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 ALLEGIANCE
 
 f. S. fl. p^ tri 
 
 ALLEGMANCE. 
 
 a flobcl. 
 
 IDA ASHWORTH TAYLOR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'VENUS'S DOVES,' ' SNOW IN HARVEST. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 RICHAKD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 publishers in ©rbinari) to ^)cr ^tnjcstg \\\z Queen. 
 1886. 
 
 \^AU Rights Reserved.']
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/allegiance01tayl
 
 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 4 
 
 VA 
 
 TO 
 
 U. ASH WORTH TAYLOR.
 
 ALLEGIANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ^"^^HERE are some places still, even in 
 crowded, overpopulated England, 
 where Nature holds her own — some 
 nooks and corners, not always the farthest 
 from the haunts of men, where she seems to 
 have entrenched herself and to defy the de- 
 stroyer to enter. 
 
 Of course, when we come to look closer, 
 
 Queen Nature has not kept her sway unaided ; 
 
 there are perhaps agricultural reasons why 
 
 man, the intruder, should have heen content 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 to leave her in possession ; or perhaps some 
 quiet, unobtrusive devotee at her shrine has 
 gallantly thrown himself into the breach and 
 expended life and fortune in defending her 
 citadel against all comers ; but whatever may 
 be the reason, we are no less thankful for the 
 result. 
 
 Down among the Surrey hills, not forty 
 miles from London, with all its hurrying life 
 and ceaseless confusion, such a spot is to be 
 found. As you look at Nortons, partly hidden 
 amongst the great trees that surround it, with 
 walls covered with ivy and Virginian creeper, 
 and roof 3^ellow with the lichen and green with 
 the moss of centuries, 3^ou feel at once that 
 this is one of Nature's favoured retreats, that 
 here she has sheltered herself against the 
 modern invader, and that N'ortons has stood, 
 as indeed it has, for hundreds of years, just as 
 it stands now, quiet and undisturbed. 
 
 It is built half-way up a hill, which rises
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 3 
 
 some hundreds of feet behind it, and up which 
 steep and narroAV pathways, slippery with 
 fir-needles and with roots intersecting their 
 surface like the veins of a hand, lead through 
 pine-woods and undergrowth to the summit 
 where, even on the hot summer days, breezes 
 blow refreshingly over miles of heather and 
 gorse, varied by bogs where the asphodel and 
 sundew grow. In front of the house lie green 
 sloping lawns and flower-beds; and beyond, 
 lanes descend rapidly between tall hedges, 
 white in spring with blackthorn and may, to 
 the wooded and cultivated land below. 
 
 Xortons itself is simply an old house, 
 neither castle nor hall, but built solidly, as 
 our forefathers were accustomed to build their 
 habitations, not for themselves alone, as we 
 for the most part are content to build them, 
 having perhaps lost some of our faith in 
 posterity, or, at least, having begun to enter- 
 tain doubts as to its claims upon our con- 
 
 1—2
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 sideration, but for their descendants as well ; 
 and yet, unpretentious as it is, it is not with- 
 out stories and traditions of its own. There 
 is a room, for instance, which the Carringtons, 
 staunch Jacobites and Conservatives though 
 they had always been, were fond of pointing 
 out as that in which Oliver Cromwell had 
 once slept, and which, in these latter days, is 
 chiefly remarkable for the wild bees which 
 in summer-time find their way cunningly 
 through some hole in the thick stone walls, 
 and buzz about the deep latticed windows 
 until, poor things, they die of their rashness. 
 There are, indeed, endless traditions about the 
 place, for the most part, as such traditions 
 have a way of being, gloomy and disastrous, 
 stories of wilful sin and of doomed innocence. 
 
 One wonders sometimes why it is that the 
 tales which cling to those old time-honoured 
 houses are almost invariablv those of sadness 
 and death and wrong; why so few fair and
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 
 
 pleasant, yes, and blameless, lives are recorded, 
 8ucli as must surely have been often passed 
 Tvithin them; lives in which men and women 
 did their duty, and lived and died well and 
 nobly, owing' grudges to no man, at peace 
 with all mankind, and fearing God and not 
 the Devil, nor those emissaries of his with 
 whose unwelcome presence places long in- 
 habited by men have been so often credited. 
 Let us hope it is because such lives are too 
 common to be recorded, although the contrary 
 is the general belief, and men would have us 
 rather imagine that crime, and robbery, and 
 murder, and revenge are the more frequent 
 events of life ; that ever since Adam was 
 banished fi'om Eden, Cains have been slaying 
 their brother Abels all the world ove.r, and 
 guilt has been preying upon innocence. 
 
 It is pleasanter to linger over other pictures 
 that those old houses suggest ; to think of the 
 generations of happy little children who have
 
 ALLEGIANCE 
 
 played within their dark walls, and gathered 
 the cowslips and bluebells in the meadows 
 outside, unconscious of any doom, even the 
 universal one of death, which hung over their 
 heads ; to imagine how many happy lovers 
 loitered together under the old trees before any 
 cloud of jealousy or faithlessness or revenge 
 rose to blight their happiness or mar their love. 
 After all, every scene, however sombre, had 
 its counterpart, every night its day ; and even 
 taking for granted that the dark old tales are 
 true, we may be sure that sunshine had come 
 before the storm, if it did not follow it as well. 
 !N'othing was so gloomy, so unrelieved, as they 
 would have us believe. 
 
 Times are changed now, it may be for the 
 better. There are fewer tragedies ; outwardly? 
 at least, the wheels of life roll more smoothly 
 on their way, less disturbed by jolts or violent 
 shakes ; light and shadow is become less 
 sharply defined, the night and day oftener
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 mix into twilight. We leave less picturesque 
 scenes for the brush and pencil of pos- 
 terity ; our lives will probably appear to those 
 who are to follow us somewhat dull and 
 prosaic and undramatic, in comparison with 
 those that went before. Perhaps the reason 
 for the change is to be found in the fact that 
 we have learnt in our older age to take 
 tilings more quietly ; that, now^ that we are 
 full-grown, and whether for evil or for 
 good have left our childhood behind us, 
 we have found out that, as we tell the 
 children, there is after all nothing to cry for : 
 or is it, perhaps, that we have discovered that 
 there is so much that it comes to the same 
 thing, and that we have at any rate learnt to 
 be silent about it ? Men, at all events — at 
 least among what are called the educated 
 classes — no longer stab or shoot their false 
 friends or their unfaithful wives. Perhaps 
 they have an indistinct and for the most part
 
 8 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 unformulated conviction, whether right or 
 wrong, that the criminal who is within reach 
 of their vengeance is only the instrument, 
 if not the victim, of another power — of 
 that terrible and inexplicable law of sin and 
 death by which we, like the lower creation^ 
 are doomed to prey upon one another, and 
 which, being eternal and immutable, lies 
 beyond the scope of human vengeance ; per- 
 haps they think nothing about it, except that 
 it is well to make as little scandal as may be, 
 and not to proclaim their grievances to an 
 over-curious Avorld, which is always only too 
 ready to scoff at the unfortunate, and has a 
 tenacious belief besides that men get what 
 they deserve. But whatever may be the cause, 
 it is certain that life, in the higher state 
 of civilization to which it has nowadays 
 attained, presents far fewer dramatic effects 
 than of old, and that when the thin brick 
 walls of our modern houses fall, though no
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 fewer hearts may have broken within them, 
 perhaps no fewer crimes been committed — 
 they will not carry to the ground with them 
 the histories and fables which still linger 
 round the homes of our forefathers. Even 
 our ghosts are less substantial, and for the 
 most part take form and shape only to our in- 
 ward eye, though it may be that they are, for 
 that reason, by no means less terrible or less 
 efficient agents and instruments of punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Within the old houses which yet remain to 
 us as legacies of the past, we move, feeling 
 ourselves to be, like our clothes when com- 
 pared with the crimson and gold, the velvet 
 and brocade, of their former possessors, a little 
 commonplace and prosaic and sad-coloured ; 
 and yet we are now and then conscious that 
 under its changed garb human nature is every- 
 where and at all times the same ; that our joys> 
 and sorrows, our hatreds and our loves,
 
 lo ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 and our revenges too, are no less real because 
 they are less dramatically expressed ; and that 
 if our ancestors were to step down from their 
 picture-frames and mingle amongst us once 
 more, though their language might be some- 
 what different, and their methods of making 
 their opinion felt possibly more open and 
 forcible than our own, yet that they would 
 still at bottom suffer and rejoice, love and 
 hate, much as their descendants do now. 
 After all, it is only the fashion of the clothing, 
 both of body and soul, that varies ; beneath it 
 human nature, good and bad, is everywhere 
 and at all times much the same. 
 
 Thoughts like the foregoing used sometimes 
 to pass through Eve Carrington's mind as 
 she sat alone, dreaming or speculating in the 
 way that a solitarj^ life had rendered habitual 
 to her. It was to her that the old house on 
 the hill now belonged, with all its traditions ;
 
 ALLEGIANCE. ' ii 
 
 to her, a girl of fi ve-and- twenty, the last re- 
 presentative of the race of Carringtons who 
 had possessed it so long, preserved it so faith- 
 fully, and loved it so well. 
 
 Eve loved it too. She would have ex- 
 changed her home for no other in the world. 
 She loved its grey time- stained walls ; its 
 curious winding passages and dark rooms, its 
 unexpected corners and angles ; she even 
 loved the stories that clung about it, though 
 they had given her childhood many terrors, 
 making her shudder in her bed when the wind 
 whistled round the house and moaned in the 
 wide chimneys, or rustled in the leaves of the 
 thick ivy outside. She had lived at Xortons 
 more than half her life -, ever since, that is, she 
 had come an orphan, at twelve years old, to 
 make her home there with the childless uncle 
 and aunt who had thenceforward supplied to 
 her the place of the parents she had lost, had 
 brought her up as their child, made her their
 
 12 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 heiress, and had now passed aAvay, leaving 
 her in possession of the old home. 
 
 Eve Carrington's had been a tranquil, 
 serene, and, save for one great exception, an 
 uneventful life. She had passed through 
 phases, lived down enthusiasms, discarded 
 beliefs. She had, like others, possessed idols 
 which had proved clay, and oracles which 
 had become dumb, or, worse still, which she 
 had ceased to consult. She had had ideals 
 Avhich had lost their power to move her, and 
 illusions which had been dispelled, and, above 
 all, she had passed through one momentous 
 experience — an experience which had given 
 the colour to years of her life, and which had 
 threatened at one time to overshadow it all. 
 
 At nineteen she had been engaged to be 
 married to Harry Courtney, a sailor, and the 
 younger son of her uncle's oldest friend and 
 neighbour. Both were young, Harry himself 
 only two-and-twenty, and the engagement,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 13 
 
 while fully approved and alloAved on both 
 sides, was not to be carried out for a year. 
 Before that year of probation was over, 
 young Courtney was dead, struck down by 
 fever on the African coast. 
 
 The girl recovered from the blow, but 
 though youth reasserted itself, it was years 
 before the shadow of death had been lifted 
 from her life, and the old wound had ceased 
 to ache. It was, indeed, only lately that she 
 had fully realized that such a change had 
 taken place, and it was not without a curious 
 sense of pain that she had learnt lier cure ; 
 that she had become conscious that time had 
 accomplished its work of healing ; that the 
 thought of Harry Courtney had lost its power 
 to move her as of old ; and that the great 
 sorrow which had given the keynote to her 
 existence for so long, had taken its place 
 among the historical facts which fail to thrill 
 us at their touch.
 
 14 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 The realization brouo-ht with it a strano^e 
 sense of loss ; a sorrow, no less than a joy, 
 becomes a friendly and familiar presence, 
 which, when withdrawn, leaves us stranded 
 and solitary ; even our griefs are a possession 
 with which we cannot afford lightly to part ; 
 and a healed wound, of which the scar alone 
 remains, a sign and a token, as it were, of the 
 transitory and evanescent nature of all things 
 human, is in some senses sadder than an open 
 one. And yet it was characteristic of Eve 
 Carrington, that though conscious of that half 
 regret, that — so to speak — ^jealousy for the 
 dead, she had not blinded herself to the fact, 
 nor striven, as some might have done, to 
 galvanize a dead sorrow to life. 
 
 She was not without friends in the neigh- 
 bourhood which had seen her grow up, and 
 when the death of her aunt had left her soli- 
 tary, she had received many and kindly offers 
 of sympathy and help. Lady Courtney,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 15 
 
 indeed, mother of the present baronet, and of 
 the man whom, had fate been kinder, Eve 
 should have married, had beeii urgent in her 
 wish that she should make her home, for the 
 present at least, with her ; cherishing, it might 
 be, a hope that the girl whom, since the 
 tragedy that had overshadowed both homes, 
 she had always regarded in the light of a 
 daughter, might yet in time become one. 
 The offer, however, had been gratefully de- 
 clined, and Eve had remained on at Nortons 
 with the sole companionship of old Miss 
 Duke, a gentle old lady who, once her 
 governess, had returned, on Mrs. Carrington's 
 death, to live with her former pupil. 
 
 Eve had never regretted her decision. It is 
 true that, in spite of its beauty, many people 
 might have found Nortons lonely, for there 
 were no near neighbours ; but Eve was one of 
 those to whom solitude becomes by habit 
 rather a friend than an enemy, and though
 
 i6 ALLEGIANCE, 
 
 the year that had elapsed since her aunt's 
 death had been for the most part passed by 
 her without other companionship than that of 
 Miss Duke, she had never been inclined to 
 reverse her determination to continue to live 
 in her old home. 
 
 Now, however, for a few months at least, a 
 change was to take place in the tenor of her 
 life, and her solitude was for a time to be 
 interrupted.
 
 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 T was two days since Mrs. Ross, her 
 maid, her French honne^ and her 
 little boy, had arrived at Nortons 
 ^ — Gortons, most incongruous abode for an}^ 
 of the four, whose very walls, grey and vener- 
 uble as they were, seemed to protest against 
 the intrusion, but where, notwithstanding, 
 Mrs. Ross meant to remain for the rest of 
 the summer. 
 
 She said it was her duty to do so, and so 
 perhaps it was. Nevertheless, those who 
 knew Patricia Ross well were apt to feel some- 
 Avhat sceptical when she assigned such a 
 reason for her actions, and, if they felt 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 interest enough in the matter, to look about for 
 another and a more probable cause for them. 
 
 In the present case, however, her account 
 of the reasons which had determined her con- 
 duct was sufficiently plausible, and she had 
 given it at some length and detail to those of 
 her friends who cared to listen. 
 
 ' My half-sister is so lonely,' she said. 
 ' Since her aunt died last year she has lived 
 alone, literally alone, except for a companion 
 of about a hundred years old ; and even Miss 
 Duke has had to leave her for the present to 
 go and nurse some sick relation. And now 
 that I need no longer be quite such a depress- 
 ing influence ' — Mrs. Eoss had been a widow 
 two years, and had by this time discarded her 
 weeds — ' I think I really ought to go and 
 look after the poor child.' 
 
 She had accordingly written to Eve, 
 suggesting that she should bring the boy and 
 spend the remaining months of summer — it
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 19 
 
 was already June — and the early autumn 
 with her ; until, that is, it should be time to 
 take her usual way to the Eiviera for the 
 winter. 
 
 Miss Carrington had assented to her sister's 
 proposal, if without enthusiasm, yet with 
 sufficient cordiality. Patricia Ross was her 
 only near relation, and though — having married 
 when Eve was still a child, shortly after the 
 latter had come to live at Norton s — there was 
 no real intimacy between them, the prospect 
 of a companion, for a time at least, somewhat 
 nearer her own age than Miss Duke, was not 
 unwelcome. 
 
 Mrs. Ross, as she drove the five hilly miles 
 from the station, had felt her heart sink a 
 little. She was not one of those to whom 
 l^ature presents many attractions, and the 
 prospect of three months to be spent in the 
 retirement of Nortons caused her a slight 
 sense of dismay, fully shared by her son. 
 
 2—2
 
 20 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' It's a very quiet place, mamma,' said 
 Master Kit, giving expression to the fore- 
 bodings his mother was feeling. ^ I hope we 
 shan't be dull; but I think we should have 
 liked St. Moritz better.' 
 
 Kit was experienced, and a traveller, though 
 he was only seven years old, and Mrs. Eo.-s 
 sighed as she attempted to answer reassur- 
 ingly. 
 
 That was, however, two days ago, and she 
 had already begun to adapt herself to circum- 
 stances, with the assistance, it is true, of a 
 wholly unlooked-for source of excitement, 
 which, though not altogether of an agreeable 
 nature, was, as Mrs. Ross would have frankly 
 allowed, considerably better than none. 
 
 It was of this that she was speaking to Miss 
 Carrington as the two were together in the 
 cool shaded drawing-room the second after- 
 noon after her arrival. It was a large low 
 room, with one window opening into a con-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. it 
 
 5?ervatory, whilst the other looked across a 
 lawn and through an avenue of elms to the 
 distant hilly horizon. The furniture, although 
 there was nothing ostentatiously old about it, 
 was solid and substantial and accorded well 
 with the thick walls and dark panelling of the 
 room. 
 
 ' I have a confession to make to you, Eve/ 
 Mrs. Ross said, throwing down the book she 
 had been pretending to read. She had a clear 
 sweet voice, with a slightly foreign pronuncia- 
 tion, due to her long residence abroad, and a 
 manner which, when she pleased, was very 
 attractive. She was pretty, too, in a bright 
 piquante way, with fair hair elaborately 
 arranged, hazel eyes, and small delicate fea- 
 tures. 
 
 Eve turned as she spoke. She had been 
 standing at the window looking absently out, 
 a slight figure a little above the average 
 height, with dark hair cut in a straight line
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 across her forehead, and lying heavy and 
 uncurled over level brows and grave, dark- 
 blue, black-lashed eyes. 
 
