with Lexiter 
 behind her. Those who had lunched had evidently stayed 
 on, and been augmented by other visitors, and the scene 
 between the white pillars of the room appeared to Patricia 
 very much what she had seen it when the Season was in full 
 swing and her mother was legitimately entertaining. The 
 bad taste of this assembly but a few weeks after Mornington's 
 death jarred upon her, and she wondered in the same instant 
 where all these people had come from. The Blais Herons 
 were chattering with Lady Vera, and Valerie, dressed after 
 the fashion of a " Maud Goodman " child, was running to 
 and fro among the other guests, talking as usual loudly and 
 intimately. Chiffon had evidently come to say good-bye 
 (they were leaving town on the morrow, Patricia knew) ; she 
 nodded from the window where she stood the instant her 
 friend appeared, and across the room Patricia could hear 
 Lord Harbinger saying something about " Rotten ! " She 
 glanced swiftly round her, and recognised that at least these 
 people had the excuse of kinship, for she saw no one who 
 could not claim a remote tie. Nevertheless, she liked it 
 none the more, and with hardly a salutation she crossed the 
 room and sat down near Chiffon by the window, her appear- 
 ance evidently carrying an atmosphere of chill and rebuke 
 with it, for the loud voices dropped a note lower, and one or 
 two guests fidgeted as if they would fain have been elsewhere. 
 It was impossible not to see Patricia as she crossed a room, 
 however unobtrusive she might desire to be, both on account 
 of her height and her carriage. She drew men's and women's 
 eyes and held them, whether willingly or no. 
 
 The talk rose again as soon as her immediate personality 
 passed them by, scraps of conversation filling Patricia with 
 the same weary wonder that had beset her so many times 
 when Mornington was present and she felt him the only other 
 soul in the room who was an alien.
 
 342 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 " We are going on to Ragby in a day or so. Thought we 
 must come and look up poor Vee and hear how things are 
 with her. Awful business altogether what ? " 
 
 "Oh, awful! Last thing anyone would have fancied him 
 doin' he was such a decent old boy ! " 
 
 "Very awkward about there being no will, too. Man 
 shouldn't do such a thing ought to remember what will 
 happen when he's gone." 
 
 " It might have been worse, as far as money goes. Vee 
 gets a third. Harbutt died last week and Carberry tells me 
 he didn't leave his wife a dollar." 
 
 " Well ! Would you have him leave it practically to Win- 
 dersley? She has been paying his card debts regularly for 
 years. Sir Richard knew what would happen what? " 
 
 "Poor Vee looks awfully cut up, anyhow." 
 
 Patricia glanced across the room, where, against one of 
 the white pillars, her mother's figure stood out sharply. The 
 black gown that closed her like a snake's skin made her cop- 
 pered hair reddish gold, and her face was a whitened grinning 
 mask to Patricia's eyes, for she was laughing. Even acros> 
 the room the metal of her voice in converse with Ernest Blais 
 Heron was a blatant thing. Her daughter's lip curled a little 
 at this mother's sympathisers who pronounced her " cut up." 
 But perhaps her loud-voiced complaints had reached their 
 deadened senses where finer feeling would have been lost 
 upon them. 
 
 Another voice nearer at hand took up the chatter. 
 
 " Are you going to Ragby ? I say, Minnie Heron was 
 asked, and they sent her a list of the men going and wanted 
 to know which she would have in her dressing-room ! " 
 
 " I believe they change round at Ragby. Last year Colonel 
 Carte was the popular man." 
 
 "Was that Ralph Carte or the brother?" 
 
 "No, Gaston. Ralph is a cousin son of old Randal, who 
 drank a bottle of port every day at Boodles' for ten years. 
 Then he took to sherry and it killed him in another five. 
 You wouldn't remember he was before your day." 
 
 " Odd, ain't it, how a well-known man is only somebody 
 to his generation what?" 
 
 The speaker might have added that women also left no 
 mark beyond their own day, yet for the space of the three score 
 years and ten during which they cumbered earth they were
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 343 
 
 more household words than any great name of public life to 
 their own world and a little beyond. It is not the famous 
 Dukes or the beautiful Duchesses who are the essential 
 familiars of their age in the Society in which they live ; these 
 stray perhaps into history, and are at least heard of by the 
 general public, but from the days of Colley Gibber until now 
 there is a strata of people so celebrated within their own 
 bounds that they are as much a part of education as the use 
 of the globes. What they were in Gibber's day one hardly 
 knows, but they existed ; and to-day they are the Mrs. " Jack " 
 Blais and Mrs. "Teddy" Lexiter cf the "Court Circular" 
 in the Morning Post. Their husband's nicknames clothe 
 them even in public, and they are the chic alternative for the 
 double surname. Save in very well-known families an extra 
 surname is the hall-mark of the Middle Classes, but the 
 simple vulgarity of Mrs. Bob or Lady Algy has become an 
 acknowledged distinction. If Patricia had taken the trouble 
 to distinguish the scions of the house of Blais round about 
 her, she would hardly have found one who was not of this 
 undercurrent of Society so distinguished in their little day 
 that to mention their names was to describe them, so unim- 
 portant to their age that, as one of them had said, their 
 characteristic vices hardly survived a generation. 
 
 Lexiter had been absorbed in the throng, and, hidden from 
 Patricia, was chatting familiarly with Lady D'Aulnoy as 
 though he had suffered no gall of defeat. At his age men do 
 not dress their wounds in public, but he did not follow the 
 woman who had practically refused him, across the room, as 
 he might have done at another time. After a few minutes, 
 however, another cousin of Patricia's the very Captain Blais 
 who had bored her at luncheon came up and offered to 
 bring her some tea. He was in the Household troops, be- 
 cause he could not have lived on his means even in a Line 
 regiment, and the position was looked upon as a good specu- 
 lation by his family, who expected him to marry money on 
 the strength of it. He was chiefly remarkable for a good 
 figure and no chin, and Patricia accepted the tea for the 
 express purpose of sending him to fetch it and so getting rid 
 of him. Unluckily, his offer, made in a loud voice, drew 
 several people's attention, and to her regret Patricia found her 
 quiet seat suddenly besieged. 
 