 She had been thinking, just before her 
 sister^s voice interrupted her, that it was the 
 anniversary of the day, five years ago, when 
 the tidings of Harry Courtney's death had 
 been brought to her ; remembering also, again 
 with that vague regret stirring within her, 
 that till that moment she had forgotten it. 
 She had been standing at that very window 
 when his brother had come across the ofrass 
 with the terrible news written on his face. 
 For years the scene in all its details had re- 
 mained j^hotograjDhed on her memory, accom- 
 panied by her own sudden horror of fear — the 
 avenue of elm-trees rustling and whispering in 
 the hot summer breeze just as they were 
 doing now, the blazing flower-beds, the 
 flickering lights — everything was exactly as it 
 had been that day : it seemed almost as if she
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 23 
 
 must once more see Sir Cyril advancing 
 across the lawn, bringing the message which 
 had blasted her hopes. Her heart contracted 
 with pain, which was yet, as she involuntarily 
 recognised, the pain of a remembered and not 
 a living sorrow. 
 ' Her sister's voice disturbed her reflections. 
 
 ' I have a confession to make,' she repeated. 
 ^ Come and listen to it^ Eve. I had not, it is 
 true, contemplated it, but circumstances have 
 made it necessary.' 
 
 Eve had turned, rousing herself from her 
 own private meditations ; and dismissing, for 
 the present, her recollections, she came to 
 sit down near her sister, looking at her in- 
 quiringly. 
 
 ' What is it ?' she asked, still somewhat 
 absent. 
 
 'What is it? It is the ghost of a folly 
 which now seems to belong to the dark ages, 
 though, counting by months and weeks, it is
 
 24 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 not, after all, so very long since it took place 
 — I always/ parenthetically, 'talk of follies 
 taking place ; it makes them more impersonal 
 — and which has suddenly started to life again. 
 Did you ever hear of Gilbert Yerschoyle T 
 
 ' The son of the man who died last month, 
 who lived some miles the other side of the 
 Courtneys? Yes, I remember the name. 
 Did he not do something discreditable, which 
 prevented his father having him^ at home ?' 
 
 * Yes — that is the man,' replied Mrs. Koss 
 gloomily. '1 wish I had happened to hear 
 his history sooner.' 
 
 ' Then you know him ?' asked Eve. 
 Mrs. Ross shrugged her shoulders. 
 ' I know him — yes,' she answered. 
 ' Do you know him well ?' asked Eve, her 
 curiosity, though it was a cpiality which was 
 not strong in her, roused by her sister's 
 manner. 
 
 'I knew him very well,' answered the latter,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 25 
 
 with some emphasis. ' Come, Eve, I may as 
 well tell you the truth — it is no use beating 
 about the bush. Six months ago I promised 
 to marry Mr. Gilbert Verschoyle.' 
 
 There was a pause. Miss Carrington's 
 countenance had taken an expression of slight 
 dismay. She was used to form independent 
 judgments, and was less than most women 
 influenced by the opinions of the world and 
 the dictates and laws of conventional society ; 
 but still Mr. Yerschoyle's reputation in the 
 county, as she now began to remember more 
 clearly, was not such as to point him out as 
 a desirable husband or brother-in-law. 
 
 ' You are eno^ao;ed to him ?' she said. 
 
 ' No, no — not now. I was engaged to him^ 
 Listen, Eve ; I Avill tell you the whole story. 
 Of course I was to blame — at least I suppose 
 I ought to have been more careful, but wliat 
 would you have ? It is all the fault of the 
 theories upon which we are brought up, and
 
 26 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 \Yliicli we are so accustomed to take for granted 
 that we accept them as a matter of course. I 
 really believe ' — with asperity — ' the worldly 
 maxims at which it is the fashion to throw so 
 much dirt — from Locksley Hall downwards — 
 have not done One-tenth of the damage that 
 the unworldly ones have, against which nobody 
 dares say a word.' 
 
 Mrs. Eoss had a sort of eloquence, or at least 
 possessed a command of language of her own, 
 and Eve was accustomed to listen to her 
 without much interruption, being herself 
 naturally silent ; but as her sister paused for 
 ])reath she put in a word, recalling her to the 
 subject in hand. 
 
 ' Apropos of what ?' she said quietly. 
 
 ' AVell, you are told you have a heart— 
 everyone has, therefore you have. That is the 
 process of reasoning — I forget what it is called. 
 And you take the fact for granted, and act 
 accordingly, /did.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 27 
 
 ' That is to say ' 
 
 ' That is to say, I engaged myself to Gilbert 
 Yerschoyle. I knew all along that it was not 
 a good marriage, but he was fond of me, and 
 I really thought I liked him ; and — and it had 
 been so dull for the last year or more,' pursued 
 Mrs. Ross frankly. ' Of course I was very 
 sorry when poor Robert died ; but after all I 
 was so young, scarcely twenty-six, when it 
 happened, and one can't go on mourning all one's 
 life long.' Eve turned away ; her sister's words 
 sounded like a crude and heartless caricature 
 of what time had taught lier. ' I had seen no one 
 and done nothins: for months, and then one 
 da}' — it happened abroad, you know — Kit's 
 pony ran away with him, and he really might 
 have been killed if Mr. Terschoyle hadn't been 
 there. I couldn't do less than be civil after 
 that, and somehow I saw a good deal of him. 
 I had never heard a hint of his previous career, 
 aud I could see he was a gentleman.'
 
 28 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Mrs, Eoss paused, out of breath ; but Eve 
 made no comment, and after a minute her sister 
 went on : 
 
 ' Well, we were engaged. It was not much 
 more than a year after Robert's death, and I 
 stipulated that it should be kept secret for six 
 months — nobody was to hear of it. I knew 
 \'ery few people at Nice, where it all took pLace, 
 and he didn't seem to know anybody either. 
 And then one day — I had casually mentioned 
 him in a letter to England just after the child's 
 accident, before there was anything between 
 us — I got a letter of khidly warning. I was 
 to take care not to have much to do with him ; 
 he had been mixed up in some shameful money 
 transactions at Oxford — I don't know quite 
 what — and was a disgraced man.' 
 
 *I remember now,' said Eve. ' He was 
 said to have forged his father's name to a 
 cheque. Mr. Yerschoyle paid the money, but I 
 believe he never had him at home afterwards.*
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 29 
 
 ' Exactly — nobody received him — so my 
 informant said : lie was. as I told you, a dis- 
 graced man. It was a pleasant account to get, 
 wasn't it, of the man one had promised to 
 marry?' 
 
 * It was,' said Eve. ' What did you do ? 
 tell him the storv and ask him if it was 
 true ?' 
 
 ^ My dear Eve, what do you take me for ? 
 To insult a man to his face — the man you 
 are engaged to — by asking him if it was 
 true he Avas a felon who had happened to 
 escape conviction! I should have died 
 of it !' 
 
 * Ah, I see/ said the girl comprehendingly. 
 ' You knew it couldn't be true — vou didn't 
 believe it ?' 
 
 ' Yes, I did ; at least ' — candidly — ' I don't 
 think I ever thought much about it. It was 
 clear the world believed him to be guilty, and 
 that was the main point.' Patricia Eoss was
 
 30 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 always too modest to set her opinion against 
 that of the world; she' deferred to its judg- 
 ments, its canonizations, its excommunica- 
 tions, as a Catholic does to those of the 
 Church. ' What is the good of innocence if it 
 can't prove itself?' 
 
 ' Poor Innocence !' said Eve softly. 
 
 Mrs. Ross laughed. 
 
 ' You needn't pity her,' she said. ' Don't 
 you know she has what we are all supposed 
 to consider most worth having — besides 
 sometimes getting w^hat we do not dare aspire 
 to — martyrdom.' 
 
 ' You are o-rowinsr discursive,' observed 
 Eve. ' What course did you take ?' 
 
 Mrs. Ross reflected, 
 
 ■ ' One I have never ceased to regret. I 
 broke off my engagement.' 
 
 ' And now you are sorry for it ?' asked Eve 
 quickly. 
 
 ' Xot sorry I broke it off — that was inevit-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 able. And besides — ^I told you before I had 
 been misled by the theories in ^dnch one is 
 brought up — I had imagined myself to have 
 lost my heart to him, whereas I now know I 
 hadn't any heart to lose. I found it out after- 
 wards, but only after a most unpleasant series 
 of mistakes, into which, if I had been left 
 alone, I should never have fallen. I liked 
 him well enough — he was good-looking and 
 clever, to a certain extent — but I never really 
 cared for him. He had a vile temper, too, 
 and I had begun to find it out. Xo, what I 
 am sorry for is that I didn't give the right 
 reason.' 
 
 ' "What reason did you give ?' 
 
 * I put it upon money. I wish I had 
 spoken the truth. I can't think why I don't. 
 I have so often found it would have answered 
 better in the end, and made up my mind to 
 try it for the future. But I can't — c'est plus 
 fort que moi /' throwing out her hands with a
 
 32 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 deprecating gesture. ' On the very next occa- 
 sion I lie as gaily as ever.' 
 
 ' You mean you gave money as your reason 
 for breakino^ off the ens-ao^ement ?' asked Eve, 
 paying no attention to Mrs. Ross's digression. 
 
 ' Yes ; I told him he was too poor. Of 
 course he teas poor then — he had no pro- 
 fession, and only the few hundreds a year his 
 father allowed him, so it was a plausible ex- 
 cuse ready to hand ; but I wish I had told 
 him the truth.' 
 
 ' And you didn't care for him ?' said Eve 
 absently. 
 
 ' My dear Eve, I said just now I didn't. I 
 liked him quite well enough to have married 
 him, if thinofs had been strai^'ht. As to the 
 rest, I have told you my theory — I have an 
 intellectual beUef in strong emotions, but my 
 faith belongs to the brain, not to the heart.' 
 
 ' And what are the " circumstances " which 
 you said just now made it necessary for you
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 to tell me about it?' asked Eve, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " I was coming to that. The fact is, I had 
 a letter from him — from Gilbert — this morn- 
 ing, telling me that by his father's death he has 
 inherited the property ; and, the bar of 230verty 
 being thus removed, he suggests that our 
 en o^a element should be renewed.' 
 
 ' Then the estate was entailed ?^ 
 
 ' isTo, that is the extraordinary thing ; it 
 was not. It really seems as if Providence 
 had interfered to protect Mr. Gilbert Ver- 
 schoyle, unlikely as it would seem that it 
 should take an interest in his affairs. His 
 father apparently died quite suddenly, with- 
 out having altered the will he made years 
 ago, before there was any quarrel, so that 
 everything comes to Gilbert as it would 
 have done naturally under other circum- 
 stances. He seems astonished at it himself — 
 you see he never expected to inherit. I must 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 say,' added Patricia approvingly, 'that Lis 
 exposition of tlie condition of affairs is most 
 business-like.' 
 
 * And what do you mean to answer ?' asked 
 Eve. 
 
 * That is just my difficulty — how to ^\xt 
 what I have to say. As to my meaning, I am 
 clear enough ; but I confess that the question 
 how to express it puzzles me. I will not 
 marry him. I have enough money of my 
 own ; and the other objection — the real one — 
 remains just what it was. I love the world 
 and society far too well to cut myself off from 
 them by marrying a man of whom they have 
 decided to decline the acquaintance.' 
 
 * I see,' said Eve. ' Yes — then what shall 
 you say ?' 
 
 ' What do you advise? it is just upon that 
 point that I wanted to consult you.' 
 
 ' Why not — the truth ?' asked Eve slowly. 
 Mrs. Ross made an impatient movement.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 35 
 
 ' I have told you that is out of the question/ 
 she said. * I will not insult him.' 
 
 ' You will not insult him/ repeated Eve. 
 ^ Then I am afraid I cannot help you.* 
 
 She was thinking that in thought and in 
 act Mrs. Ross did not object to insulting 
 the man she was to have married — it was only 
 in word that she found it impossible. There 
 was a pause, and then Patricia spoke again. 
 
 'I suppose I must write an ambiguous 
 letter — tell him I have come to the conclusion 
 that we are not suited to make one another 
 happy, and so forth. It is quite true. 
 Luckily he writes from London, so that there 
 is no chance of meeting him in this neighbour- 
 hood ; and he does not know where I am — his 
 letter has followed me from abroad. Well, I 
 may as well get it done. Come, Eve, tell 
 me you think I am right.' 
 
 Eve looked her sister steadily over. She 
 was fond of her, she even in a certain wa}' 
 
 3—2
 
 36 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 admired her ; but yet at this moment she felt 
 something not unlike contempt for the nature 
 that lay revealed, though such contempt was 
 not a sentiment which was accustomed to find 
 a place in her mind. 
 
 ' Yes, I think you are right,' she answered 
 after that momentary survey. 'At any rate, 
 as you have been wise enough to range your- 
 self on the side of the majority you are safe, 
 whatever happens. It is only when we join 
 the minority that a mistake is fatal.' 
 
 She rose and passed out through the open 
 window. Patricia looked after her with a laugh 
 in which there was no touch of offence, though, 
 shrewd as she was, she had not failed to read 
 her sister's meaning with sufficient accuracy. 
 
 ' She is very young still, ' she said to her- 
 self indulgently. ' I kncAV more of the world 
 at fifteen than she does at five-and-twenty. I 
 know, though she does not say so, that she 
 would have liked me better if I had held to
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 37 
 
 Gilbert in spite of his damaged reputation and 
 doubtful character — if, in fact, I had been 
 content to think " all for love and the world 
 well lost.'^ But she will find out in time — 
 though she takes so long about it — that the 
 beaten paths are best. I have tried them both.' 
 
 It was true ; but Mrs. Ross forgot to reflect 
 that the tracks which in her somewhat 
 chequered career she had more than once been 
 tempted to follow had all tended in one 
 direction, whilst those of which Eve Car- 
 rington dreamed led in quite another. 
 
 Perhaps, however, there was truth in what 
 she said. The beaten paths at any rate are 
 the smoothest, and those who tread them, 
 diverging neither to the right nor to the left, 
 not only escape the thorns and briars and 
 pitfalls that lie alike on either side, but also 
 avoid the precipices over which those who 
 climb higher are apt to fall.
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 NE afternoon, some ten days after 
 that upon whicli Mrs. Eoss had 
 made her confession — not, perhaps, 
 an altogether complete one — the subject of 
 it was arriving at the home he had quitted 
 upwards of eleven years ago, and had never 
 since revisited. 
 
 He had not announced his coming before- 
 hand, and there were no preparations to greet 
 the arrival of the heir. Xo conveyance was to 
 be had at the small countrv station where he 
 got out, nor was there anyone to meet and 
 welcome, or even recognise him. The station- 
 master was a stranger, and only an old porter
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 39 
 
 looked curiously after the new-comer as he 
 walked quickly away, leaving his portmanteau 
 to be called for. 
 
 * That'll be young Yerschoyle, Bill/ he said, 
 addressino^ a comrade, after havino; first taken 
 the precaution of verifying his conjectures by 
 a survey of the initials upon the traveller's 
 luggage. ' I mind him well enough, though 
 he's changed since he come here last. He 
 were quite a young chap then ; but there's no 
 doubt that'll be him.' 
 
 * Then it'll be a rare bad one,' returned Bill 
 severely. 'When a man's own father won't 
 have nothing to do with him, we knows what 
 to think.' 
 
 And his companion endorsed the opinion 
 with a shake of the head. 
 
 The subject of their remarks was meanwhile 
 walking away at a swinging pace. He was a 
 man of between thirty and thirty-five, looking 
 older than his age ; with close-cut black hair
 
 40 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 waving slightly ; a tall well-built figure ; a 
 brown thin face, and dark -grey eyes under 
 marked black eyebrows. It was a handsome 
 face, though somewhat worn and lined ; and 
 yet not a pleasant one, and it bore out Mrs. 
 Koss's assertion that his temper was bad. The 
 world had, in fact, gone ill with him, and the 
 consciousness of it was apparent in every line 
 of his well- cut mouth, and in the expression 
 of the eyes which were just now taking note 
 of the familiar landmarks with an interest 
 in which no touch of any softening sentiment 
 mixed, though he was visiting the home of 
 his boyhood — the only home, in fact, that he 
 had ever known. 
 
 Eleven years ! — he had counted them up — it 
 was eleven years since he had last traversed that 
 road. Two months later the event had taken 
 place which had left him disgraced for life in 
 the eyes of the world, and had shut the doors 
 of his father's house upon him, casting him
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 41 
 
 forth, friendless and alone, to face his disgrace 
 as he might, and make what he could of his 
 life. He had faced it, with a proud and 
 doo'o-ed endurance which, if it was not 
 courage, both counterfeited it and did its best 
 to supply its place ; but the struggle, none the 
 less because he had to a certain extent con- 
 quered in it, had left him with every trait of his 
 character hardened and embittered, and w^ith 
 its history w^ritten in each line of his face ; 
 with the character and the face of a man who 
 for eleven years — perhaps the most important 
 years of his life — had been standing on the 
 defensive, with his hand at all times ready to 
 return a blow, till the attitude had become 
 habitual ; who had been ever ready to detect 
 an insult, and prompt to avenge a slight, and 
 upon whom few counteracting influences had 
 chanced to fall. 
 
 His childhood had been unloved, and his 
 boyhood neglected. The first Mrs. Verschoyle
 
 42 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 bad died when her only child was in blouses ; 
 his father, a cold, severe, upright man, with a 
 keen and uncompromising sense of honour 
 and an inordinate family pride, had never 
 cared for the boy ; and his stepmother had 
 treated him with open dislike. Xo tender 
 memories lingered round the paths which, 
 after so long, he w^as treading ; yet recollec- 
 tions of one sort or another crowded upon 
 him as he walked along the familiar road — so 
 curiously more familiar than all those with 
 which he had been acquainted since. 
 
 It was at that wdiite gate that his pony had 
 shied and thrown him. He remembered, with 
 the strano^e vividness belono^ino* to childish 
 impressions, his father's look as he stood 
 before him — a muddy little figure, bruised, 
 shaken, and even tearful— -and the cold con- 
 tempt with which his reluctance to mount 
 again had been visited ; he recalled his own 
 mingled fear and resentment when he had
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 43 
 
 been forced to do so. The pony was unsafe — 
 he knew it, the groom knew it, everybody 
 knew it — but his father had called him a 
 coward. He remembered his father's second 
 marriage when he was a lad of sixteen, and the 
 undisguised dislike his stepmother had from 
 the first entertained for him ; as fully and 
 with equal openness reciprocated by himself. 
 She, poor thing, was dead now, and her only 
 child, Dorothy, whom he had not seen since 
 she was four years old, was, as he knew, left, 
 by a strange oversight, to his own guardian- 
 ship. She was at home now, as he thought, 
 with a sense of distaste. 
 
 Xo, he had no reason to love the place ; and 
 yet he had come to it meaning to stay, to live 
 on and make his home there. He anticipated no 
 welcome in the neighbourhood. He was fully 
 aware that if there was one place more than 
 another wiiere his reputation and his ruhied 
 character would tell against him, it was among
 
 44 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 his father's friends ; and yet he had decided, 
 with the same dogged determination with 
 which he had met all the other consequences 
 of his disgrace, there to brave the matter out. 
 He was not even conscious of any particular 
 shrinking from what to many men Avould 
 have Ibeen an unbearable ordeal. To a great 
 extent he was hardened and steeled ao:ainst 
 the opinion of the w^orld. It was impossible 
 that the years which had gone by should not 
 have left him thus ; for shame, like sorrow^, 
 loses its edge, and the one is no more, what 
 it is so often called, lifelong, than the other, 
 although the effects of both remain, for good 
 or for evil, stamped upon the character. 
 Habit — stronger than either courage or prin- 
 ciple — had rendered him in great measure 
 callous to disapproval or blame, and it was 
 only when he was touched at some unac- 
 customed point that the blow still had power 
 to make him wdnce, and force him to confess
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 45 
 
 with self-contempt that, habituated though he 
 had been to insult and slight, he was not yet 
 invulnerable. Over such an intimation he 
 was even now brooding, with his face dark 
 and his mouth hard, as he approached his 
 destination. It was, this time, Patricia's letter 
 which had found its way through the joints of 
 his harness, and of which the recollection, 
 though it was now ten days since he had 
 received it, still rankled. 
 
 Cautiously worded and considerately ex- 
 pressed as it had been — Patricia was an adept 
 at letter-writing — he had read between the 
 lines, and had detected, quick as he had 
 become at such discoveries, the real cause of 
 her refusal to renew their engagement ; and in 
 her present rejection he had read no less the 
 reason of her former one. It did not, it is 
 true, come to him with any great surprise. 
 He had suspected something of the kind 
 before, and perhaps it had been, in part at
 
 46 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 least, a morbid curiosity and desire to prove 
 his suspicion correct which had prompted his 
 present proposaL At all events, whether 
 such had been the case or not, her answer had 
 confirmed him in his conviction. He knew 
 her well enough to be sure that she was not a 
 woman likely to refuse what he had now to 
 offer, had she no other reason for doing so 
 than those she alleged. He judged her justly, 
 impartially, and with sufficient accuracy. 
 He had never, indeed, with regard to Patricia, 
 been blinded by passion ; although, liking 
 her, he had allowed himself to be carried 
 away by a transient, and even at the time half 
 contemptuous, admiration for her shallow 
 cleverness and bright pleasant ways. For 
 the rest, she had crossed his path when life 
 had little that was pleasant belonging to it ; 
 and the days when he had believed — with 
 that curious half belief which voluntarily and 
 with open eyes lends itself to deception — in
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 47 
 
 her affection, had been among the least sombre 
 ones of his latter years, although the happi- 
 ness which belonged to them had not been of 
 an ideal or elevating character. 
 
 It was, perhaps, characteristic of the terms 
 upon which they stood, and of his estimation 
 of the nature and force of her affection, that he 
 had kept silence to her concerning the blot 
 which stained the name he had offered her, aid 
 wdiich she had accepted. It had not so muc!i 
 as occurred to him to do otherwise. She would 
 learn the truth soon enough : he had asked no 
 more confidence from her than he was pre- 
 pared to give. Had there been any episode in 
 her life upon which she might think it Avell 
 to drop a veil, he knew her well enougli to 
 feel sure that she would do so ; and for the 
 rest, if he could steal a march upon the world 
 and upon society — the w^orld and the society 
 to which she belonged, and from which he 
 was, though she did not know it, an outcast
 
 48 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 — all was fair in the war which they had waged 
 upon him. So he told himself upon the rare 
 occasions on which conscience had suggested 
 to him a scruple. 
 
 When the end had come he had not been^ 
 however, heart-broken — Patricia was not the 
 kind of woman for whom men break their 
 hearts — and he had acquiesced with sufficient 
 facility in the course she had taken, and in 
 the reasons she had assigned for it, recog- 
 nisino; their value and not even resentino^ her 
 change of purpose. He had, to a certain 
 extent and to a modified degree, been sensible 
 of disappointment, but he had made no com- 
 plaint. It was not his custom to complain of 
 the world and its ways. If he had a quarrel 
 with it, he kept it to himself. His cynicism, 
 if it existed, was always a silent one — perhaps 
 it was too real to be garrulous, for genuine 
 cynicism is rarely overt ; if the world has 
 been really unkind, and thus has given us a
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 49 
 
 thoroughly bad oj)mion of it, we are apt to 
 keep it to ourselves, having a lurking sus-' 
 picion that it may have reason on its side, and 
 being therefore unwilling to draw attention to 
 the quarrel. • Of late, however, as has been^ 
 said, a suspicion had forced itself upon him- 
 that the reason she had alleged for the" 
 annulling of their engagement had not been 
 the real one, and since he had received her 
 last letter his suspicion had been confirmed.- 
 It is true that she had not now, any more than 
 on the former occasion, hinted at the truth ; her 
 whole letter w^as indeed an elaborate attempt 
 to conceal it, and it was this that had chiefly 
 roused his anger. Had she been candid he 
 Avoiild have acquiesced, not perhaps without 
 bitterness, but without remonstrance or re- 
 proach, in her decision. But as it w^as, he swore 
 to himself that he w^ould force the truth from 
 her ; that — with a correct perception that this 
 was the only punishment he had it in his 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 power to inflict — she should be forced to tell 
 the man she had professed to love well 
 enough to marry him that she had thrown 
 him over, not because of the poverty she had 
 once assigned as her excuse, nor because of 
 the incompatibility of temper and difference 
 of disposition which she now gave as her 
 determining reasons, but because the world 
 had turned its back upon him and made him 
 an outcast. For once he would force the 
 truth from her. 
 
 His meditations, emphasizing the disagree- 
 able expression on his face, had reached this 
 point as he walked up to his own door and, 
 after a moment's hesitation, rang the bell. 
 
 * Is Miss Yerschoyle at home ? Will you 
 tell her I am here? I am Mr. Yerschoyle,' 
 he said to the man who appeared ; conscious 
 of a dim sense of amusement at havino^ thus 
 to introduce himself and at the servant's face 
 of surprise, which, however, with the instinct
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 51 
 
 of a well-bred footman, he instantly succeeded 
 in suppressing. 
 
 * Certainly, sir. Miss Dorothy is in the 
 schoolroom. I will inform her that you are 
 here.' 
 
 Gilbert passed the man and went into the 
 library. It had the desolate, uncomfortable 
 look of an unused room, though it was 
 well and luxuriously furnished. Yerschoyle 
 wondered, as he stood before the empty fire- 
 place looking round him, whether he should 
 €ver feel at home there, anything but an un- 
 welcome and intrusive interloper. It almost 
 ■seemed to him as if his father's ghost must 
 rise, to turn him out of the inheritance into 
 which by such a strange oversight or accident 
 — it could be nothing else — he had been 
 allowed to enter. 
 
 There was his father's leathern chair, the 
 table where he used to write, his books. The 
 room was chiefly associated in his mind with 
 
 4—2 
 
 LIB RAH Y 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 parental reprimands and rebukes ; till now, he 
 never recollected entering it voluntarily or 
 of his own accord. With strange accuracy 
 he recalled the last occasion upon which he 
 had stood there — eleven years ago — and his 
 parting with his father. It had made little 
 enough impression upon him at the time ; the 
 interview had been chiefly interesting, and 
 that in a somewhat unpleasant manner, from 
 a financial point of view, and he had been 
 sensible of some relief when it was over, and 
 he had been able to make good his escape. 
 
 Yet now he remembered it clearly enough. 
 It had been the last time he had seen Mr. 
 Verschoyle till, hastily summoned to the 
 hotel in London where he had been overtaken 
 by his sudden and fatal attack of paralysis, he 
 had arrived too late to find him alive. He 
 wondered, glancing at the ink and pens still 
 on the table, whether it had been there that 
 the letter had been written which, two months
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 53 
 
 later, had contained his sentence of banish- 
 ment and outlawry. 
 
 Standing there in his father's house, he 
 accused him in silence of the ruin of his life. 
 What had he ever given him that was worth 
 having ? Other men had tender recollections 
 clinging round their homes, but what had 
 he ? — only the memory of neglect and dislike, 
 scarcely veiled or concealed ; and, lastly, the 
 brand of an implacable resentment, which had 
 shut him out for ever from forgiveness, and 
 had cast him upon the world at twenty-two 
 without a friend. 
 
 He wondered as he stood waiting for his 
 sister, though he was not given to indulge in 
 such speculations, whether anyone more soli- 
 tary than himself existed. He had not a 
 single close friend. He had, once for all, Avhen 
 he quitted Oxford, broken with those who 
 belonged to the past — necessity and pride alike 
 demanded it — and he had not accepted those
 
 54 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 who would have been since ready enough ta 
 admit him into their circle, no question asked. 
 He stood absolutely and entirely alone. He 
 was interrupted in his reflections. 
 
 The door had opened, and a little girl 
 was advancing towards him in a leisurely 
 manner. She was small and childish in ap- 
 pearance, with pale flaxen hair neatly 
 smoothed away behind her ears, and hanging 
 in a thick plait behind ; light-blue eyes and 
 straight features ; and was dressed in deep 
 mourning, with a brown-holland apron over 
 her black frock. What might be wanting^ 
 however, in dignity in her appearance was 
 amply made up for by her manner, which, for 
 its calm self-possession, would have done 
 eredit, under the circumstances, to a woman 
 of twice her age. No faintest shadow in 
 voice or manner indicated that she was 
 greeting her only brother after an absence 
 of eleven years ; no trace of shyness or em^bar-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 55 
 
 rassment sent the colour to her pale little 
 face. 
 
 * I am sorry to have kept you waiting/ 
 she observed, advancing and offering her 
 hand, which Grilbert took with a sense of 
 relief that he was evidently not expected to 
 give her a more brotherly greeting. Senti- 
 ment, as has been observed, had little to do 
 with his home associations, and certainly less 
 than all with his stepmother's child. ' If you 
 had let me know when to expect you, the 
 carriage should have met you.' Dorothy's 
 tone was slightly disapproving. 
 
 ' It did not matter at all, thanks,' he re- 
 turned. 'I did not feel sure I should find 3^ou 
 at home. Have you been here ever since — 
 since last month ?' 
 
 * Since papa died, you mean ? that was six 
 weeks ago,' corrected Miss Yerschoyle, men- 
 tioning the event with none of her brother's 
 involuntary hesitation, and quite without the
 
 56 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 emotion the fear of which had oiven rise to it. 
 ^ No ; I went to Mace Court — Lady Courtney's 
 ' — for a week. But I have been at home a 
 fortnight now. Miss Hare did not wish my 
 lessons to have any further interruption.' 
 
 ' I see/ said Gilbert, rather absently. ' You 
 were not at the funeral, Dorothy.^ 
 
 Mr. Yerschoyle had been buried, in accord- 
 ance with his own wish, at a small property he 
 possessed at some distance, where his father 
 and grandfather rested. 
 
 ' Xo,' returned the child. ' Miss Hare 
 thought it was better not.' 
 Gilbert changed the subject. 
 'Miss Hare? Is that the lady who con- 
 ducts your education ?' he inquired. ' How 
 old are you, Dorothy ? fourteen, is it not ? I 
 remember you were a little thing in white 
 frocks when I saw you last ' — a plain, spoilt 
 little child, he added mentally. 
 
 'I shall l)e fifteen next month,' answered
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 57 
 
 Dorothy sedately, ignoring his allusion to 
 their last meeting, which indeed appeared to 
 her most injudicious under the circumstances. 
 Dorothy was well acquainted with the family 
 scandal. She was one of the children — not so 
 rare as might be wished, and perhaps becoming 
 daily less so — who appear to arrive at a know- 
 ledge of the world as if by instinct; and in this 
 special case no care had been taken to kee]) 
 her in isfnorance of her brother's disofrace. To 
 her, as to all his father's friends, to all the 
 neighbours, to the parson who had regretted 
 the advent of such a parishioner, to the very 
 footman who had opened his own door to him, 
 he stood in the position of a disgraced man ; 
 and Dorothy Yerschoyle, conventional and 
 worldly to the core of her small heart, was 
 the last person to forget or forgive it. It had, 
 it is true, been clearly necessary under the 
 circumstances that she should outwardly, at 
 least, condone her brother's offence ; but .she
 
 58 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 disapproved of any reference to the subject, or 
 to what it had entailed, as both wanting in 
 good taste and as denoting an insufficient 
 sense on his part of its enormity. Gilbert was 
 acutely conscious — half amused, half angry — 
 of the meaning of the child's manner. 
 
 ' Yes,' he went on carelessly. ' Eleven 
 years is a long time, isn't it, Dorothy ? Can 
 you remember what happened eleven years 
 ago ?' 
 
 ' Not ver\- well. I ' 
 
 ' Well, never mind ; some things are better 
 forgotten, aren't they ? All things considered, 
 perhaps, a good memory is not an altogether 
 unmixed good ;' he was touching, irritated 
 by the consciousness of the child's manner, 
 on the subject he knew she wished to ignore. 
 ' Perhaps you will learn that in time, like 
 other things — besides those Miss Hare teaches 
 you.' 
 
 When, half an hour later, she left him to
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 59 
 
 return to her lessons, he shrugged his 
 shoulders with a half-laugh, which yet was 
 not without its bitterness. Little Dorothy 
 had once more held up to him the mirror 
 of the world. 
 
 * And to-morrow,' he said to himself, * to- 
 morrow Mrs. Ross shall, for once, speak the 
 truth.' 
 
 He was again interrupted. The door had 
 opened, and an old man, his father's valet, 
 who had been in his service ever since Gilbert 
 could remember, entered. Yerschoyle held 
 out his hand to him with careless kind- 
 ness. 
 
 ' Ah, how are you, Jenkinson ?' he said. 
 
 He had last seen the man at the funerah 
 He had been with Mr. Verschoyle when he had 
 been seized in London with the fatal illness, 
 and it had indeed been he who, on his own 
 responsibility, and Avith fear and trembling, 
 had despatched the telegram which summoned
 
 6o ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Gilbert to his deathbed. He now came for- 
 ward with timid eagerness. He was a frail 
 old man, with thin grey hair and a worn 
 nervous face. 
 
 ^ I am glad to see you home, sir,' he said, 
 with a voice that shook a little as he took his 
 master's hand. ' The house has never been 
 the same since you left it.' 
 
 Gilbert was both taken by surprise and 
 touched. He, for his part, in the yeai's that 
 liad elapsed since he was banished from home, 
 had almost forgotten Jenkinson, and the 
 timid, unobtrusive affection he had always 
 shown him as a boy. But though he Avas not 
 unmoved by this, the first word of welcome 
 he had received, he had all a man's dislike of 
 anything approaching to a scene, or to any 
 display of emotion. 
 
 ' I am sure it is very good of you to 
 say so,' he said. ' I am glad to find you still 
 here.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 6r 
 
 He shook the old man's hand kindly before 
 he turned away. He would have been still 
 more touched and surprised if he had known 
 that Jenkinson's eyes were full of tears as he 
 left the room. 
 
 *At least he has got his own,' he said to 
 himself, as he went along in his hesitating, 
 uncertain way towards the back regions. ' In 
 spite of all them lawyers.'
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 .^ EARLY a foi-tnight had elapsed 
 1;^^ since Patricia Eoss had received 
 and answered Verschoyle's letter i 
 and having heard no more from him, she had 
 decided that he had made up his mind to 
 regard her refusal to renew the terms upon 
 which they had once stood as final, and to 
 accept it without further remonstrance. 
 
 She was relieved on the whole, and though 
 perhaps not without a slight sense of pique, 
 she could not but allow that, especially in a 
 neighbourhood where he and his affairs were 
 so well known and likely to be so freely 
 canvassed, it was well that her past connec-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 63 
 
 tion with him should remain unguessed. It 
 was of this that she was speaking to her 
 sister one afternoon as they were returning 
 from their drive about five o'clock. 
 
 ' My letter has evidently put an effectual 
 end to the affair,' she was saying. ' I was 
 decided enough, though I was civil — ex- 
 tremely civil. Civility is the only thing that 
 does carry conviction; people always think 
 it is temper if you are not. I must say I 
 am relieved that it should all be decided 
 before he comes down to this part of the 
 country — if he does come, that is, which I 
 suppose is doubtful under the circumstances. 
 Leaving myself out of the question ' — it may 
 be mentioned that this was a figure of speech 
 of the wildest description ; Mrs. Ross never 
 had been known, on any occasion whatever, 
 to leave herself out of the question — ' leaving 
 myself out of the question, I should have 
 been very sorry to have been the means of
 
 64 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 bringing you into contact with Mr. Yer- 
 schoyle. I shudder to think of Sir Cyril's 
 feelings, should he have discovered that I had 
 done so.' 
 