 " How silent you are, Nougat ! I did not even know that
 
 344 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 you were there. What a lot of people, aren't there? I did 
 not expect to meet anyone else." 
 
 " Perhaps they all came under the same delusion ! " 
 
 " Oh ! 7 really came to see how poor Vee was getting 
 through it. And you, too. I am sure you are worried to 
 death." 
 
 " I am not of a worrying disposition, thanks." 
 
 " What a blessing for you ! But it's enough to give any 
 body nerves, this bother about the will, I mean." 
 
 Patricia did not answer, but her discouraging silence 
 appeared lost upon the people thronging about her. Little 
 Valerie, darting across the room, flung herself against 
 Patricia's knees in a boisterous welcome, and spoke in her 
 peculiarly clear and self-assertive treble, even the strong white 
 hand that put her gently aside not checking her effusion for 
 a moment, though Patricia of all her noisy world generally 
 had a quieting influence upon the overwrought, precocious 
 little girl. 
 
 " Sceptre ! I'm going to call you Sceptre instead of Nougat 
 I like it better than Nougat ! " she exclaimed. " It's what 
 the men call you Lord Windersley told me. Sceptre the 
 horse is worth thousands of pounds, isn't she but this dear 
 darling Sceptre is worth much more ! " 
 
 The child had thrust her arm round Patricia's waist, and 
 though her caresses were as unwelcome as her words, for the 
 moment only roughness could have thrown her off. Patricia 
 looked down into the dark excited eyes, and at the little lips 
 that were trained so woefully to smile, with grave displeasure. 
 Valerie, half frightened, laid her red curls coaxingly against 
 the girl's arm. 
 
 "You are the greatest heiress in London, aren't you, 
 Sceptre? What will you buy now you are so rich? Aunty 
 Vee told mamma that you would have two millions you 
 are a lucky girl ! Don't I wish I were you rather ! " 
 
 It was probably the opinion of every single person in the 
 room, voiced by the child's bold statement. But no one else 
 could have put it plainly into words. 
 
 " Hush, Val ! " said the lady who had been speaking to 
 Patricia. ^ " But it doesn't really matter," she added easily. 
 "The child was bound to hear it discussed isn't she quick, 
 the little monkey? there being no will was such a nine-days' 
 wonder. What a fortunate thing that the money is all right.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 345 
 
 Nougat and no legacies to cut into it ! I tell Vee she ought 
 to be thankful for that. I had a long talk with her yester- 
 day, so it's no breach of confidence to speak of it still you 
 know you mustn't talk of these things, Val. We don't want 
 them chattered about." 
 
 The child looked up shrewdly. Patrica's hand on her 
 shoulder, half holding her away, half retaining her in her 
 caressing attitude, had tightened as if unconsciously, and 
 Patricia's eyes had gone over her head to the face of the lady 
 who had spoken. 
 
 " My mother talked to you about it ? What did she say ? " 
 she demanded, not hurriedly, but with a certain imperative 
 determination. There was no one but Valerie to hear besides 
 the lady, who had spoken in a tone of confidence. 
 
 " Oh, she just gave me an outline, you know. How she 
 takes one-third, and you two. It is something to be the 
 greatest heiress in London, Nougat, as Val so< naively says! " 
 
 " Don't you like being rich, Sceptre ? " coaxed Valerie, her 
 quick sense still feeling the ominous tightening of that grasp 
 upon her. " I only wish I had two millions in my own 
 right ! " 
 
 " You talked to my mother did she tell you that ? Did 
 she say so lately ? " asked Patricia, her tone crystallising into 
 a hardness that made it almost like Lady Vera's. She still 
 spoke over the child's head to the woman who had addressed 
 her, but now one or two other people were within idle hearing. 
 
 " That you inherit two millions ? Yes, she told be so yester- 
 day. Surely you know that yourself ? " 
 
 " My mother told you yesterday that I should inherit it ? 
 That I was the heiress to Mr. Mornington's money?" 
 
 The little crowd about her seemed suddenly stricken into 
 a puzzled silence. They drew nearer, and some even turned 
 from other groups and looked at her as if the subtle disturb- 
 ance of the atmosphere reached them. Patrica released 
 herself from Valerie, rose up from her seat, and looked 
 straight at the lady who had practically congratulated her. 
 
 "You learned this from my mother herself?" 
 
 Her informant faltered, as if the girl's face confused or 
 frightened her. She said afterwards that it was like facing 
 an angry man. The masculine side of Patricia that had 
 gained her Valerie's repeated name of " Sceptre " " the 
 male mare " had never been more to the fore than now.
 
 346 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 There was no feminine softness in her, nothing but a rising, 
 raging purpose. 
 
 " My dear, I hope I have said nothing indiscreet ! It was 
 that tiresome little Val who began it," she said, meanly throw- 
 ing the blame on to the child, who stood, really frightened 
 now, at Patricia's side. " It was Vee, herself, who told me 
 most of what I know as to the amount of the money, I 
 think I heard that from Constance Varley." 
 
 " Lady Varley, too ! Where is she ? " 
 
 The darkening brown eyes swept space for the lady in 
 question, and found her, the central figure of the room, talk- 
 ing to Lord Harbinger and Editha Blais Heron. It was not 
 difficult to see Lady Varley, for her proportions were only 
 second to those of the Duchess of London. She was, in 
 fact, the identical lady of whom the Duke had remarked to 
 Patricia at their first meeting, that she was a "cottage." 
 Patricia turned swiftly to the Blais parasite to whom she had 
 been speaking, and drew her with her as if by the force o f 
 her gaze. 
 
 " I am going to speak to Lady Varley. Will you please 
 come with me I want you to hear also." 
 
 She led the way through the familiar pillars to the spot 
 where Lady Varley was chatting to those around her, and as 
 she went people closed in and followed her, as if conscious of 
 a crisis. The talk died down again, until the hush was 
 plainly broken by Lady Vera's laugh, but no other sound 
 supported it. Then Patricia had reached her goal, and 
 stopped, looking down on Lady Varley than whom she was 
 very much taller. 
 
 "Lady Varley," she said, in those hardened tones of her 
 voice that it was not possible to mistake. "I find that you 
 are under the impression that I am inheriting Mr. Morning- 
 ton's money. I thought that my mother would have ex- 
 plained to you that this is not so could not be so, under the 
 circumstances. As she has not done so, apparently, I should 
 like to take this opportunity before you all to announce that 
 I cannot claim one penny of that fortune. I have my god- 
 mother's money, left to me by name. Mr. Mornington did 
 not leave anything to me, and I cannot touch what he left 
 unbequeathed, nor shall I ever be able to do so." 
 
 Through the bewilderment on Lady Varley's face she was 
 conscious of others pressing nearer, of the eagerness and
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 347 
 
 excitement to hear what she was saying, of everyone closing 
 in on her ; and across them all of her mother's face. .... 
 
 " But, my dear Nougat, you inherit exactly as your mother 
 does," said Lady Varley sharply, in her startled discomfort 
 " When a man dies intestate his money goes to his wife and 
 children in this case you take two-thirds as the only 
 daughter." 
 
 " I am not Mr. Mornington's daughter," said the cruel, 
 deliberate voice, without faltering. " Most of you probably 
 every one of you know that, or have heard a rumour of it 
 I only knew it a few weeks ago. I told my mother then that 
 morally and legally I could not inherit the money of the man 
 she had married, and I left her to explain the situation as she 
 thought best. It seems that she has not done so. I want 
 you all to understand that Mr. Mornington, in declining to 
 acknowledge me, declined tacitly to lie about my birth, and 
 that I consider myself under the same obligation not tc 
 continue the plausible deception under which I have lived 
 hitherto." 
 
 There came a short, hard, bitter cry, breaking the sinister 
 drift of the girl's slow speech " Nougat ! " Lady Vera's 
 voice was a fury of entreaty and passion and protest. There 
 was a murmur round the central group Patricia herself and 
 Lady Varley, flanked by Bobby Harbinger and Editha Blais 
 Heron " Disgraceful ! " " She must be out of her mind ! ''' 
 " Her own father and mother ! " Before she could answer the 
 exclamations Lady Varley was speaking gravely. 
 
 " Nougat, this is a very terrible thing that you are saying 
 You cannot have thought that you are accusing your mother " 
 
 For the first time Patricia turned on her with a spark of 
 resentment in the horrible stillness of her white face. " You 
 are mistaken," she said coldly. "I have fully calculated the 
 fact that I am attacking my mother, and known what people 
 would say of it. It is just because sentiment stands between 
 women and justice that they dare to be false to their marriage 
 vows. For a sentiment the sentiment of a name men will 
 not go into the Divorce Court or separate from their wives. 
 For a sentiment the children who know themselves illegiti- 
 mate will not acknowledge it, not only for self-interest, but 
 because the woman who ought to pay is their mother. And 
 so this thing becomes daily more possible, and though there 
 is a certain risk, an unscrupulous woman can calculate on the
 
 348 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 two most honoured ties that she dishonours, to screen her 
 she is wife and mother. It is a proof of the moral code of 
 this social world that you all think I am mad because I am 
 honest. I will not take one penny of the money which I 
 cannot inherit as Mr. Mornington's daughter, and if there is 
 an attempt to force me, I will seek for proof of what I say 
 the legal proof that will stand in a court of law and make 
 this statement to a wider public than I have done to-day." 
 
 There was the silence of the absolutely unprecedented. 
 No tradition existed for such a case as this, and even protest 
 seemed to have been stricken mute. Then there was the 
 diversion of action, for Caryl Lexiter suddenly swung forward 
 out of the background where he stood, and seized Vera Morn- 
 ington by the arms. He had seen her gather her forces 
 together and turn blindly towards the spot where her daughter 
 stood, with an impulse of the old undisciplined race from 
 which she sprung. He had no fear for Patricia who could 
 fear for that terrible relentless face and splendid physique? 
 but for her own sake he caught the poor maddened woman 
 back and held her, raving and swearing with unconscious 
 passion, until, with a choking movement, she tried to get her 
 hand to her throat, reeled heavily and slipped through his 
 arms to the floor. 
 
 It was an ugly scene. The men laid her down there, be 
 tween the great white pillars, and one of the women Lady 
 D'Aulnoy, angel of mercy loosened her gown, and ruthlessly 
 cut the tight clothes beneath. The group round Patricia 
 looked at her with a kind of horror and fear, but no one 
 spoke to her again. She turned from them as if already they 
 had passed out of her life, and walked quietly through the 
 shrinking, whispering crowd, past the prostrate figure on the 
 ground a long black body with a gash of white linen at the 
 breast, and false reddened hair above the ghastly face and 
 so out of the room. No one followed her. She had been 
 conscious of Chiffon's frightened face, as if she saw it for the 
 last time, but of hardly anyone else, and she felt that as they 
 passed from her actual sight all these people passed also out 
 of her existence. She had outraged the tenets of a Society 
 of which she seemed, even to herself, an abortion a monster 
 created by traditional vice, which had grown up to curse the 
 perpetrators. Several of the women present, remembering 
 Patricia's eyes during her denunciation, shuddered a little.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 349 
 
 It was impossible that a daughter could denounce and 
 betray her mother ; it made the whole sorry scheme of things 
 unstable. But what was this to which they had been listen- 
 ing? And if one could do such things in the green leaf, 
 what should be done in the dry !
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " Look up 
 
 Into God's gracious canopy of leaves 
 
 Thrilled through with golden touches of the sun ! 
 