 She laughed maliciously as she spoke. 
 
 ' Sir Cyril ?' repeated Eve with rather cold 
 inquiry. 
 
 'You do not mean to deny that he has a 
 special interest in the matter ? How long are 
 you going to keep him waiting, Eve ?' 
 
 The girl turned a little away. It was the 
 first time that the subject had been openly 
 broached between them, yet she knew, nor 
 would she denv her knowledo^e of it, thnt 
 Sir Cyril Courtney teas waiting ; and she 
 also knew — but this she had only quite lately 
 admitted even to herself — that it was possible 
 he might not wait in vain. Xothing could 
 have made her realize so clearly as this 
 consciousness the deadness of the past. She 
 would have rejoiced, had it been in her j^ower
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 65 
 
 to answer, as she would have done a year 
 ago, that it was impossible, out of the 
 question — to have resented the very sugges- 
 tion as an insult, both to her living, and to 
 Harry dead. But as it wfls, she knew, with 
 the inexorable truthfulness that was part of 
 her character, that the reason which so short 
 a time ago would have seemed all-sufficient 
 Avas gone — vanished ; and in its absence it 
 appeared likely that there would be none 
 ■other of sufficient strength to withstand much 
 longer Sir Cyril's own gentle, though hitherto 
 only half - expressed, persistence and the 
 wishes of his mother, aided and abetted as 
 they were by the strong affection she bore 
 them both. Perhaps, as her sister spoke, her 
 most prominent feeling was regret that she 
 liad not been married to Harry Courtney, 
 since such an arrangement would have 
 enabled her to retain his broth ei as her own 
 without danger of future complications. She 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 could hardly have loved Cyril more had he 
 been her brother indeed — he was the closest 
 friend the world held for her — but perhaps 
 that very love made her the less willing to 
 contemplate a change in the terms upon 
 w^hich they stood. Had she cared for him 
 less, less w^ould have been at stake. Her 
 sister had been w^atchim^ her curiouslv, and 
 now spoke again. 
 
 ' How long are you. going to keep him 
 w^aiting, Eve ?' she persisted. 
 
 ' I do not know,' said the girl slowly. It 
 was a confession, and she knew it. 
 
 They had turned in some minutes before 
 at the lodge-gates, and were drawing up at 
 the door. Kit, who was kneeling upon the 
 step of the porch, engaged in spinning a top 
 of a particularly attractive description, rose at 
 their approach, and desisted from his occupa- 
 tion, hailing ^ their arrival with the alacrity of 
 one who has news of interest which he is
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 67 
 
 ready and anxious to impart. His voice 
 reached them almost before the carria^'e 
 stopped. 
 
 • The man is here what caught Tommy 
 when he runned away,' he cried. Kit's 
 conversation, though fluent, and marked with 
 considerable acuteness, was not characterized 
 by grammatical correctness. 'He is waiting 
 in the drawing-room.' 
 
 'Mr. Yerschoyle!' exclaimed his mother, 
 with undisguised consternation. * Are you 
 sure it is he, Kit ? When did he come?' 
 
 ' About half an hour ago, ma'am,' said the 
 butler, coming forward. ' I informed him 
 that you and Miss Carrington were out 
 driving ; but he said that he had come upon 
 business, and would wait.' Jones's tone was 
 severe and disapproving to the last degree. 
 
 ' He is in the drawing-room ?' asked Mrs. 
 Ross, with an effort at disguising her dismay. 
 ' There, Eve !' she said in an undertone, as 
 
 5—2
 
 68 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 the man retired. ' That comes of congratu- 
 lating one's self too soon. What is to be done 
 now ? What on earth can have brought him 
 here? I am sure my letter was explicit 
 enough. What shall I do ? 
 
 * I suppose you can't refuse to see him,' 
 returned the girl. ' Delay, at all events, will 
 do no good. You had better go in at once.' 
 
 * I suppose I must. But promise not to 
 leave us for long alone — one quarter of an 
 hour's tete-a-tete is all I will give him. Yes, 
 I know I said just now I would not be the 
 means of introducing you, but I can't help it. 
 Sir Cyril notwithstanding, you must promise 
 me to come and interrupt us.' 
 
 Eve gave the required pledge, though 
 reluctantly. She had a languid distaste to 
 the whole affair, and disliked the idea of being 
 mixed up in it, even to the extent of assisting 
 at the parting interview of her sister with the 
 man she had thrown over. It was evident,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 69 
 
 however, that Mrs. Ross would not let her 
 refuse without more difficulty than the matter 
 was worth, and she accordingly resigned her- 
 self to the inevitable. 
 
 AYhen Patricia had left her, she sat down on 
 the doorstep, idly watching her little nephew 
 and listening to his disjointed talk, whilst she 
 allowed her thoughts to wander away. At 
 her right there was a flower-bed under the 
 wall, where tall hollyhocks, not yet in bloom, 
 leant confidentially towards each other as if 
 imparting affairs of importance or gossip or 
 scandal, whilst a ribbon of mignonette below 
 made the air sweet. On her left, great heavy- 
 headed blush-roses were blowing on the wall. 
 The murmur of bees was all around. It w^as 
 a day when Xature seemed to have gone to 
 sleep, and only stirred from time to time in 
 dreamy contentment as a breeze passed over 
 it and rustled amongst the leaves. Kit 
 interrupted Miss Carrington's reflections.
 
 70 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Do you know Mi\ A^erschoyle ?' he 
 inquired, his eyes fixed on the top, which 
 .was just now spinning with marked success. 
 ^ No ? I do. Marie says he is a vaurien^ 
 finished Master Kit shrewdly. 
 
 ' Perhaps Marie does not know much about 
 it,' observed Eve absently, more from a dis- 
 like of the child's gossip than from any desire 
 to defend the subject of it. 
 
 Kit, however, resenting her scepticism, took 
 Vi^ arms. 
 
 ' She does know,' he retorted. ' She knows 
 all about it — she says she does. He stole 
 money once, and she said he would have been 
 2iforqat if he had got what he deserved.' 
 
 The srirl rose and moved awav. She did 
 not like her nephew, nor his conversation, and 
 had besides become aware that the quarter of 
 an hour had more than elapsed, at the end of 
 which she had promised Patricia to interrupt 
 her tete-a-tete with her exdover.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 71 
 
 She was not naturally shy; but still she 
 was conscious of some embarrassment as, 
 without allowing herself time for hesitation, 
 she opened the door of the drawing-room, 
 w^here the interview was taking place. 
 
 On the threshold, however, she paused. 
 Mrs. Ross was sitting on a low chair facing 
 her, just a little flushed and shaken out of her 
 habitual bright serenity. Above her, on the 
 hearthrug, stood Verschoyle. He was speak- 
 ing as Eve entered in a low measured voice, 
 but turned at the sound of the opening door, 
 and for a second faced her. 
 
 Sometimes in days to come Eve recalled 
 that moment, and her first look at his face, 
 with a vain and unavailing wonder that no 
 instinct had told her what it was to become 
 to her, that no compassionate warning had 
 been vouchsafed. But none such came. 
 
 ' What a handsome face !' was her first 
 thought ; ' what a disagreeable one !' her
 
 72 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 second, as involuntarily Patricia's comment 
 upon his temper recurred to her mind. It 
 well might. 
 
 Every line of his countenance was set and 
 hard, his brows drawn together till they made 
 a straight black bar across his forehead ; 
 whilst the total absence of any sort of 
 violence, either of voice or manner, only 
 served to emphasize the restraint he was 
 putting upon himself. 
 
 It was but a moment before, acknowledging 
 with a slight bow the introduction that Mrs. 
 Ross, with manifest relief, hastened to make, 
 he turned to her again. If she had imagined 
 that her sister's presence would serve to put 
 an end to the discussion of disturbing topics, 
 she was to find out her mistake. Scarcely 
 pausing for a moment, he again took up the 
 thread of what he had been saying when 
 interrupted by Eve's entrance, and as if 
 unconscious of the presence of a third person.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. n 
 
 Perhaps he had detected and resolved to 
 defeat Patricia's object. 
 
 ' Let us understand each other at last,' he 
 said. ' It would have been better had we 
 done so earlier. I am to understand that you 
 refuse me, not because, as you stated six 
 months ago, I am poor, nor because, as you 
 wrote last week, your mind has changed since 
 the time you promised to marry me, but 
 because I am a disgraced man ? Have I 
 expressed your meaning correctly ?' 
 
 ^ Why will you force me to put into words 
 what it is at least as painful to me to say as 
 it can be to you to hear ?' 
 
 With surprise Eve noticed a certain slight 
 quiver in her sister's voice ; she had yet to 
 learn that surface emotions are most easily 
 roused when there is no depth below* 
 Yerschoyle perhaps had judged Patricia with 
 greater accuracy when he had selected his 
 present mode of procedure as the one which
 
 74 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 would o;ive him the chance of a reveno;e, 
 which, slight as it might be, was all that 
 it lay in his power to inflict upon the shallow 
 and selfish nature of the woman who had 
 wronged and deceived him. Of what ad- 
 ditional pain might accrue to himself in the 
 process he recked little. He was a man who, 
 like Samson, would have pulled down the 
 pillars of the house to crush his enemies, 
 though he himself should be involved in their 
 destruction. 
 
 ' I am sorry if it gives you pain,' he said. 
 His voice never changed from its level 
 modulations, but a touch of sarcasm found 
 its way into it as he spoke. ' I am sorry 
 to force you to say what gives you pain, 
 but you may set your solicitude at rest as 
 regards my share of it. It is my desire — it 
 is the reason for which I have souo;ht this 
 interview — to have a distinct answer to the 
 question I have asked. Shall I repeat it ?
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 75 
 
 Is it now — and was it six months ago — 
 because I am a disgraced man that you have 
 refused to marry me ?' 
 
 There was a m.oment's pause. All had 
 happened so rapidly that Eve still stood on 
 the threshold. Till now she had had no 
 time to consider or to feel anything save a 
 painful sense of intrusion. Now, however, 
 hastily reviewing her position, she decided 
 that no promise to her sister should compel 
 her to be a further witness of the scene. But 
 as she turned to go Patricia's voice arrested 
 her. 
 
 ' Stay, Eve,' she said ; ' do not go.' 
 
 Still the girl hesitated — not for her own 
 sake only, but for Verschoyle's. Surely he 
 had a right to the explanation he had sought, 
 and to receive it unwitnessed. As if divining 
 her thoughts he, too, turned. 
 
 ' Pray stay, Miss Carrington,' he said, ' if 
 your sister prefers that you should be pre-
 
 76 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 sent. It can make no difference to me who 
 hears the answer to the question I have 
 asked.' 
 
 Again there was a silence. Eve had 
 crossed over to the window-seat, and there 
 sat doAvn. 
 
 Glancing up at Gilbert she saw' that his 
 eyes were fixed on her sister, relentlessly com- 
 pelling her answer; and, as she looked, she 
 realized that, however it might have been 
 once, the passion that darkened them now 
 bore no relationship to love. He waited in 
 absolute silence. 
 
 ' Since you Avill have it — }'es,' Patricia said 
 at last. 
 
 ' And the reasons you gave me, then and 
 now, were false ?' he said. 
 
 ' Yes ;' her voice was barely audible. 
 
 ' Then there is nothing more to say, except 
 that if you had told me the truth six months 
 ago it would have saved us both this, and I,
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 
 
 77 
 
 at least, should have been the last to blame 
 you: 
 
 He turned to go. Patricia looked up. She 
 had risen and stood before him, her white 
 hands clasped, her hazel eyes, wet with tears, 
 raised to his. She did not, perhaps, love him ; 
 she had spoken with absolute and unusual 
 honesty when she had told Eve that she had 
 no heart ; yet now some transitory emotion 
 swaved her. There was nothinsr in Gilbert 
 Verschoyle, nothing in the traged}^ and ruin 
 of his life, that had poAver to move her; yet 
 looking at his face, darkened with an anger 
 and a contempt she only dimly understood, 
 and remembering, as she could not choose but 
 do, that he was the man she had once at least 
 believed herself to love, some faint regret 
 stirred within her, though untouched by re- 
 pentance. 
 
 ' Gilbert, forgive me,' she said. 
 
 ' Forgive you — I have nothing to forgive.'
 
 78 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 He paused and looked her steadily in the face, 
 scanning it line by line. ' Yet I will do more 
 - — I tJumk you.' 
 
 He turned to leave the room. As he did 
 so, moved by a sudden impulse, Eve came 
 forward. 
 
 'Good-bye,' she said. 
 
 He paused, surprised, and took the hand 
 she had held out, meeting the grave eyes slie 
 raised to his. 
 
 ' Good-bye,' he said, then dropping her 
 hand, was gone. 
 
 As the door closed behind him, Patricia 
 turned to her sister ; already the momentary 
 ripple of emotion which had stirred her was 
 over. Kelief, clear and manifest, w^as in her 
 face, and in the long breath she drew. 
 
 * Well, that is over,' she said. ' What do 
 you think of him?' 
 
 ' He is not guilty,' answered Eve absently. 
 
 ' What ! tried and acquitted !' said Patricia,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 7^ 
 
 with a light langh. ' May one ask your 
 grounds ? You heard him — he did not deny 
 it. Upon what do you found your asser- 
 tion ?' 
 
 'I don't know — nothing, I suppose,' an- 
 swered the girl ; ' but I am sure that he is 
 innocent.' 
 
 ' Don't be too sure, my dear child,' said 
 ^Irs. Koss gaily ; ' or rather be as sure as yoit 
 like, but don't act upon your certainty. It is 
 a safe rule in life to believe everyone to be 
 good — which is pleasant ; and to act upon the 
 opposite assumption — which is wise.' 
 
 She laughed again, but Eve did not re- 
 spond. Verschoyle's face was still before her, his 
 bitter words in her ears ; and yet it was not 
 them alone which lent the sadness to her eyes 
 as she gazed out into the yellowing light of 
 the summer evening. It was as if through 
 them a vista had been opened to her into 
 another sphere than that — pure, serene, and
 
 So ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 untroubled — in which she was an habitual 
 dweller ; and she gazed with sad and fasci- 
 nated eyes into a world of lost possibilities, of 
 trampled; ideals and wrecked hopes ; a world in 
 which poor humanity struggled in vain, and 
 asfonized, and was lost. It is stransre with 
 what suddenness such glimpses into other 
 worlds than our own visit us, flashing across 
 our vision with the blinding vividness of 
 lightning, and sometimes vanishing almost as 
 swiftly, leaving behind them only a dim recol- 
 lection of gates rolled back, and of sights and 
 sounds — of possibilities^ — other than those of 
 which we had dreamt, and which confuse and 
 bewilder us wdth their new and startling sig- 
 nificance. We can scarcely trace, perhaps, 
 whence they came, how they originated ; but 
 one thing is certain, that once having been, 
 they are never completely forgotten. Ignor- 
 ance is retrievable, knowledge never. The 
 realization, brought home for the first time,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 that side by side with the world of mercy and 
 truth in which our lines may have been cast,' 
 there exist others in which wrong^ and in- 
 justice and cruelty are triumphant, and 
 tyranny bears sway, corresponds in the moral 
 and spiritual sphere to the effect that the first: 
 personal realization of death in the physical 
 world produces. It had been believed in 
 before, now it is known, and the taint and 
 brand of mortality lies upon all living 
 things. 
 
 Truly many worlds exist, some touching 
 and intersecting each other, but of which the 
 inhabitants are ignorant of the language of any 
 save their own ; some, again, as remote and 
 separated by as wide and deep a gulf as that 
 across which Dives cried to Abraham in vain, 
 but from which some Lazarus still looks 
 down in pity, and would fain quit Abraham's 
 bosom to go and slake, if so he might, the 
 thirst of some sinner below. 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 S2 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 To Eve Carrington, Verschoyle had been all 
 unconsciously the exponent and interpreter of 
 a new world more tragic than any at which 
 she had yet guessed. 
 
 ' He is innocent/ she repeated to herself, 
 as she had before said to her sister — ' I know 
 that he is innocent ; but the brand of the 
 accusation is on his life, and it is ruining him 
 body and soul. God help him!*
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 T was some few days later when 
 one morning not long after break- 
 fast was over, Eve and Mrs. Ross, 
 wlio were sitting together in the drawing- 
 room, were interrupted by a visitor. 
 
 ' I suppose I ought to apologize for coming 
 so early,' said Sir Cyril Courtney, opening 
 the door and entering unannounced. It was 
 a habit he had retained from the days when 
 he and Eve had expected to be brother and 
 sister, and Eve looked up with a smile of 
 welcome. To her, indeed, he seldom came 
 amiss. 
 
 He was a man of perhaps eight or nine and 
 
 (o—2
 
 84 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 twenty, not above middle height, although, 
 owing to the smallness of his head, he 
 gave the impression of being taller. His 
 hair, smooth and close cut, was of the 
 light shade of brown which borders upon 
 yellow ; he had keen restless eyes, and a 
 thin face with marked features, whilst the 
 touch of colour upon the cheekbones, easily 
 produced by any excitement or annoyance, 
 gave an impression of delicacy confirmed 
 by the narrow build of his chest and 
 shoulders. It was a face denoting more 
 weakness than strength, and there were, 
 moreover, lines about the thin flexible mouth, 
 unshaded by any moustache, which indicated a 
 tendency to discontent or querulousness ; yet, 
 taken altogether, he was not without a certain 
 attractiveness of his own which took effect on 
 his surroundings. Whatever might be the 
 reason, he was a man who generally got his 
 way, whether because he was in the habit of
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 85 
 
 taking it for granted that such would be the 
 case, or whether he obtained it by the touch 
 of feminine weakness which was characteristic 
 of him, rather than by the influence of more 
 masculine qualities. However that might be, 
 and whatever might be his faults and defici- 
 encies, there were few people that Eve loved 
 more than Cyril Courtney. It was an affec- 
 tion made up of many fibres, interwoven with 
 old memories, common sorrows, and the close- 
 ness of present intimacy, and partaking 
 somew^hat of the inalienable and ineradicable 
 nature commonly supposed to belong only to 
 ties of blood. 
 