 This is a fairer tent spread over us 
 
 Than cloth o ! gold and rich embroidery, 
 
 ****** 
 
 A Court is but a poor burlesque of Heaven 
 Angels, not we, have right to cloth o' gold. 
 Let us be Man and Woman on this Earth ' 
 
 King Cophetua. 
 
 GERALD VAUGHAN came out of Ashingham quickly, with alert 
 hard eyes that were already bent on the horizon. He was 
 down from business early, after a week's rush that made his 
 nerves raw, and " damn " the easiest and most natural word 
 in his vocabulary. It was wise, he knew, to take a holiday 
 and to get out into the fresh air, and his flying steps were set 
 towards the bicycle shed. But autumn was doing her work 
 in the garden at Ashingham, the nasturtiums that July had 
 brought to their glory were being thinned and ruined by 
 October, and lay in a draggled tangle across his path how- 
 ever badly he wanted to get to the bicycle shed his evil genius 
 forced him to stoop and clear away the ragged flowers before 
 he passed on, and then, as he raised himself, a look of some- 
 thing like regret flashed into the cold quick eyes as they 
 rested on the familiar scene before him. Vaughan took root 
 in the soil as tenaciously as his favourite plants, and man 
 cannot dig and sow and labour earnestly with the Mother 
 Earth from which he came without growing to love that patch 
 of it which takes and rewards his labour. For eight years
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 351 
 
 now Vaughan had found health and exercise and consolation 
 for his thwarted instincts in the garden at Ashingham, and he 
 could hardly realise that he should see it no more. 
 
 For he was going away, as he told Fate Leroy that he 
 thought he ought to do and much disliked doing. The 
 " beastly excellent offer " in New Zealand was too strong a 
 stroke of destiny to be resisted, and he had accepted, and 
 settled it. Things had run smoothly for Vaughan's arrange- 
 ments, and he had felt absolute surprise at the ease with which 
 he was uprooting himself. Truth to tell, he fretted a little 
 secretly, and would rather have been delayed, though not 
 finally prevented. " I am too old a man to enjoy the shifting 
 of old landmarks," he said. " I do not know that I like 
 England, but it is an unknown chance that I like New Zealand 
 and at least I am sure of something to grumble at in the 
 place which I know ! " His own humour laughed at himself, 
 but he felt the wrench of the uprooting none the less. Even 
 his sister seemed to make things too easy, to his injured mind. 
 She regretted her home and friends in the prosaic conven- 
 tional manner that was quite correct and exactly what might 
 have been expected of a right-feeling woman ; but there was 
 a latent enjoyment of expectation underlying her regrets, and 
 a sense of movement already impregnating her, as a traveller. 
 
 " We shall both be at sea at the same time ! " was one of 
 her satisfied remarks to Vaughan, and she found something 
 novel and worth mentioning in this. 
 
 " I am not a particularly good sailor and you are a 
 wretched one ! " he reminded her brutally. " It is not a 
 matter of congratulation, anyhow." 
 
 " It seems to me so strange ! " said Bertha for the 
 hundredth time. 
 
 Vaughan grunted. Its lack of strangeness was the point 
 that irritated him most, for things slid easily into the new 
 groove, and already, not too far ahead of him, he saw the 
 locked trunks and the packing cases, and Ashingham with 
 that air of tenantless quiet which is like a dumb reproach. 
 He had spent much time fussing and adjusting his surround- 
 ings, until they were dear to his fastidious sense ; even the 
 Caudle Cup on the mantelpiece of the smoking-room had 
 been a detail of his scheme for background until it was 
 broken and he was secretly afraid that the next tenants 
 would paint the walls the wrong tone even if they had the
 
 352 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 sense to distemper them, and might have an unchecked taste 
 for blue bows. 
 
 "Well, it's no use worrying," he said grimly, kicking the 
 last nasturtium into the border; and then he saw the post- 
 man come in at his own gate with letters in his hand, and 
 went on to meet his destiny. There were three for Bertha, 
 whose correspondence, being totally trivial, was of course 
 voluminous, and one for himself, and that one was from Fate 
 Leroy. The postman went on with Miss Vaughan's letters 
 to the house, but Vaughan took his own. 
 
 He stood still amongst the ruined nasturtiums and the 
 autumn asters, already crisped with October frosts, and 
 opened the letter in Fate's familiar, illegible handwriting. 
 It was more than usually so, for she had written in a real 
 hurry, and had not paused for her usual dainty thought or 
 any subtleties of expression. Enclosed was a portion of an- 
 other letter in handwriting that Vaughan did not know. It 
 struck him afterwards that he had known it so little that it 
 had represented nothing to his mind but the half sheet of a 
 stranger's letter, with no quickened interest on his part to 
 make it an important thing. 
 
 " I want you to go over to Sunnington as soon after you get 
 this as possible, and to see that everything is in order," wrote 
 Fate. " The servants are already there, because we shall be 
 back in a few weeks and I wanted the house put straight. 
 But I am putting it at the disposal of Patricia Mornington, 
 whom you will see from the enclosed must most certainly go 
 there for the time being. I have no time to comment on her 
 story I think perhaps that she has done a very terrible 
 thing, and yet one's sympathies are with her to a great extent, 
 and one cannot judge of a state of mind to which late events 
 have driven her. Anyhow, Eldred and I are agreed that our 
 house is open to her, and we are asking you to be our deputy 
 to see that she is properly welcomed. How strangely things 
 turn out, do they not? Patricia, herself, has knocked down 
 at one blow that great wall of hard bright gold which you 
 fancied solid between you. I leave the result to you it is 
 too weighty a matter for even the finger of a friend to touch. 
 But I, being a woman, am regretful at my own forbearance, 
 for I should dearly like to help two people of whom I am so 
 fond though perhaps in different ways. This, at least, I may 
 say, that I think you are almost good enough for her and she
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 353 
 
 for you, and were either of you different I should be jealous 
 for the other. At least go over to give Patricia what help 
 you can. She has lived a lifetime in the last few weeks. 
 
 " F. L." 
 
 In the corner of the last sheet was scribbled a postscript : 
 
 " I told the cook to bring Phlumpie back from Battersea 
 would you see whether she has done so?" 
 
 Vaughan opened the enclosed sheet the letter he had 
 thought a stranger's with a new consciousness in his nervous 
 fingers. He did not know the handwriting, but he seemed to 
 know the expressions and the character that shone through 
 the mere words. It was only a portion of the explanation 
 that Patricia had written to Fate when she asked for a refuge 
 at Sunnington, but it told Vaughan the gist of the matter. 
 There was no visible alteration in him when he folded both 
 letters carefully and put them into his pocket, but he felt a 
 little upset and giddy, as if the clouds had suddenly reversed 
 themselves and come near enough for him to walk upon them 
 instead of the solid earth. He continued his interrupted 
 progress to the bicycle shed, got out his machine, and wheeled 
 it out of the gate, all quietly enough. The next moment he 
 was flying swiftly and steadily along the well-known way to 
 Sunnington at sixteen miles an hour. 
 
 He did not know what he should find there, or exactly 
 what he was going to do. Our most serious decisions are 
 rarely the result of deliberate intention. As the Leroys' re- 
 presentative, Vaughan could go to their house and meet 
 Patricia, without committing himself further even in his own 
 mind. So much depended on her that it seemed to him his 
 own will was in abeyance. Their acquaintance looked to his 
 mental vision at one moment horribly inadequate to the mere 
 conception of something nearer, even in his own mind at 
 the next it seemed so full of significance during those last 
 weeks of Eldred's illness that formalities were superfluous. 
 It depended on the way in which she chose to regard it. 
 
 At the historical gate where they had said good-bye, he 
 dismounted and wheeled his bicycle up the gravel path, con- 
 scious for the first time that he had ridden fast and was hot. 
 He pushed his cap back and wiped his forehead before he 
 rang the bell, wondering fretfully if he looked like a vulgar 
 " scorcher " or a summer tourist. The door was opened by 
 
 23
 
 354 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 Fate's own parlourmaid, who smiled a welcome under her 
 snowy frills, and the aspect of the little house was again the 
 one that Vaughan so bitterly appreciated. He had passed 
 it several times while his friends were away, and disliked the 
 blank windows and the quiet, closed air of the place. Now 
 there was a glimpse of silver on the sideboard through the 
 open dining-room door, of fresh curtains at the windows, and 
 of a small fire of course, for the days were really frosty, and 
 this was Patricia's first English winter. 
 
 " Is Miss Mornington here?" he said. " I am glad things 
 are all in order again, Reynolds." 
 
 " Yes, sir, Miss Mornington came yesterday. Shall I tell 
 her you are here?" 
 
 " Is she upstairs ? Does she not want to see visitors ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, sir. She is in the drawing-room. I was just going 
 to take in her tea. She gave me no orders about anyone who 
 called." 
 
 It did not occur to Vaughan that, secure in her loneliness, 
 Patricia had taken no precautions about her neighbours. 
 Not until the drawing-room door was open and Reynolds had 
 said, " Mr. Vaughan, miss ! " did the movement of the woman 
 standing in the window suggest to him that she would fain 
 have taken flight if it had not been too late. Patricia had 
 been looking out over the ferns to the little winding path 
 through the shrubbery, and the glimpse of the grass which 
 was thickly strewn with leaves, but as she turned he saw her 
 face. 
 
 Somehow he had not expected her to be changed. He had 
 still fancied the beautiful grave Princess who had looked at 
 him over the hard bright wall of gold with contemplative 
 eyes. But at sight of the Patricia who stood gazing at him 
 across the room, he forgot his old fancy and knew nothing 
 but that he saw a woman who had gone through the acme of 
 suffering. It was not that the outlines of the face were less 
 rounded, or the bright brown hair grown grey, or the large 
 eyes less softly bright. She was very pale, it is true, but it 
 was not that that had changed her, either. He felt as if no 
 tenderness or consideration could quite atone to her for having 
 fought some terrible battle with no man near to assist her, 
 and all his manhood rose to the unconscious demand her 
 altered look made upon it. 
 
 " Mrs. Leroy wrote to me," he said, crossing the room and
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 355 
 
 looking down on the coils of her chestnut hair. " Would you 
 rather that I went away ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Leroy told you about me ? " she questioned in a 
 quiet level tone and without looking up. 
 
 "All that it was necessary to tell." 
 
 " Oh ! I do not mind ! " said Patricia a little wearily. 
 " When you have lost your name and your place in the world, 
 the mere fact of people knowing it seems a minor detail." 
 
 " You have not really lost either," he said emphatically 
 the little croak in his voice brought back the Land of Beulah 
 and her sojourn there. She felt as if a century lay between 
 that time and this day, when he met her discrowned and a 
 pariah from her kind. " The man who flung the cloak of his 
 name over you as a little helpless child would not intentionally 
 have stripped you of it now. And as to your place in the 
 world, that is as, and where, you choose to make it," he said. 
 