 ' I ought to apologize,' he repeated. ^ But 
 to-day, at least, I am not without excuse. 
 My mother sent me.' 
 
 He had come forward and had shaken 
 hands with Eve and Mrs. Ross, before pro- 
 ceeding to take possession of the biggest 
 armchair the room aiforded. Sir Cyril, Eve
 
 86 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 sometimes told him, had an absohite genius 
 for making himself comfortable : he would 
 have contrived it even under the most unpro- 
 mising circumstances — in a railway waiting- 
 room, or a third-class carriage. 
 
 ' My mother hopes you will both come and 
 stay next week. If I could have seen you 
 separately I should have held out different 
 inducements. I should have told you, Mrs. 
 Ross, that you would find a brilliant and 
 witty company assembled to meet you ; and 
 Eve, that charity compelled her to come and 
 help us to entertain the dullest party we 
 could possibly have got together. Finding 
 you, however, both here, I have no alternative 
 but to deliver my mother's message honestly.' 
 
 ' One is obliged to have recourse to truth 
 occasionally, as a last resource,' observed Mrs. 
 Ross parenthetically. 
 
 ' Oh, not often,' replied Sir Cyril. ' One 
 likes to keep it in reserve ; it is emphatically
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 87 
 
 one of the thino-s not intended for common 
 use. I am sure you agree with me ?' 
 
 He had "glanced at Mrs. Ross Avith a brifrht 
 keen glance, not unmingled Avith irony, and 
 suggestive of some recollection on his part of 
 Patricia's characteristics. Eve, too, glanced 
 at her sister, sensible of a slight curiosity as 
 to Mrs. Ross's reply. The latter, however,, 
 was embarrassed neither by Cyril's appeal 
 nor by Eve's observation, though she was not 
 unaware of it. 
 
 ' Agree with you ? well, perhaps so,' she 
 answered ; * I reverence truth too much to 
 love it. But to return from the moral to the 
 practical question, may we not hear what was 
 Lady Courtney's message ?' 
 
 'I was coming to that. It is that her 
 guests are a dull set, and that she makes it 
 her special request that you will give her 
 your assistance in entertaining them.' 
 
 ' Are you sure that you are delivering your
 
 88 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 mother's message correctly after all ?' asked 
 Eve. ' Has she ever been known to call her 
 guests, or indeed anyone else, dull ?' - 
 
 ^ I was true to the sph-it, though perhaps 
 not to the letter. That is my idea of veracity 
 — people conimonly reverse it. What she did 
 say was that she ^vas afraid they might find 
 it dull, which comes to precisely the same 
 thing. You should correct your tendency 
 to a carping and cavilling spirit, Miss 
 Carrington. If half a dozen people are 
 incapable of amusing each other, it follows 
 that they are dull people, and in this case 
 the inference is certainlv correct. Therefore, 
 I appeal to your charity. Eve, at least, has 
 a fund of it — haven't you discovered it, Mrs. 
 Ross — a tendency to espouse the cause of the 
 worst specimens of the human race ?' 
 
 ' Yes, perhaps so,' replied Patricia. ' Yes,' 
 as she remembered the incident of two days 
 ago — ' I believe you are right.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 89 
 
 ' I am sure I am. Her capacity for 
 idealism is simply boundless, and of course 
 the lower the object you select to exercise 
 it upon, the greater the scope it affords. 
 AYell, to return — Eve's charity will bring 
 her, I am sure ; and you, Mrs. lloss, can 
 borrow a little of hers. She Avill never miss 
 it, even if you do not remember to give it 
 back when done with ; and I think I can 
 promise you will be honest in that respect. 
 It is a most inconvenient commodity to carry 
 about with you.' 
 
 ' Do you speak from experience ?' inquired 
 Patricia. It may be observed that Cyril was 
 not noted for his general good-nature. 
 
 ' I do. I tried it once — long ago, when I 
 was young and impressionable. I never 
 spoke any harm of anyone for a week — 
 never took away a character, or made an 
 ill-natured remark ; but I couldn't keep it 
 up. My best friends began to find me tire-:
 
 90 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 some. Then I tried doing kind actions, as 
 the copy-books say, but that answered still 
 worse. Not one of them turned out well. 
 My worst failure was when I undertook to 
 propose to a lady for a man who was too 
 shy to manage it for himself. I did it so 
 Avell, too. She accepted me — him, I mean — 
 at once; but would you believe it — I found 
 it was the other sister he had meant, and sIlc 
 had meant me ! I was never more crushed in 
 my life.' 
 
 ' It was inconvenient,' observed Mrs. Ross 
 sympathetically. ' What did you do ?' 
 
 ' Oh, I got them married — I insisted upon 
 it. I told him she was much nicer than her 
 sister. I dare say she was. I didn't like 
 either of them.' 
 
 'And what did you tell her — that he was 
 nicer than you ?' 
 
 'Xo, that would have been too much for 
 my conscience; he wasn't nice at all. That
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 91 
 
 Avas the reason,' plaintively, ' that I under- 
 took the business. Xo woman in her senses 
 could have accepted him if he had proposed 
 for himself. No, I told her I could not 
 betray my friend's confidence — it sounded 
 very Avell — also that he was just about twice 
 as well off as I was. She made up her 
 mind to it, and the marriage has turned out 
 remarkably well, except that my friend has 
 never liked me quite as well since. It is 
 ungrateful of him, after all I went through. 
 Then you will come ? I may tell my mother 
 she may reckon upon you? It will really be 
 a relief to her; slie is not equal to enter- 
 taining a houseful unassisted. I often wish/ 
 with a veiled glance at Eve, ' that she had a 
 daughter.' 
 
 ' You have not yet told us who we are to 
 have the pleasure of meeting,' observed Eve, 
 interrupting Sir Cyril's reflections. ^ Of what 
 does the party consist?'
 
 92 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Let me think. There is Lord Ralston — 
 I put him lirst, because he invariably puts 
 himself so. He is a man with a future— I 
 think that exactly describes him. There is 
 nothing else worth mentioning about him. I 
 detest men with futures ; they are a class by 
 themselves. A man with a past is bad 
 enough ; but at least there is a chance it may 
 contain something or somebody besides him- 
 self, whereas a man's future never does.' 
 
 ' You are quite right,' agreed Mrs. Ross. 
 ^ x\lso, there is nothing to attack in a man's 
 future. It places one at a great disadvantage. 
 We are to understand, then, that you dislike 
 Lord Ralston ?' 
 
 ' Very much,' answered Sir Cyril candidly. 
 ^ He is one of the few men who possess abso- 
 lutely no redeeming points in my eyes. I used 
 to take some little interest in annoying him ; 
 but I even got tired of that. I had discovered 
 that he liked arguing better than anything
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 93, 
 
 else in the wo.' id, so I not only made a point 
 of agreeing with him, but emphasized all his 
 remarks. He has such a contempt for my 
 intellect that he began to doubt the wisdom 
 of his own views when he discovered that I 
 shared them. He hates me,' concluded Sir 
 Cyril with satisfaction ; ' I never succeeded 
 better ; he never addresses me now when he 
 can possibly help it. Then the Erskines are 
 coming ; the parson and his sisters. I should 
 rather like the Miss Erskines if they were not 
 so active, and did not expect to be taken to 
 w^alk or drive every day ; and, besides, they 
 talk slang. I hate a woman wdio talks 
 slang. The brother is a good little chap. 
 I like him. I met him this morning, by the 
 w^ay/ laughing at the recollection. ' He is 
 sorely exercised in his ministerial mind about 
 an addition lately made to his flock. It seems 
 Yerschoyle has come home — the fellow^ who 
 forged, you know — and Erskine is afraid he
 
 94 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 may liave a bad influence on the parish ; a 
 case of wickedness in high places. I com- 
 forted him by assurances that he couldn't pos- 
 sibly intend to live there ; but little Erskine 
 was quite perturbed. I believe he Avas not 
 certain that it was not his duty to try and 
 reclaim the sinner.' 
 
 ' Did he ask your advice ?' inquired ]\Irs. 
 Ross rather nervously, as Eve made no com- 
 ment. 
 
 ' Xot exactly, but I gave it. I advised him 
 to let Yerschoyle alone. Well, then, two or 
 three more men are coming, and that is all. 
 It does not sound lively, does it ? But a 
 week can't last for ever with the best will in 
 the world, and I dare say we shall survive it. 
 You will come ?' 
 
 He had turned to Eve, and she assented ; 
 yielding also to his subsequent suggestion 
 that she should accompany him as far as the 
 stables, where he had left his horse.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 95 
 
 They walked down the avenue, talking' of 
 Mrs Ross and her stay at Xortons, of familiar 
 and unembarrassing topics ; but through all 
 Eve was vaguely and disquietingly conscious, 
 as she had not seldom been of late, that a dis- 
 turbing element was growing daily more a]3t 
 to interrupt the ease of their intercourse. In 
 the presence of others it Avas less apparent ; 
 but when with Cyril alone, there was a rest- 
 lessness, almost amounting to impatience, in 
 his manner which troubled her. She knew, 
 as her sister had said, that he was waiting, 
 and perhaps guessed that, though he dared 
 not as yet put it to the touch, he was begin - 
 nino; to find the waiting' lon^f. She siofhed 
 as she noticed the occasional jar in his 
 voice, and the little touches of temper that 
 betrayed themselves, as it were, in spite of 
 himself. 
 
 ^ You should have the trees thinned/ he 
 said, as they came to a spot where several of a
 
 96 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 group were pressing upon one another. * They 
 will be spoilt/ 
 
 ' Perhaps you are right,' answered the girl. 
 ' I will speak to Baylis about it. He told me 
 some time ago that it ought to be done, but I 
 put it oiF. I like to leave everything as it is 
 as long as possible.' 
 
 ' I am glad you added that saving clause,' 
 said Courtney. 'What can remain as it is ? If 
 you force a thing to be stationary, it only 
 means death to itself or its neio;hbours. Look 
 at the destruction that larch is inflicting 
 around it. It is, after all, only selfishness 
 "dressed up as sentiment.' He was trying to 
 speak lightly, but there was a tone in liis 
 voice which belied his attempt. ' Sometimes/ 
 he added abruptly, and with seeming irrele- 
 vance to the subject in hand — * sometimes I 
 hate the past.' 
 
 * The past ?' repeated Eve absently. She 
 was thinking for how long the past had
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 97 
 
 seemed to her to contain all that "was worth 
 loving, how even her affection for Cyril him- 
 self owed half its force and depth to it. ' What 
 is the past ? Nothing is really past so long 
 iis it lives in us. It is of our faithlessness 
 alone that it is born.* 
 
 She was speaking dreamily ; but Cyril looked 
 at her with a sort of restless impatience. 
 
 ' You would like the impossible/ he said. 
 * You would like to prove that the world can 
 stand still, and everything remain as it was. 
 You are wrong; however convincing your 
 arguments may be, " e imr si muovey ' 
 
 Eve did not at once answer. Certain of his 
 words had struck home, and raised a question 
 in her own heart. Was her lingering over 
 the past, her reluctance to dissociate herself 
 from it by what would be a new departure — 
 Avas it indeed, as he had hinted, selfishness 
 in the form of sentiment ? She looked at Cyril 
 rather wistfully, but made no answer ; and a 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 few minutes later, having readied the stables, 
 they parted. As she walked back alone to 
 the house, her head bent and her eyes on the 
 ground, Eve pondered. She knew that, though 
 Cyril's words had been spoken in jest, he Jiad 
 meant what they implied, and she wondered if 
 the implication was just. Was she selfish ? 
 Was she wasting the life of the man she loved 
 best in the world, the dearest friend — with all 
 his faults — that she possessed, for no good 
 reason? The question forced itself on her in 
 spite of herself, and bringing with it the 
 consciousness that the answer to it could not 
 be long delayed. 
 
 ***** 
 When, an hour later, Cyril entered his 
 mother's sitting-room, he found her alone and 
 engaged with some white work, which she put 
 down as he came in. She had a sweet placid 
 face and fair hair, as yet only touched with grey, 
 smoothed away under a cap of soft, fine lace.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 99 
 
 ' Yes, they will come/ he said, in answer to 
 her question. ' I told Eve that you could not 
 do without her. I was right, was I not?' 
 comhio; to lean over the back of her chair. 
 He had the manner, caressing if exacting, of 
 a spoilt child. 
 
 ' Quite right, my dear,' answered Lady 
 Courtney. ' Did you tell her ' — with a gentle 
 smile — 'that you could not do without her 
 either ?' 
 
 He too smiled, though colouring slightly. 
 
 ' Not yet,' he said. There were no secrets 
 between them. 
 
 ' You are patient,' she said, with something 
 not unlike a sigh. 
 
 ' That,' he answered, a momentary cloud 
 crossing his face, ' is a virtue that has been 
 forced upon me. And what have you been 
 doino^ this morninci:?' he added, chano^inor the 
 subject. 
 
 ' Little Dorothy Yerschoyle has been here. 
 
 7—2
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Poor child, I am sorry for her. I am sure 
 she feels her position.' 
 
 ' Dorothy Yerschoyle ?' repeated Cyril, 
 bringing his attention with some difficulty to 
 hear upon the subject. ' Why is she to be 
 pitied ? Oh, you mean because of her unlucky 
 brother. It is unfortunate, certainly — the 
 more so since her father chose to die in that 
 casual way. She is actually left to this man's 
 guardianship, isn't she?' 
 
 ^ His sole guardianship — yes. It is most 
 unfortunate, poor little girl ! If she had not 
 such good principles I should feel very 
 
 anxious about her ; and as it is ' 
 
 ' As it is, my dear mother, I don't think 
 3^ou need feel the slightest uneasiness about 
 Miss Dorothy. I am sorry for her, of course, 
 and I think it is an instance of the irony of 
 destiny to have put such a little piece of pro- 
 priety into the guardianship of a man like 
 Yerschoyle. There is really a sort of dramatic
 
 ALLEGIANCE. lor 
 
 incongruity about it ; but I think you need 
 Lave no fear that she will be led into evil 
 courses. She has far too profound a sense of 
 what is due to herself. In two or three years, 
 when she is grown up, the real inconvenience 
 of the situation will appear.' 
 
 * She tells me he is come home.' 
 ' Ah, so Erskine said. I suppose he has 
 only just run down to see to things. He 
 cannot be meaning to stay.' 
 
 ' I think he is — from what the child 
 said. I did not like to ask her much about 
 him.' 
 
 ' It will be a most ill-judged proceeding if 
 he does/ said Sir Cyril, with some heat, 
 ' The only thing for a man of that sort to do — 
 especially if he has the luck to have money- 
 is to take himself clean off to a new place and 
 try to make a fresh start of it. Here, where 
 every soul knows his story, it is an impossible 
 position.'
 
 02 
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Yet it seems hard on him,' said Lady 
 Courtney softl3\ 
 
 ' He has been hard upon himself/ retorted 
 Sir Cyril. ' A man ought to suffer the penalty 
 of his acts. Where would society be if he 
 did not? Women — forgive me, my dearest- 
 mother — never take a right view of these 
 thino^s. It seems there is some mental in- 
 capacity about them which prevents it. They 
 are invariably soft where they ought to be 
 hard, and hard where they ought to be soft. 
 I am as sorry as you can be for the whole 
 business ; and I am the last man in the world 
 to be hard on a fellow when he is down — I 
 have not the belief in human nature and the 
 impossible standard of virtue that such an 
 inclination presupposes ; but after all there 
 must be limits to toleration, and I think 
 dishonesty — cheating, in fact — marks that 
 limit.' 
 
 * Then you will not leave your card?'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 103 
 
 ' No.' He got up and went to stand over 
 the empty fireplace. ' No, I don't see that it 
 would do anything but harm ; it could only 
 lead to complications in the future. I couldn't 
 have a fellow of that kind about the house ; 
 it is not fair upon the people who might meet 
 him. You must see it yourself, my dear 
 mother' — -Sir Cyril spoke with some impa- 
 tience; all the more because, as he had said, 
 he was not a man to be hard upon another 
 when he was down, and felt somewhat 
 aggiieved by having such a position forced 
 upon him by circumstances — ' you must see 
 
 it yourself. Imagine Eve — anyone ' he 
 
 broke off. * I have no doubt life has been 
 rough enough upon Yerschoyle, poor beggar ; 
 but that doesn't alter the facts, or one's duty 
 towards society. I can't have a forger, 
 who happened to escape conviction, at the 
 house.' 
 
 * I suppose you are right,' said his mother ;
 
 104 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 but she sighed as she took up her work 
 again. Perhaps Cyril was right, and women 
 have a natural incapacity for taking a just 
 view on such subjects.
 
 CHAPTER Yl. 
 
 iT was, after all, alone that Eve set 
 out the next week to keep her 
 engagement and pay the promised 
 visit to the Courtneys. 
 
 At the last moment Mrs. Ross had received 
 a communication from her solicitor, which 
 rendered it necessary that she should go at 
 once to London to sign j)apers and transact 
 business, though she hoped to get it done in 
 time to return the next day and join her sister 
 at Mace Court. 
 
 ' It is very tiresome,' she had said discon- 
 tentedly, when the summons arrived b}' the 
 afternoon post the day before. ' Old Kent is
 
 io6 ' ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 so fussy ; he declares it is absolutely necessary 
 the papers should be signed at once. I wish 
 he would do it himself. It would be an 
 indictable offence ? Well, what if it is ? it 
 is just like his selfishness not to be willing 
 to run the risk rather than bring me up to 
 London in this weather.' 
 
 ' You have a high standard of unselfish- 
 ness,' said Eve, unable to suppress a smile. 
 
 ' Ah, I know what you mean. You think 
 I am selfish myself. Perhaps I am, but I 
 only want to be happy and enjoy life. No- 
 body else has a right to my happiness. 
 Everybody should look out for themselves, 
 and then everybody w^ould be properly 
 attended to ; whereas the state of affairs, 
 which has somehow got to be considered the 
 ideal one, is exactly like a badly managed 
 Irish household, where all the servants — from 
 the best of motives, no doubt — are running 
 about doing each other's work. Nobody
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 107 
 
 knows our wants so well as we do; there- 
 fore it is onl}^ common-sense to say we had 
 each better take care of om^selves. It is the 
 unusual case of an exactly balanced state of 
 supply and demand — one person to attend to 
 one person, whereas on the opposite theory 
 everyone is to attend to everyone, except 
 themselves. It comes to exactly the same 
 thing in the end, only the work is done 
 badly instead of well.' 
 
 ' And what if two people happen to want 
 the same thing ?' 
 
 /Ah, then comes in the droit du j)Iuh fort. 
 After all, it is the easiest way of settling the 
 matter.' 
 
 Eve was silent, half amused, half sad. She 
 knew Patricia's theories were actually those 
 upon which she based her life and conduct. 
 She never combated, never even openly 
 blamed them; she had long lived down her 
 young impatience of low standards and
 
 io8 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 unworthy rules of life, and she had also 
 outlived her young hope of changing them 
 where they existed. She Avas accustomed to 
 take people as she found them — a little sad, 
 perhaps, but neither hard upon them nor 
 impatient. 
 
 Mrs. Ross started early the next morning, 
 intending to have the day in London, and 
 get, if possible, the business which had taken 
 her there completed. The weather was, 
 indeed, oj^pressively and unusually hot, even 
 for July. There had been no rain for weeks ; 
 the roads were white and dusty, and the 
 lawns and hedges parched. 
 
 Eve's head had been aching all day, and 
 she had put off her seven miles' drive till an 
 hour when the heat might be reasonably 
 expected to have, in some degree at least, 
 spent itself. It was, therefore, between five 
 and six in the evening that she set off. 
 
 She Avas tired by the long hot day, and.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 109 
 
 lay back in a corner of the carriage, closing 
 her eyes, and giving herself up to the 
 luxurious dreaminess which rapid movement 
 through the air, coupled with physical weari- 
 ness, is wont to produce. She was, however, 
 doomed to interruption. They had not gone 
 flxr — Avere, in fact, not more than two or 
 three miles from home — when, having just 
 descended a steep hill covered with loose 
 rolling stones, the coachman drew up with 
 a jerk. 
 
 ' Is anything wrong ?' she asked, opening 
 her eyes. ' What is the matter, Griffiths T 
 
 ' One of the horses has cast a shoe, ma'am,' 
 returned that functionary, having descended 
 to ascertain the extent of the mischief. ' He 
 is going lame, too.' 
 
 * How very inconvenient !' exclaimed Eve. 
 She knew the country well ; they were at 
 least four miles from their destination, and 
 she was well aware, moreover, that there
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 was no forge nearer than the one in the little 
 village below N^ortons. ' How very incon- 
 venient ! What can be done ?' 
 
 ' I am sure I don't know, miss/ replied 
 Griffiths. ' I am afraid we must just drive 
 him slowly home.' 
 
 Eve considered. By the time she reached 
 Nortons it would be already past six, and 
 before she could make another start it would 
 be certainly too late to bring her to Mace 
 in time for dinner. However, there was 
 evidently no alternative, and she was pre- 
 paring to acquiesce in Griffiths's decision, 
 when a dogcart, driving rapidly from the 
 direction in which they had come, slackened 
 its pace preparatory to passing the carriage, 
 which filled up most of the space in the 
 narrow lane, and then pulled up short at the 
 sight of Griffiths, still standing on the road, 
 contemplating his horses with perplexity 
 depicted upon his face.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Is anything the matter ?' said a voice Eve 
 had heard before. 'Can I be of any assist- 
 ance T 
 
 She turned round with a swift movement, 
 and once more her eyes met those of Gilbert 
 Yerschoyle. 
 
 Her face had been turned away, and, coming 
 up behind, he had not recognised the occupant 
 of the carriage. As he caught sight of 
 her, and took off his hat in acknowledgment 
 of her bow, a change, slight but significant, 
 passed over his face, and he turned at once 
 again to the coachman, repeating his question 
 with a shade more of stiffness in his manner. 
 - Griffiths replied by an exhaustive account 
 of the accident, dilating moreover upon its 
 special inopportuneness. He was inclined to 
 be garrulous, and being unacquainted with 
 Yerschoyle's personal appearance, saw in him 
 only a gentleman evidently known to his 
 mistress.
 
 ti2 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Gilbert paused before he answered. When 
 he spoke it was without looking at Eve, and 
 in the perfunctory manner of a man who is 
 making an offer which civility demands, but 
 which he neither wishes nor expects to be 
 accepted. 
 
 ' If you like to avail yourself of my dog- 
 cart, Miss Carrington,' he said, ' it is quite at 
 your service. Your servant,' glancing at 
 Griffiths, * could no doubt leave the horses to 
 be taken home by the groom.' 
 
 He was makino; it clear that it was his doo^- 
 cart and not his escort that he was offering. 
 Eve hesitated. If the proposal had come from 
 any other man equally little known to her, she 
 would in all probability have declined it ; but 
 the very fact which would have operated with 
 most people in precisely the opposite direction 
 ■ — her knowledge, namely, of the character he 
 bore, and the consciousness which his manner 
 conveyed that he expected and anticipated a
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 113 
 
 refusal — made her hesitate. Griffiths, however, 
 interposed, in a low voice inaudible to the 
 groom : 
 
 ' I am very sorry, ma'am, but 1 could not 
 trust James to take the horses home. He only 
 came last week,' he added explanatorily to 
 Yerschoyle, 'and knows no more about driving 
 than a child.' 
 
 * Then I am afraid there is no help for it,' 
 said Yerschoyle. ' The engagement must be 
 broken, I am afraid, Miss Carrington — unless 
 indeed,' again he spoke with studied indiffer- 
 ence, 'you would let me leave you at Mace 
 Court.' 
 
 Again the thought of the construction he 
 would be likely to put upon a refusal on her 
 part was uppermost in her mind, as she 
 answered quickly. 
 
 ' Thank you,' she said. ' It would really 
 not take you too far out of your way ? then I 
 shall be very grateful.' 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 She had spoken without giving herself time 
 for consideration ; but she had scarcely uttered 
 the words before the sense of the anomaly of 
 her position seized upon her, accepting, as 
 she was doing, a favour from the man whom 
 her sister had thrown over. If she had failed 
 to perceive the singularity of the situation, it 
 would have been brought home to her by the 
 flash of surprise which, suppressed as it was 
 almost at once, yet crossed his face. It was, 
 however, done and irrevocable ; in two minutes 
 more he had helped her into the dogcart, and 
 she was driving rapidly by his side through 
 the narrow lanes. 
 
 As she realized more and more distinctly 
 the position into which she had put herself by 
 yielding to her ill-considered impulse, Eve 
 became, for one of the first times in her life, 
 the prey of an overwhelming embarrassment. 
 She was not used to be shy, though the quiet- 
 ness of her manner sometimes gave the im-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 115 
 
 pression that she was so ; but now her face 
 burnt, and her hands grew cokh Ah^eadj she 
 bitterly repented her rash act of Quixotism, as 
 she knew Patricia would have called it — would 
 call it now if, as she trusted would never be 
 the case, it came to her knowledge. She sat 
 looking straight before her in the short 
 silence that ensued, her hands nervouslv 
 clasping each other as they lay together 
 on her knee. 
 
 Yerschoyle, for his part, said nothing ; in- 
 stinctively she guessed that he would make no 
 effort to relieve any embarrassment she might 
 feel. He had made his offer because, under the 
 circumstances, he could scarcely do less ; and 
 since she had fallen into the inconceivable 
 mistake of accepting his proposal, he had had 
 no choice but to act upon it, but he evidently 
 meant to do nothing to help her to forget the 
 peculiarity of the situation. 
 
 Presently, feeling that anythiug would be 
 
 8—2
 
 ii6 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 preferable to silence, slie spoke in a low, rapid 
 tone, which was even a little tremulous. 
 
 ' It was fortunate for me that you happened 
 to pass,' she said. ' They are expecting me at 
 Mace, and I should have been terribly late if I 
 had had to return home again. I am so much 
 obliged to you.' 
 
 ' Pray do not mention it,' he answered 
 formally. ' The obligation is all on my side. 
 Also, I shall scarcely have to go two hundred 
 yards out of my way. The road runs straight 
 past the lodge-gates.' 
 
 ' You live some way beyond Mace, do you 
 not ?' she asked, catching at anything to say 
 rather than relapse into silence, and again 
 aware that she had no assistance to expect 
 from Yerschoyle in her efforts at conver- 
 sation. 
 
 * Two miles,' he answered laconically. 
 ' You had come far to-day,' she went on, 
 still with the sensation of laying hold of any
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 117 
 
 plank to enable lier to keep her head above 
 water. * Had you been to see the Grants ?' 
 
 * No/ he said shortly. ' I do not know 
 them. I know nobody.' 
 
 His tone completed her confusion. Un- 
 pleasant as it was, she guessed that it was not 
 unintentionally or accidentally so, but was 
 meant to be an explicit declaration of his 
 position, as if he might have imagined that 
 she had intended to sound him on the subject. 
 The fear that he might, indeed, have so mis- 
 understood her question deprived her of her 
 last remains of self-possession. 
 
 ' I — I beg your pardon,' she said hastily. 
 
 * What ! for imafi^inino^ that I mi^i^ht be 
 acquainted with the Grants? That, surely, 
 scarcely requires an apology — unless, indeed, 
 their acquaintance should be particularly com- 
 promising.' 
 
 Again his tone was disagreeable, as if he had 
 detected her embarrassment and was amusinof
 
 ii8 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 himself at her expense. Eve made no answer. 
 Absolutely and entirely miserable as she ^Yas, 
 she was feeUng acutely that she had only herself 
 to thank for the predicament in which slie was 
 placed, and the consciousness did not tend to 
 lessen her annoyance. Presently Verschoyle 
 bent to arrange her dress, which Avas 
 dangerously near the wheel; and in doing so, 
 for the first time he looked full at her. On 
 the only other occasion upon which they had 
 met he had had no attention to spare for 
 Mrs. Ross's sister; but now, as he surveyed 
 her steadily and deliberately, she acquired a 
 new interest in his eyes, though it was one 
 w^hich took its colour and tone from the recol- 
 lection of her relationship to Patricia. When 
 he spoke again, his voice and manner had 
 changed to a cool and careless familiarity 
 which was more distasteful to the girl than 
 his former constraint and moody silence. 
 ' Confess that you consider me an ill-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 119 
 
 mannered brute, Miss Carrington,' he said, 
 smiling, 'and that you regret having so far 
 forgotten yourself as to allow me the honour 
 of driving you to Mace/ 
 
 Eve made no answer. She was conscious of 
 a ridiculous inclination — to which she would 
 have died sooner than give way — to cry, like 
 a child who had been roughly treated. Yer- 
 schoyle, however, took no notice of her silence, 
 but talked on in the same tone, regardless of 
 her short responses, and doing his best to efface 
 any impression his former taciturnity might 
 have produced. His conversation was not 
 otherwise than agreeable, yet as Eve listened 
 she became more and more silent. It was not 
 vso much that she resented his tone to herself, 
 though the slight, almost imperceptible shade 
 of disrespect did not escape her, nor the touch 
 of familiarit}^, new to her experience as it was. 
 Tt was not anger, or at least not chiefly nor 
 principally anger, that she felt. There was at all
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 times little room in her nature for the rankling 
 of a personal slight; and had it been otherwise, 
 how could she resent his tone when he spoke 
 lightly of women, when it had — alas! — ^been 
 her own sister who had helped to teach him 
 to do so? how be angry at the veiled and 
 bitter sarcasms hidden behind his jests, when 
 the world at which he scoffed had deserved so 
 ill at his hands? It was not anger that she 
 felt, but something deeper and sadder. Once 
 again he was opening and unfolding to her 
 that world of injustice and bitterness and 
 wrong of which he had unconsciously been 
 her first exponent; and gazing into it, a great 
 compassion, which left no place for resentment, 
 filled her for the man who represented it ; a 
 pity which was only deepened by every word 
 or sign which indicated the injury his whole 
 nature had sustained. Had he come through 
 the ordeal unscathed she might, nay, certainly 
 would, have honoured him ; but she would
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 12 1 
 
 not have felt the passion of pity — it is a 
 passion with some women, strong as that to 
 A\'iiich it is said to be akin — which swept acros ^ 
 her now, worsted as she instinctively felt him 
 to have been in the struggle, scarred and 
 defaced by it morally and spiritually. 
 
 Her attention had wandered from what he 
 was saying, although she was apparently 
 listening and making what answers were 
 necessary. Suddenly, however, it was recalled 
 by a direct appeal. 
 
 ' It was hard luck, was it not. Miss Car- 
 rington?' he was saying. 'Do you not feel 
 sorry for me?' 
 
 She turned, startled yet scarcely surprised. 
 Detached as the words were, so far as she was 
 concerned, from all that had preceded them, 
 they chimed in with strange relevancy wdth 
 the thoughts in which she had been lost. 
 She forgot that he was a stranger speaking to 
 a stranger ; did not wait to consider the
 
 122 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 improbability — rather the impossibility — that 
 he should be, in earnest, claiming her sym- 
 pathy. Abruptly, without pause or hesita- 
 tion, she answered, as if his question had 
 borne reference, not to the trifle of which he 
 had been speaking, but to that for which 
 Gilbert Yerschoyle had never asked or ac- 
 cepted sympathy or compassion from living 
 soul, and for which, had they ever been 
 offered, he would have flung them back with 
 scorn. 
 
 ' Do you not feel sorry for me ?' he had 
 asked. 
 
 ' I do — I do,' she said, with a catch in her 
 voice that was like a sob. 
 
 As the words and tone struck his ear he 
 turned in sharp inquiry, meeting, as he did 
 so, her eyes fixed upon him. For a moment 
 they looked straight into his, grave, com- 
 passionate and sorrowful, and in the involun- 
 tary unspoken question and answer that
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 123 
 
 flashed between them the meaning of her 
 words was made plain to him. The next 
 moment he had turned abruptly away, flush- 
 ing darkly. 
 
 Even now habit was strong, and a scofling 
 retort rose to his lips, but there it died. 
 After that one look he never glanced towards 
 her, looking steadily before him as they 
 drove on. 
 
 They had already nearly reached their 
 destination, and were passing through a 
 villao'e about half a mile from the house. 
 A few scattered cottages on the edge of rich 
 pasture-land ; one or two women standing at 
 their doors with babies in their arms ; some 
 little children playing on a bit of dried-up 
 grass, while a dog, looking on at the game, 
 lazily stretched himself; a glimpse of scattered 
 red roofs among cornfields — then the little 
 bit of human life was over, and once more 
 they were driving on in solitude.
 
 124 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Yet those few minutes liad effected a change 
 that years of common intercourse might have 
 failed to do. Between them now was the 
 subtle indestructible link of an unspoken 
 confidence, a question asked and answered 
 straight from soul to soul. 
 
 They drove the remaining half-mile in 
 silence, absolute and unbroken. When he 
 had drawn up at the door, he helped her 
 down, still without speaking. 
 
 ^ Good-bye,' she said. The slanting yellow 
 liorht — the evening::: was closino^ in — fell on 
 her fair grave face and sad eyes as she stood 
 a little above him on the step in her 
 clinging white dress, a fading spray of 
 heliotrope at her throat, and her hand held 
 out. 
 
 Yerschoyle looked at her, straight and 
 steadily, a curious unaccustomed sensation 
 stealing over him — something that was half 
 remorse, half a regret. Yet, w^hen he turned
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 :25 
 
 a moment later to go, he had not seemed to 
 see her offered band ; only silently lifted his 
 hat, and drove away through the darkening 
 avenue to his home.
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 HE party at Mace, after all, did not 
 prove other than a success. It is 
 always difficult to foretell success 
 or failure in such a case ; a turn of the 
 kaleidoscope may alter the position of all the 
 component parts, and disprove the most care- 
 ful forecasts. 
 
 Sir Cyril was perhaps right when he 
 described Lord Ralston as a man with a 
 future ; it was at least certain that it was in 
 this light that he regarded himself His 
 future was, as it were, his stock in trade. It 
 was also true that, being now forty years of 
 age, his best friends and firmest disciples were
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 127 
 
 beginning to feel dimly conscious that it was 
 time that the future which had been so con- 
 stantly and hopefully discussed should become 
 the present. Hitherto there had always 
 existed excellent reasons why that process 
 should be deferred. He had had a serious 
 illness ; his friends had been out of power ; he 
 himself had been anxious to attain to a 
 greater degree of the cultivation and general 
 knowledge for which, as he was w^ont to say, 
 he would have no time hereafter, before 
 launching himself finally on the sea of public 
 life. All these reasons and causes for delay 
 had seemed plausible ; but there is a limit 
 even to praiseworthy caution, and, as has 
 been said, his friends were beginning to be 
 of opinion that the limit had been reached. 
 Whether Lord Ralston thought so himself 
 was another matter. There was a serene 
 self-complacency about him which argued 
 entire confidence and conviction of final
 
 128 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 success, and it was perhaps on this account 
 that people still to a certain extent believed 
 in him ; belief in one's self being the first 
 qualification for inspiring faith. Still it cannot 
 be denied that many people were beginning 
 to find Lord Ralston' s future long in coming, 
 and to listen with less patience than formerly 
 to his hints on the, subject. 
 