 But she turned her face from him despondently. " I dare- 
 say," she replied. " Only I do not seem to have an inch of 
 fight left in me. I don't doubt that I shall get my grip on 
 life again some day. I am so full of vitality that human 
 nature will force me back into taking an interest even in my- 
 self, I know. At present I am too tired." 
 
 His voice softened dangerously, though his eyes were more 
 under control. " I am glad, at least, that you have come back 
 to us, to let us rest you," he said. " Do you know that I had 
 almost made up my mind that I should never see you again ? " 
 
 She looked up, startled already out of her stupor of in- 
 difference. He was standing very close to her, not three 
 inches between their respective shoulders, and as if a little 
 overcome with his personality she moved a trifle away from 
 him as she asked why. 
 
 "Because my life is altering also," he said, with a little 
 glint in his eyes that told that he recognised her embarrass- 
 ment and was not altogether displeased by it. " Come and 
 sit down, and have tea with me, and I will tell you all about 
 it. I have not had anyone sympathetic to talk to since " he 
 checked himself, some thought of Fate floating up across his 
 mind as this other woman sat down at her tea-table and began 
 to pour out his tea for him. With all loyalty to the present, 
 he did not want to linger on the indefinite past, which, per- 
 haps, had been the more alluring for its very incompleteness. 
 
 " It is odd how you and I have been suddenly wrenched 
 
 23*
 
 356 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 out of our grooves," he said. " We both thought we should 
 go on in the inevitable sequence of our lives, didn't we ? in- 
 deed, as far as one can see the future, ours seemed to be 
 plain to our eyes. And now here we are, both in totally new 
 circumstances, cut off from old associations and the destiny 
 of which we were so sure." 
 
 " You also ? What has happened to you ? " 
 
 " I have had a very excellent offer from a firm of electrical 
 engineers, in New Zealand of all places in the world, and I 
 am not justified in refusing it My sister wants to travel with 
 a long-suffering friend, so there is not even the home-tie to 
 keep me, and I am growing old and must think of making 
 a competence for my latter end. You see that Providence 
 has determined that my feeble struggles to remain in England 
 shall have no excuse. So I am rather surprised to find my- 
 self going out to begin life afresh." 
 
 "Soon?" 
 
 " At the New Year," 
 
 " Ah ! " she said, and seemed for the minute to fall into a 
 deep study of the carpet. " I congratulate you most heartily," 
 she said at last in an inscrutable tone. " I think I can imagine 
 nothing more desirable just now than to begin a New Year 
 by leaving all the old life behind me and starting fresh in a 
 fresh country." 
 
 " Unfortunately, some old associations have a painful way 
 of having been pleasant," he said with his wry smile. " As 
 an instance, I found my friendship with you this summer 
 extremely desirable then I lost sight of you, and just as I 
 see a chance of renewing it, Fortune turns me out of the road 
 that leads the way of my desire. I can hardly take your 
 friendship with me to New Zealand, can I ? Can I ? " he 
 added with sudden insistence. 
 
 " Why not ? " she asked calmly, but she was looking with 
 keen interest into the teapot as she spoke, as though her whole 
 soul were bound up in the exact quantity of water to add to 
 the over-brewed tea. 
 
 " It is some ten thousand miles away ! " 
 
 " There are always letters ! " 
 
 " Would you write to me ? Even letters are very unsatis- 
 factory," he said discontentedly. "When you miss the in- 
 tonation of a voice, and want to watch for an expression, the 
 mere black and white scrawl seems so inadequate."
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 357 
 
 " Really, Mr. Vaughan, 1 do not scrawl ! I write quite 
 nicely." 
 
 " I never said you did not, but I deny that you can write as 
 nicely as you look and speak ! I am a person who craves for 
 the actual presence." 
 
 There was a startled silence, while Patricia hoped wildly 
 that though her heart beat so loudly in her own ears no hint 
 of such a thing was patent to him. He had not made his 
 last speech with intention; it was one of those sentences 
 which strike us dumb with truth and are so naked of pretence 
 that we feel ashamed. He would indeed crave for her actual 
 presence he had done so already ; but even to guess at such 
 a thing made her feel breathless. He seemed a stranger sud- 
 denly, this broad-shouldered man with the lean face and a 
 haunting voice that she had so relentlessly remembered. 
 What right had a stranger to demand her actual presence 
 near him? 
 
 And then, to Patricia's dismay, she felt that she was going 
 to blush. She knew, with despair, that his eyes were fixed 
 on her face, and yet the blood was rising slowly and inevit- 
 ably over the betraying pallor of her skin. "I can't and I 
 won't ! " she said to herself, but she did in spite of will-power 
 and training, the burning acknowledgment of Masculine and 
 Feminine rushing up to her forehead like a danger-signal, 
 and triumphing over the pretence of civilisation. For a man 
 and woman sitting on either side of a tea-table, without legal 
 ties, are tacitly robbed of sex, and the tell-tale blood sug- 
 gested bodies beneath the decency of clothes. Eve ex- 
 perienced the first blush as she sewed her fig leaves, and read 
 a more intimate knowledge of herself in Adam's eyes even 
 when she had put them on. Patricia had every right to eat 
 buns and bread and butter in company with Vaughan; but 
 she had no right to blush. 
 
 For a minute his eyes gloated rather cruelly on the proof 
 of his power over her, then, being a gentleman, he turned 
 away and appeared not to have seen. 
 
 " By the way, did the cook fetch Phlumpie ? " he asked in 
 his usual tone. "Fate told me I was to be sure to ask. But 
 I utterly decline to take a basket to Battersea and bring him 
 back, even if she did not ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, it is all right he was here when I arrived. I 
 must give him his milk," said Patricia with obvious relief,
 
 358 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 and seizing the excuse she walked away from him to the open 
 door to recover herself. He heard her voice gently calling 
 the cat, and smiled a little to himself. 
 