 From her first appearance on the scene, 
 however, Mrs. Ross had taken an interest in 
 it. Whatever may be the sentiments with 
 which a man's problematical career may be 
 regarded by others, it has an interest all its 
 own for those who may feel themselves 
 personally involved in its success or failure ; 
 and from the first it had occurred to Patricia 
 that this might not impossibly be the case 
 with herself. Before she had been four-and- 
 twenty hours under the same roof with his 
 lordship, she had taken his measure, had 
 weighed him in her dispassionate balances,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 129 
 
 and had decided that, with all its disadvan- 
 tages, tlie prize was not unworthy to be 
 striven for ; and since she had appeared at 
 Mace, Lord Ralston had been upon no one 
 else's hands. 
 
 It is true nobody grudged him to her. Sir 
 Cyril, so far as his duties as host allowed it, 
 was as usual devoting himself to Eve ; the 
 Miss Erskines were dividing their attention 
 between lawn-tennis and riding, and their 
 brother, a red-haired, zealous little parson, 
 suspected of broad views, tolerant, kindly 
 and popular, was usually absent most of the 
 day, superintending parochial matters in the 
 village, some three miles off, where his duty 
 lay. 
 
 To Eve the visit had been pleasant. She 
 loved Lady Courtney, and had always ac- 
 counted her house a second home since the 
 days of her loss ; and she had acquired a sort 
 of quiet dexterity in avoiding tete-a-fetes or 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 exciting topics with her host. Of the man- 
 ner of her arrival Miss Carrington had said 
 nothing. She was singularly indifferent to 
 the opinion of the world, even to that part 
 of it formed by her own immediate circle of 
 friends — singularly so, that is, considering her 
 gentle and undefiant nature. It might have 
 been the solitude in which for the most part 
 she lived, which had given her the habit of 
 adopting her own views and acting upon them 
 — quietly, unobtrusively, without parade, but 
 equally without hesitation. If they seemed to 
 clash with the opinions of those she loved — 
 and they were few — or to whom she owed 
 deference, she was sorry; but it did not occur 
 to her to alter them on that account, and still 
 less to alter the course of action resulting 
 from them. Beneath her soft exterior there 
 lay a fund of strength and determination of 
 which few suspected the existence. But, for 
 that very reason, it had grown into a habit
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 131 
 
 with her to be silent when speech would have 
 evoked disapproval or remonstrance. 
 
 Had she been questioned as to her mode of 
 reaching Mace, she would have answered with 
 the whole truth ; but being in the position — 
 peculiar at her age — of there existing none to 
 whom it was due that she should render an 
 account of her actions, she kept the matter, in 
 the absence of questions, to herself. It had 
 taken place, whether rightly or wrongly, by 
 her own choice ; it w^as done, and in her heart 
 she did not regret it. But being conscious 
 that it might appear differently to other eyes, 
 she simply kept silence on the subject. 
 
 On the third afternoon after her arrival, 
 most of the party were scattered about 
 under the trees on the lawn, where tea had 
 been brought, waiting till it should be cool 
 enough for any exertion in the shape of lawn- 
 tennis, walking, or riding. 
 
 Eve, somewhat apart, under a big horse- 
 
 9—2
 
 132 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 chestnut -tree, was talking to Cyril, or rather 
 listening to him as he lay at her feet, watching 
 with lazy amusement the rest of the party and 
 making his comments upon them. He was 
 not deficient in humour or in a sort of dis- 
 cernment, and just at present he was indulging 
 in certain speculations concerning Mrs. Ross 
 and Lord Ralston, who were, as usual, to- 
 gether, and to all appearance engaged in 
 earnest conversation. 
 
 Lord Ralston — a man with light hair grow- 
 ing rather scanty, a beard of the same colour, 
 pale-blue eyes, and a large forehead- — was 
 discoursing, his head thrown back and his 
 eyes, through glasses, surveying a distant 
 gravel walk with grave interest ; whilst Pa- 
 tricia, her work dropped on her knee — some 
 people said that Mrs. Ross's work was onl}' pro- 
 duced in order that it might be dropped when 
 it should become advisable that her attention 
 should grow absorbed — was listening eagerly,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 133 
 
 her pretty hazel eyes fixed upon his face in 
 rapt attention. 
 
 ' He's at it again, I'll take my oath,' said 
 Sir Cyril. ' I am sure I caught the words, 
 ^' when the party to which I have the honour 
 of belonging" — How can Mrs. Ross stand it ? 
 and how mil she be able to stand it in the 
 future? You don't understand? Oh yes, 
 Eve, you do — don't perjure yourself. You 
 know what it all means. Do you think his 
 lordship will make a satisfactory brother-in- 
 law?' 
 
 ' You think she would marry him ?' asked 
 Eve. 
 
 The idea was new to her, in spite of 
 Courtney's words ; and glancing across at 
 Lord Ealston, and placing him in swift 
 mental comparison by the side of the man 
 whom, only six months ago, Patricia was 
 to have married, a faint astonishment shot 
 through her.
 
 134 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Oh, I could not presume to say/ answered 
 Cyril, propping his chin on his hand, and 
 taking a deliberate and exhaustive survey of 
 the couple. ' But I think it looks like it^ 
 don't you ? I feel certain he means it, though 
 he does appear to select his topics from the 
 chances of the Ministry. I am ashamed to 
 confess that, feeling a real curiosity as to how 
 Kalston w^ould make love, I have taken some 
 pains to ascertain.' 
 
 ' Do you think she w^ould be happy?' asked 
 Eve, still occupied with the possibility he had 
 suggested, and with that comparison before 
 her mind. Cyril shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' Happiness is relative,' he observed. ' Yes, 
 I think Mrs. Eoss has a fair chance of it, 
 whatever happens.' 
 
 ' You mean ' said Eve. 
 
 * That she has the advantage of presenting 
 only one vulnerable point for the attacks of 
 fate, whereas most of us have one or two other
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 135 
 
 breaches in our walls — the fewer the better. 
 I would mve the world to care for nothintr 
 but myself.* There was an unmistakable ring 
 of sincerity in his voice — indeed, the candour of 
 his selfishness always disarmed criticism ; it 
 was the frank and fretful impatience of a child 
 when he discovers that life will not continue 
 the indulgence of his early years. 'As it is,' 
 he went on, ' I only care for myself most, and 
 that is the worst policy of all ; since one is 
 certain to be cheated in the game. N^ext 
 to absolute selfishness, a great and self- 
 sacrificing love for other people would be 
 most repaying.* 
 
 ' Even in that case,' said Eve, half smiling^ 
 ' even in that case you would not escape 
 suffering. It is only that then it would be 
 at second-hand — through them.* 
 
 He laughed and shook his head. 
 
 ' I would close with the exchange,* he said. 
 ' I feel my brother's toothache, it is true ; but
 
 136 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 3"et there is a difference — the instrument does 
 not touch the nerve ; it is not, to use a 
 Scriptural illustration, the angel's touch which 
 shrinks the sinew, and from which we — some 
 of us — go halting all our lives/ 
 
 There was a silence; Eve did not answer 
 at once. She was wondering whether Cyril's 
 words were true; half wishing, as if with 
 some dim prevision of evil, that she could 
 believe them to be so, could believe that the 
 sufferings of others can find no vivid or 
 personal realization. Were such the case — so 
 she felt half unconsciously — were she safe 
 from the blows which might reach her 
 through others, she would have no over- 
 whelming fears of what life might do to her. 
 Cyril was watching her, guessing in part her 
 thoughts. 
 
 ' Believe me,' he said, ' sympathy bears the 
 same relation to suffering as the echo to the 
 reality. It is cant to call it anything else.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 137 
 
 ' Yet you say,' she observed rather wist- 
 fully, ' that most of us have vulnerable points 
 outside ourselves.' 
 
 He did not attempt to defend the con- 
 sistency of his argument. 
 
 ' So much the worse for us,' he said ; ' let 
 us at all events make them as few as possible 
 — taking Mrs. Eoss for an example. Ah, 
 there she comes,' as Patricia, whose conversa- 
 tion with Lord Ralston had come to an end 
 a few minutes earlier on his lordships dis- 
 covering that he had important letters to 
 despatch by the evening post, detached herself 
 from a group at a little distance and crossed 
 the lawn to where her sister and Sir Cyril 
 were sitting. ' We were just speaking of you,' 
 he added politely. ' I was urging your sister 
 to take example by you in the management 
 of life.' 
 
 Patricia glanced keenly at him, detecting 
 an undercurrent of irony in his words.
 
 138 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' You will never persuade her to do that,* 
 >she observed ; but she did not pursue the 
 subject. ' Great excitement prevails/ she 
 added, as she sat down by her sister. * Miss 
 Cunningham,' alluding to a guest who had 
 arrived the evening before, ' Miss Cunning- 
 ham has spoken.' 
 
 ' You don't say so !' returned Cyril, with 
 the interest the subject seemed to demand. 
 ' Who insulted her ? Nothing else could 
 have induced her to forget herself so far. I 
 had made up my mind to try it myself if my 
 mother insisted upon my taking her in to 
 dinner again.' 
 
 ' You are wrong,' observed Patricia, * and 
 ungrateful too. Her remark was quite spon- 
 taneous, and bore reference to yourself. After 
 long cogitation upon the manner in which 
 you have employed this afternoon,' with a 
 malicious glance at her sister, who, however, 
 obstinately declined to meet it, ' she observed
 
 ALLEGIANCE. i3(> 
 
 that she always felt sorry for a young man 
 who had no profession.' 
 
 ' Does she ?' replied Sir Cyril. ' Noav I 
 call that really kind, and I retract my former 
 remark. I like people to take an interest in 
 me, and somehow they never do. I suppose 
 I am too well conducted to be interesting. I 
 suppose she did not mention what profession 
 she would advise me to adopt ?' 
 
 ^ She did not/ replied Mrs. Ross. ' Perhaps, 
 however, if you were to ask her — you see she 
 is disengaged at present.' 
 
 ^Not just now, I think,' said Sir Cyril 
 hastily. ' It will be invaluable as furnishing 
 us with a topic of conversation hereafter, and 
 should be kept carefully in reserve. Also the 
 lawn is still too hot to cross; it was very 
 courageous of you to brave it.' 
 
 Half an hour later, when Lady Courtney 
 sent to summon Eve to drive with her, the 
 three were still together, and Cyril rose and
 
 I40 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 walked with her to the house. When he had 
 put her into the carriage with his mother, he 
 still stood talking for a few minutes with his 
 hand on the door, until the latter dismissed 
 him. 
 
 ' I wish I could come too,' he observed 
 discontentedly. ' Driving is the only rational 
 occupation in this weather ; but as it is ' 
 
 ' You must stay and attend to your guests, 
 my dear,' said his mother. ' Yes, it is quite 
 necessary. Drive on, Benham. He looks ill 
 to-day, does he not ?' she added, turning to 
 Eve as he moved reluctantly away ; * I wish 
 he was stronger.' 
 
 The girl's thoughts had wandered, and she 
 made no reply, though Lady Courtney was 
 looking at her rather wistfully. A few 
 minutes later they were drivhig through the 
 steep Surrey lanes, the hedges nearly meeting 
 over their heads, whilst Lady Courtney talked 
 on steadily in the gentle monotonous way to
 
 ALLEGIANCE. T41 
 
 which Eve was accustomed, and which to her 
 never grew tedious, of reminiscences of her 
 youth — Lady Courtney had been a famous 
 beauty in her day, and treasured the recol- 
 lections of her early triumphs with a naive 
 and pleasant childlike vanity — of Cyril and 
 his boyhood, and of her husband, dead so 
 long that she could dwell upon his memory 
 ^\dth no sentiment more painful than a tender 
 regret. 
 
 Both he and Lady Courtney's father had 
 been high in the diplomatic service, and 
 havino: lived much at foreim courts in former 
 days, she had many tales, innocent scandals, 
 pathetic comedies, to narrate, to which Eve 
 was wont to listen with sentiments somewhat 
 similar to those inspired by the portraits of 
 Sir Joshua's powdered ladies and gaily attired 
 noblemen. It was not exciting conversation, 
 but soothing and refreshing, like the constant 
 rippling murmur of a brook ; and the girl
 
 142 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 liked it, though her attention still wandered 
 from time to time. 
 
 Suddenly, however, she started slightly. 
 Coming towards them, in a rough grey shoot- 
 ing-jacket, with his dogs at his heels, and a 
 cigar in his mouth, was Gilbert Yerschoyle. 
 
 In another moment they had passed him. 
 The lane was so narrow that he had almost 
 had to stand on one side to allow the large 
 carriage to go by; he had been so near that 
 by reaching out her hand — he was on her side 
 of the carriage — Eve could have touched him ; 
 but he had made no sign of recognition, had 
 given her no opportunity of making any. He 
 had not once lifted his eyes as, taking his 
 cigar out of his mouth, he had walked straight 
 past. 
 
 The colour which had rushed to her face 
 when she first recognised him, faded rapidly 
 away. She knew he had seen her — he could 
 scarcely, indeed, have failed to do so ; and had
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 
 
 143 
 
 it not been thus, the care which he had taken 
 to avoid glancing towards the carriage would 
 have told her as much. She understood what 
 his manner meant; it was no studied and in- 
 tentional insult, this time at least — of that she 
 acquitted him ; neither could it be, now, the 
 expectation that she would desire to ignore 
 their acquaintance — she would not believe 
 that he could so far misjudge her. Xo, she 
 understood it ; it was his tacit but deliberate 
 recognition of the fact that it was best for her 
 that they should meet as strangers, since 
 chance had thus once more brouo^ht them face 
 to face, and as such he had meant her to 
 understand it. A sense of shame laid hold of 
 her, as if it had been her fault, as if she had 
 disowned him ; and beneath it a sharp, painful 
 realization of what his position in truth must 
 be, since, in his eyes at least, the greatest 
 kindness he could show a woman was not to 
 own her acquaintance.
 
 144 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Lady Courtney's voice interrupted her re- 
 flections. Her attention had been attracted 
 by the stranger, and she spoke with calm 
 interest. 
 
 * What a handsome face, my dear — the man 
 we passed just now, I mean — did you notice 
 him ? I wonder who he can be. I thought 
 I knew all the gentlemen about here. He 
 must be paying a visit somewhere in the 
 neighbourhood.' 
 
 It was upon Eve's lips to answer by the 
 truth; but yet she hesitated, arrested by a 
 curious sense that in so doing she would be 
 in some -sort frustrating his intentions, and 
 acting contrary to his wishes. She remained 
 silent, and Lady Courtney went on placidh*. 
 
 ^ I wonder who it can be — such a striking 
 face ! Did you not think so. Eve ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' said the girl. Her head was turned 
 away ; and, as they almost brushed the hedge, 
 she put out her hand and pulled down a spray
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 145 
 
 of wild roses that bung just above. Tbev 
 remained in ber hand, but a thorn caught and 
 tore it, and the delicate, fragile petals were 
 scattered over ber dress. 
 
 Benham, the coachman, who bad overheard 
 bis mistress's speculations, turned and ad- 
 dressed ber with the familiarity of a servant 
 who bad been for twenty years in the family. 
 
 ' Were yon inquiring about the gentleman 
 who passed just now, my lady?' he asked. 
 ' That was young Mr. Verscboyle.' 
 
 He spoke with the air of a man imparting an 
 interesting piece of information, and was not 
 disappointed in Lady Courtney's reception 
 of it. 
 
 ' Mr. Yerschoyle — was it indeed, Benham ?' 
 Then in a lower voice : ' Do you bear, Eve ? 
 It was Mr. Yerschoyle — that poor young 
 fellow. Of course it was bis own fault, but it 
 is a melancholy story. You know it, of 
 course ?' 
 
 VOL. I. ,* 10
 
 146 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Eve bowed her head. The blood burnt in 
 her face ; but still that undefined sense of 
 loyalty to his will kept her silent. 
 
 ' I know it,' she said. 
 
 ' How many wasted lives there are,' moral- 
 ized Lady Courtney, with the mild passing 
 recjret accorded to the unknown. ' It was his 
 own fault, of course ; but it is a wasted life.' 
 
 ' Waste is the law of life,' said Eve dreamih. 
 her sad eyes gazing away to the horizon. 
 * When it ceases, it is because life has ceased 
 too.' 
 
 Lady Courtney made no answer, perhaps 
 she had not caught the girl's words — certainly 
 she had not understood them; perhaps Eve 
 herself did not quite understand her own 
 meaning. The elder w^oman sighed gently 
 before, dismissing Yerschoyle and his affairs 
 from her mind, she resumed the anecdote she 
 had been telling when she had interrupted 
 herself.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 147 
 
 ' Where was I, my dear? Ah, I was telling 
 you, was I not, how Sir George answered the 
 
 Marquis de R ? He was the wittiest man 
 
 of his time, you know. I was standing by 
 and heard it. I was two-and-twenty then, 
 and only just married. Those were happy 
 old days ' 
 
 So she talked on gently ; but though Eve 
 made the proper answers, she heard no more. 
 Her thoughts were occupied with a scene 
 nearer home, as, sitting with her eyes fixed on 
 the roses which lay on her knee, their leaves 
 drooping and their petals fallen, she recalled 
 the look on Yerschoyle's face. 
 