 " Not to-day," he said. " I can afford to wait a little. 
 Next week, I think." 
 
 The appearance of Phlumpie was like a third person in the 
 room, and seemed to reassure Patricia. She took him on 
 her knee, regardless of hairs, and gave him his milk, the 
 emphasis of his gratitude making even his purr less colourless 
 than usual. (Fate said that he had a white purr and a white 
 mew, to match his snowy fur.) He blinked at Vaughan with 
 his pale green eyes, put his paws round Patricia's waist, and 
 went to sleep. Vaughan smiled as one who could afford it ; 
 he did not object to Phlumpie as a chaperon, and the Leroys 
 were not returning for another fortnight at least. 
 
 He did not hesitate from any fear of convention to ride 
 over to Sunnington every day. Life was too important at 
 this stage of it to be trifled with, and he wanted to wear the 
 newness off his reacquaintance with Patricia before he startled 
 her by the suggestion that they should spend their lives to- 
 gether. He even decided on the day and hour on which he 
 should ask her to marry him, and then, as happens in nine 
 cases out of ten. he never actually proposed to her at all. 
 Very few men say baldly to the woman they love, " Will you 
 marry me ? " It is a necessary business question where no 
 love exists, but the man and woman who have reached the 
 point of hoping for such a development, from tenderer reasons, 
 find such expressions superfluous and horribly inadequate. 
 What happened in Vaughan's case was that he came in un- 
 announced at his usual hour, the afternoon before he meant 
 to speak, and found Patricia with a watering-pot in her hands, 
 watering the ferns in the window. She put down the watering- 
 pot to give him her hand, and even made a trivial remark to 
 the effect that the servants neglected the plants ; and sud- 
 denly, even while their eyes met, he had laid his arm across 
 her shoulders and stooped his face to hers, and was the first 
 man though he did not know it who had kissed her on 
 the mouth since she was a child. And by the time that the 
 breathless lips had parted, words seemed a little superfluous. 
 
 " Don't ! " Patricia said at last, pushing him away gently. 
 
 " You have yet to learn that I am a very material person ! " 
 Vaughan admitted, moving as little as possible.
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 359 
 
 " I would not have believed it of you! " 
 
 " If you think a further demonstration would make it any 
 easier of comprehension 
 
 " Oh, no, thank you ! " she said laughing. " And please 
 take your arm away I am so afraid of one of the servants 
 coming in suddenly ! " 
 
 " What on earth does it matter if they do ? " he demanded 
 with the argumentative tone developing in his voice. 
 
 "I have a mild objection to looking foolish. And besides, 
 I feel a little in the wrong, staying as I am on sufferance in 
 someone else's house." 
 
 " Well, of course, if that is your feeling, the only thing left 
 me to do is to take a house at once for the special purpose 
 of making love to you in it ! But as we cannot well be 
 married for the next forty-eight hours, even with all expedi- 
 tion Did you start?" 
 
 " I had not thought of it of you quite so definitely ! " 
 
 " I am going to New Zealand in a few months, Patricia ! 
 Would you rather I went alone, to spy out the land ? " 
 
 She had turned her face from him with a mute protest 
 against his insistent lips, and he could see nothing but the 
 curve of one smooth cheek, the setting of her little flat ear, 
 and the wave of her chestnut hair above it where it was swept 
 up into the coil. But he knew exactly the depth of gravity in 
 her eyes, and he confessed to himself that he could not judge 
 of her decision. 
 
 It came by her turning to him suddenly, with a passion 
 and grief that made him realise in what deep waters she had 
 lately struggled, for it was as the wrack of the storm. 
 
 " No, you shall not go alone," she answered. " Take me 
 with you, out of the Old World and its traditional sins, to a 
 new one where I can at least keep the illusion that marriage 
 is not a farce, and that men and women know how to keep 
 faith. At present the Colonies do not include vice in a 
 woman's education, do they ? " 
 
 He did not answer the embittered question, passing it by 
 with a man's broader tolerance, as the result of a momentary 
 jar and shock such as few women have to bear. Instead of 
 answering, he kissed the hurt brown eyes and the sad lips, 
 and Patricia was comforted. 
 
 " I have very little to bring you, Gerald," she whispered. 
 " I have no fortune and no name, and I have done a thing
 
 3 6o AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 that almost all the world would condemn, in daring to 
 denounce my mother." 
 
 " I am not going to argue that point with you, because it 
 is done," he said. " Whether you were quite right, or wise, 
 it is useless to decide now, isn't it? But you may feel sure, 
 at least, that my sympathies are entirely with you in your 
 essential aim, whatever method you used to gain it. And I 
 give you all honour and respect, and, before all things, love. 
 Come with me and begin the new life in the New Year. 
 Some day I will bring you back to England, and it shall not 
 look the same to you, as in the world you have known which 
 is but a small section even of society, after all. You will find 
 that there is a great majority, which we call the Middle Class, 
 and which will show you all sides of life you may find just 
 as much vice and folly amongst it as you have amongst the 
 minority; but on the whole the good predominates, and we, 
 being healthy of mind and body, will not willingly know of the 
 bad. Life is exactly what one makes it, though the making 
 may be an effort of violence. Let us live and love rationally, 
 my darling, and the curse promised to the third and fourth 
 generation will pass us by." 
 
 " Amen ! " she answered.
 
 361 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 "Inifashionable London 
 
 This May or next year's May, 
 They go the tinsel round of life 
 
 The same old weary way. 
 The hothouse blooms of womenkind 
 
 Rose-red or passion-pale, 
 The men whose future lies behind, 
 They all are straws upon the wind 
 
 But when shall London fail ? " 
 
 The Burden of London. 
 
 ON a certain sunny day at the beginning of the Season, the 
 Honourable Caryl Lexiter was strolling up Piccadilly. He 
 walked slowly, partly because he had recently had a twinge 
 of the gout, which was as much an inheritance to Queens- 
 leigh as in Lord Lowndes' family, and partly because he was 
 by instinct an idler. As he passed the Cavalry Club a mem- 
 ber ran down the steps, and, catching sight of the remarkable 
 figure, and the grey head, he quickened his stride and came 
 abreast with it. They walked as far as Bond Street, chatting. 
 
 " Saw Harbinger last night," said the soldier, " and told 
 him not to put his money on Golightly. The colt shapes 
 well, but he won't be safe business until next year can't stay 
 the Epsom course. Bobby looks awfully glum ! " 
 
 " I was there yesterday," said Lexiter carelessly, after an 
 imperceptible thought. " Bobby finds life ' rotten ' just now 
 It will be ' rippin' ' again when there are birds to slay," 
 
 The soldier laughed. " Heard about Blais Heron ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " Yes, poor devil ! What a holy smash ! " 
 
 " That was Africa it has smashed a lot of fellows since 
 the depression. But things look better than they might. 
 He isn't to be bankrupt somebody Lord Ragby found is
 
 362 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 
 
 putting him into the new motor firm as agent. They say he 
 goes out to dinner now with a prospectus up his sleeve." 
 
 " Poor devil ! " said Lexiter again. He knew more of such 
 gentlemanly shifts than the Cavalry man. 
 
 "A hell of a life, I should think what? " said the soldier. 
 " I'm goin' up Bond Street come ? " 
 
 "No, thanks! I know whither you are bound. I can't 
 choose ladies' hats ! " 
 
 The younger man coloured through a healthy tan, and 
 turned up by Stewart's. " Ta-ta, then," he said. 
 
 Caryl crossed and looked into Scot's, wondering whether 
 the shape of the caps of that year would suit him. He had 
 had no occasion to buy one yet, but if he went down to the sea 
 for a week-end the East Coast is windy. Then he strolled 
 back to Soloman's and looked in there, and a girl pinned 
 violets into his coat with recognition she had done the same 
 thing two days since, and had told him, in answer to his 
 sympathetic question, that she grew very tired with the stand- 
 ing, and would be off duty at six. He did not, however, see 
 what he had half hoped to see (he had gone into the shop on 
 the off chance) the familiar little face of a lady buying 
 flowers. It was tiresome, because Bobby was evidently sulk- 
 ing after last night, and a word outside the house would have 
 been useful. 
 
 The crowd was thick in Piccadilly as he turned once more 
 and made his way towards the Circus, but for one face and 
 figure known to Caryl Lexiter thirty passed him which be- 
 longed to an alien, outside world men and women busy with 
 their own lives, who bestowed no more than a passing wonder 
 on him. He wore his clothes so like a gentleman, and his 
 face was still so insouciant and handsome that it was probable 
 he would never lack for admiration. And as far as a mere 
 result of breeding goes the careful breeding and training of 
 the Third and Fourth Generation the racehorse and Gary] 
 Lexiter both win and deserve admiration. 
 
 Still handsome, still loved and longed for by women, with 
 the appetite for life fresh on his palate, if there were a sting 
 in Caryl Lexiter's usual, leisurely life that Spring morning, 
 it lay in the fact that Vera Mornington was back from her 
 conventional seclusion at Alassio, and that their names had 
 been already coupled together. But Vera, with her three 
 millions, of which she had taken undisputed possession,
 
 AS YE HAVE SOWN. 363 
 
 knew herself a matrimonial prize-and looked for younger men 
 to offer her an equivalent for her wealth. Lexiter might once 
 have had it for the asking; but that was ten years ago. He 
 wanted the money, and he did not want Vera, but he would 
 not have either now. 
 
 After all, it would have been a hard condition, too, to marry 
 Vera Mornington, he told himself, lifting his high head in 
 the bright sunshine with the ease of freedom and the content 
 of a huge, sleek animal. To take the red-haired woman's 
 temper, her powder and paint, and the distasteful rechauffi 
 of a past passion, was a heavy tax upon the three millions. 
 She had not even the advantage of a dubious novelty to him, 
 any more than to other men of whom he knew. He thought 
 languidly of married life with her, as a duty that all the arts 
 and crafts of her bedchamber could not quicken into anticipa- 
 tion. No, life was more pleasurable for him at fifty if free 
 to come and go, to waste time and energies on other women, 
 to find himself still courted by his neighbour's wife. He 
 squared his broad shoulders, smiled a little under the soft 
 tawny moustache, and looked down beneath drooping lids 
 into the eyes of a passing pretty girl. 
 
 " What a remarkable looking man ! " she said involuntarily. 
 
 " Where? " said her chaperon, as chaperons had ever been 
 with Lexiter, a hint too late. 
 
 " He has passed us. He was so good to look at ! " 
 
 So be this his epitaph, without harsher judgment, for, as 
 he goes upon his Avay, he is one type of a lost chivalry to 
 which the majority looked up in times past, and of a chimera 
 which to-day we call the Upper Classes; well-bred, well- 
 groomed, well-dressed, one glance out of his masculine eyes 
 enough to startle pretty youth into passing admiration so 
 he goes, as he will always go in London through the Season, 
 an idle man, enjoying the pleasant world he finds around him, 
 and withal giving pleasure in his turn in that he is " so good 
 to look at ! " A type of our worthless and our best the 
 Honourable Caryl Lexiter, strolling up Piccadilly. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.
 
 
 3 1158 00217 2087 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL UBRARY FACILITY 
 
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