 10—2
 
 CHAPTEE yill. 
 
 'T was already nearly three weeks 
 since Gilbert Yerschojle had re- 
 turned to Sandmoor. To him it 
 seemed far more ; the days had appeared to 
 lengthen themselves out into weeks, the weeks 
 into months. He had already begun to ask 
 himself how it would be possible that he 
 should live his life out there — whether he 
 would be able to bear it. 
 
 He had, it is true, been accustomed to 
 solitude; but solitude in a town — a crowded 
 solitude with hurrying life and movement all 
 around — is so essentially different from an 
 isolated one that the former is scarcely
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 149 
 
 a preparation for the latter. It may be 
 true, as it has been said, that loneliness in a 
 crowd has an isolation about it with which 
 nothing else can compare; but on the othev 
 hand, as has also been said, the hurrying life 
 of others somehow destroys or w^eakens the 
 sense of personal individuality, so that solitude 
 is less unbearable. 
 
 To Gilbert the very silence and stillness of 
 the country, to which he had been unaccus- 
 tomed for years, was oppressive — it was as 
 if life was hushed and, as it Avere, taking 
 breath; he disliked the large rooms after the 
 lodgings which he had been used to occupy : 
 there w^as no denying it, he disliked it all. 
 Even had his position been different, it is 
 possible that the life of a country gentleman 
 might not have been particularly congenial to 
 him ; *as it w^as, it promised to be intolerable. 
 
 And yet he was determined, honestly deter- 
 mined, to throw himself into it. He had
 
 150 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 come home intending to pass his days as his 
 fathers had done before him, and he meant 
 to persevere, with the dogged determination 
 which was part of his character — to persevere, 
 and, if possible, not allow himself to be 
 beaten. He saw the bailiff, and set himself 
 to learn the details of the business to which 
 he had not had the ordinary chance that 
 comes to most men of his class, of serving an 
 apprenticeship. He took an interest in the 
 stables, and resolved to hunt when the season 
 for doing so should come round, though he 
 smiled not altogether agreeably when he 
 thouofht of the then inevitable meetino: with 
 his neighbours, and the feelings with which 
 they might regard his appearance in the 
 field. 
 
 Distasteful and uncongenial as the whole 
 life was to him, there was, besides, one special 
 circumstance which rendered the atmosphere 
 even more opjjressive than it might otherwise
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 151 
 
 have been, and this was the presence of 
 Dorothy and her governess. Whatever had 
 been the drawbacks of the life he had hitherto 
 led, it had at least possessed the advantage of 
 entire and absolute liberty; and the sense that 
 he formed one of a household, and that others 
 in some measure depended upon him, was 
 irksome to him in the extreme. 
 
 It is true that he saw but little of them. 
 His breakfast was served to him alone, long 
 after Miss Hare and her pupil had disposed of 
 theirs and were deep in the studies of the 
 day, and he never made his appearance at 
 luncheon; but still occasions would arise 
 which necessarily brought them into contact, 
 and to Gilbert those occasions were among 
 the most prominent of the lesser trials of his 
 life. 
 
 Miss Hare was a woman of between forty 
 and fifty, sharp - featured and light -haired. 
 She was highly educated, furnished with many
 
 152 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 diplomas, and enjoyed a high sense of her 
 own dignity. To her, no less than to his 
 entire surroundings, Gilbert's history and 
 antecedents were well known, and upon her 
 acquaintance with them she had carefully 
 regulated her manners and behaviour with 
 regard to him. She prided herself upon 
 being a woman of the world, well versed in 
 its manners and customs, its severities and 
 indulgences. She had lived in ' good 
 families ' and mixed in good society ; and 
 she recognised the fact that it was no less 
 due to herself than to the guardian of her 
 pupil that she should treat him with uniform 
 civility and politeness, whilst never for one 
 moment forgetting his position, or failing to 
 remember that she — Miss Hare — the former 
 instructress of the present Lady Sherstone, of 
 the Ladies Colinson, and others of equally 
 noble birth and exalted station, was making a 
 sacrifice of no small importance in remaining
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 153 
 
 on in a family the liead of which was a man 
 disgraced in the eyes of the world and of 
 society. 
 
 She had even seriously considered within 
 herself whether it might not be her wisest 
 course to relinquish the charge of Dorothy's 
 education upon her father's deatlx. and the 
 chano'es therefrom ensuino^, her doubts and 
 scruples having been materially increased by 
 Gilbert's decision to live at Sandmoor, and 
 the subsequent change in the household. All 
 things considered, however, she had decided 
 upon remaining. She had been with Dorothy 
 some three or four years ; was in some degree 
 attached to the girl, who had indeed responded 
 admirably to the care and training she had 
 bestowed upon her ; and she told herself — 
 taking somewhat the same view as Lady 
 Courtney of Gilbert's probable influence upon 
 his sister — that it was now more than ever 
 important that she should remain to watch
 
 154 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 over her. She was also well paid, and comfort- 
 ably situated, and — as is usual with us all — 
 the lower and unacknowledged motives were 
 not without their effect in deciding her to 
 allow the higher to determine her course. 
 So she remained on at Sandmoor. 
 
 Gilbert, for his part, had from the first 
 detested the woman. The estimable qualities 
 which she doubtless possessed were not such 
 as had much value in his eyes, and she was 
 hopelessly deficient in all those which he 
 looked upon as most essential. She had 
 never had any pretensions to good looks, 
 and years had not improved the sharp and 
 meagre character of her face; her voice was 
 metallic, her manners precise, and to crown 
 all she prided herself upon her powers of 
 conversation. On the occasions upon which 
 they met, Yerschoyle was not permitted to 
 confine himself to the commonplaces sug- 
 gested by the weather, the garden, the horses.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 155 
 
 Subjects such as these were beneath the range 
 of Miss Hare's intellect, although under the 
 circumstances there was a certain difficulty in 
 supj)lying their places with others. Half 
 amused, half provoked, Gilbert was conscious 
 that his antecedents were always before his 
 sister s governess, and governed and directed 
 her choice of topics. 
 
 In Avhat might have been supposed to 
 furnish at least one subject in common — little 
 Dorothy, that is — her brother had never 
 attempted to assume the slightest interest. 
 He rather disliked the child, although he 
 intended to do his duty by her. She had 
 been placed in Miss Hare's charge by her 
 father, who presumably had had his own 
 reasons — occult though they appeared — for 
 the selection; and there for the time the 
 matter ended, so far as Gilbert was con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Dorothy, on the contrary, had, for her part,
 
 156 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 begun to take a certain interest in her brother, 
 traceable, it may be, to the fact that he took 
 absolutely none in her — such neglect being a 
 new experience to Miss Verschoyle, who in 
 her father's lifetime had been, and considered 
 herself, a somewhat important personage. It 
 is also j)ossible that another circumstance was 
 not without its influence even upon a mind 
 so well balanced as Dorothy's. 
 
 'Don't you think Gilbert is handsome?' 
 she asked her governess one day, pausing to 
 put the question in the middle of grappling 
 with a problem of Euclid. 
 
 Miss Hare looked up from her knitting, sur- 
 prise and a certain disapproval visible in her 
 countenance. 
 
 'Your brother?' she asked. 'Really, 
 Dorothy, I have never considered the question.' 
 
 'Haven't you?' returned Miss Yerschoyle, 
 with composure. ' Well, now that you do, 
 don't vou think him e^ood-lookino^?'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 157 
 
 ' I believe he Avould be considered so,' said 
 Miss Hare, with caution. ' Had you not better 
 continue voiir v.'ork, niv dear?' 
 
 Dorothy did so, but with less application 
 than was usual with her. She had taken to 
 reflecting upon her ill-conditioned brother of 
 late, and perhaps feeling vaguely aggrieved at 
 his entire indifference to herself 
 
 Miss Hare, for her part, had she answered 
 the child's question with frankness, would have 
 said that Gilbert looked exactly what might 
 have been expected. He was good-looking, 
 no doubt, but it was the face of a man who 
 had lived every day of his life, and, as Miss 
 Hare Avould have probably added, had not 
 lived it well. Perhaps she was not entirely 
 
 Gilbert had had one visitor since his arrival 
 at home. Whatever view others might take 
 as to their own course of action, the Rev.
 
 158 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Jonathan Erskine (called by his intimates 
 Johnny) had felt it no part of the duty of the 
 vicar of the parish to turn his back upon any 
 sinner, of however black a dye, who chose to 
 take up his abode in it. He might be sorry 
 that he was there, or wish that he had kept 
 away ; but being there and being his 
 parishioner, it was clearly not for him to hang 
 back from the acquaintance. Mr. Erskine 
 was, as has been said, a cheery, honest little 
 fellow, who had taken to the Church as he 
 would probably have taken to the army or to 
 doctoring, or to an}^ other profession that had 
 been presented to him from his boyhood 
 upwards as his future career ; and having done 
 so, he was determined to do his duty by it 
 in much the same spirit as he would have 
 done it by any other. He was not, it was 
 true, a particularly spiritual man, nor had he 
 any exalted ideas of the sacerdotal office or of 
 Ms own dignity; but he was a parson, and
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 159 
 
 was neither ashamed of his profession nor in- 
 clined to shirk its duties. He did not take 
 any specially large or wide views on the sub- 
 ject. He would have said, had he been asked, 
 that he w^as put into that particular parish to 
 try and make the souls of its inhabitants 
 better, their bodies more comfortable, than 
 they w^ould otherwise have been; and if he 
 was not particularly sanguine of success in 
 either department, if poverty, destitution, and 
 want still seemed to him to exist in much the 
 same proportion as when he came to the 
 parish, and if there was no very perceptible 
 improvement in its spiritual condition, he still 
 stood manfully to his guns, doing his best and 
 not too much cast down by his failures. 
 
 He preached short and cheerful sermons, 
 from w^hich the villagers, of which his con- 
 gregation was mainly composed, went away 
 feeling more kindly towards man and more 
 grateful towards God, even though they com-
 
 i6o ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 pared the new parson, sometimes not alto- 
 gether favom-abh', with their late vicar. 
 
 ■ Lor, he ain't nothing like the Rev. 
 Headley, he ain't/ said an old woman once, 
 as she hobbled away after one of his short 
 discom^ses. ' The old vicar, he was worth 
 putting one's bonnet on and coming for to 
 hear. He had something to say, and took 
 his time about it, he did ; but this here young 
 chap, he's up and down again before you can 
 turn round.' Mr. Erskine, in fact, for all his 
 kind cheery ways, was to a certain extent 
 a come-down for the parish. 
 
 When he had come to call at Sandmoor he 
 had found Gilbert, as usual, alone in the great 
 library, and the look of the place had struck a 
 chill to his kindly heart. He had done his 
 best to be friendly, and though Gilbert had at 
 first not been particularly prompt to respond 
 to what he was disposed not altogether 
 wrongly to regard as professional cordiality.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 16: 
 
 he thawed by degrees under the influence of 
 Erskine's o'ood-humour. 
 
 ' A nice little chap, though he is a parson/ 
 had been his mental verdict ; and by the time 
 his visitor rose to take leave he was almost 
 cordial, accompanying him to the door, where 
 his own horse was standing, having just been 
 brought round. 
 
 'Do you care about horses?' he asked, in 
 answer to some comment of his guest's. ' Do 
 you ride?' 
 
 Mr. Erskine's boyish face fell slightly. 
 
 * Not now,' he said. ' I don't keep a 
 horse.' 
 
 ' Ah,' said Verschoyle, ' I dare say you 
 have not much time on your hands ; but if 
 you ever feel so inclined, I hope you will 
 make use ol mine. They are quite at your 
 service. ' 
 
 ' Thanks,' said the other, hesitating. * It is 
 true — I have not much time. I ' 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 He had an instinctive sense that to call 
 upon the black sheep was one thing ; to 
 accept a favour from him quite another. Per- 
 haps Yerschoyle suspected what was passing 
 in his mind; at any rate he did not press his 
 oiFer. 
 
 * Just as you please/ he said rather shortly, 
 looking not at him, but at the horse upon 
 whose neck he had laid his hand. 
 
 Erskine glanced at him and took his part. 
 
 * But I shall be glad of a mount sometimes,' 
 he said, as if finishing his former sentence. 
 ^ It would be great pleasure to me to ride 
 again.' 
 
 Gilbert's brow cleared. 
 ' Well, send round any day you like,' he 
 said. ^ Are you walking home now?' 
 
 * Not home. I am not at home just now. 
 I am staying for ten days at Mace — Sir Cyril 
 Courtney's, you know.' 
 
 He had spoken without thought, and
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 165 
 
 coloured violently as he finished. He had 
 hitherto carefully avoided any mention of the 
 neighbours, and he glanced apprehensively at 
 Yerschoyle as Sir Cyril's name escaped himy 
 with whose views concerning his present host 
 he was well acquainted. 
 
 Gilbert, however, did not notice his con- 
 fusion. He was thinking of the afternoon, 
 three days ago, when he had driven Eve Car- 
 rington to Mace — remembering her as he had 
 seen her last, standing in the light of the 
 setting sun, with her fair face turned to- 
 wards him, and the hand he had not taken 
 held out. 
 
 ' At Mace, are you ?' he said absently. ' You 
 will have a hot walk, but it is cooler than it 
 was. Good-bye.' 
 
 He turned back again into the library, 
 forgetting the horse that stood waiting at the 
 door. He had liked his guest, and his visit 
 had broken the dreary monotony of the da\' ; 
 
 11—2
 
 i64 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 but he was not thinking of him as he stood 
 looking absently out of the window. 
 
 Involuntarily and uncalled for, some words 
 had sprung to his memory which — though he 
 was not a reader of poetry in a general way — 
 he had met with long ago : 
 
 * If Maud was all that she seemed, 
 And her smile was all that I dreamed, 
 Then life were not so bitter, 
 But a smile might make it sweet.' 
 
 If ? — Gilbert Yerschoyle's reflections gene- 
 rally ended with a note of interrogation. He 
 roused himself, and went out. 
 
 imuA 
 
 I, jJJiMli: 

 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DAY or two after Mr. Erskine's 
 visit, Gilbert was passing through 
 the hall on the way to the door, 
 where the dogcart was waiting, when he met 
 Dorothy wandering about with a somewhat 
 disconsolate appearance. Contrary to his 
 custom, he stopped and addressed her. 
 
 'What, idle, Dorothy!' he said. 'What 
 has become of your studies ? Has Miss Hare's 
 vigilance relaxed ? I thought you were always 
 in the schoolroom at this hour.' 
 
 'So I am — from four to six, generally,' 
 answered the child listlessly. 'But Miss 
 Hare has a headache to-day.'
 
 i66 ALLEGIANCE, 
 
 ' Why don t you go out then ?' said Gilbert. 
 * I should take advantage of her indisposition^ 
 however much we may regret it, and it is a 
 beautiful afternoon.' 
 
 ' She won't let me go out alone,' said 
 Dorothy, glancing rather Avistfully through 
 the open door at the sunshine outside. ' At 
 least not unless I take Briggs ' — her maid — 
 ^ and that is dull.' 
 
 Gilbert paused, good-nature and reluctance 
 to be bored struggling within him. The first 
 conquered. 
 
 ' Would you like to come with me?' he 
 asked. ' I will take you for a drive if you 
 like.' 
 
 ' In the dogcart ?' Dorothy brightened 
 visibly, but hesitated. * I should like it ; but 
 I don't know whether Miss Hare ' 
 
 Gilbert interrupted her with the shadow of 
 a smile. 
 
 * I don't think we need trouble Miss Hare,'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 167 
 
 lie said. * Did you not say she had a head- 
 ache ? — it would be a pity to disturb her. 
 You can come if you like.* 
 
 Carelessly as he spoke, for the first time 
 there was a slight assumption of authority in 
 his tone, and Dorothy's shrewd little mind 
 noticed and half resented it, even whilst she 
 longed to avail herself of his off'er. Perhaps, 
 too, she, like Mr. Erskine, felt doubtful as to 
 accepting a favour at his hands. If so, however, 
 her hesitation did not last. The temptation 
 was too strong ; the sun outside, the dogcart 
 and the great black horse together overpowered 
 her scruples, and for once Dorothy's conscience 
 allowed itself to be lulled to sleep. 
 
 ' After all, it is Gilbert who is my guardian,' 
 said the youthful casuist to herself, as she ran 
 upstairs to get ready, passing the door of the 
 room in which Miss Hare was lying down 
 with suspicious speed and caution. 
 
 Gilbert, for his part, had already repented
 
 i68 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 of the impulse of good-nature to whicli he had 
 yielded. As he drove along by his sister's 
 side he felt not only, as he had anticipated, 
 bored, but even somewhat embarrassed. He 
 knew nothing of children — if, indeed, he had 
 done so, his acquaintance with them would have 
 been of little assistance to him, for Dorothy 
 was most unchildlike — and he was completely 
 Sit a loss how to make conversation. 
 
 'Do you like living in the country?' he 
 asked, when the topic of the weather had been 
 exhausted — it had afforded so little variety of 
 late that it presented a particularly barren 
 field for remark. ' Don't you find it dull?' 
 
 Perhaps he had a lingering hope that 
 Dorothy's answer might furnish him with a 
 plausible pretext for sending her — with or 
 without Miss Hare — to live in a more excitino' 
 locality. If so, hoAvever, he was disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 ' [NTo, I don't find it dull,' said Dorothy,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 169 
 
 surprised at the question. ' I have always 
 lived here, }'0u know.' 
 
 'Ah, no doubt that makes a difference,' 
 allowed Yerschoyle. ' And you wouldn't 
 like a school better, where you would have 
 other children — other girls, I mean,' correct- 
 ing himself hastily — ' as companions ?' 
 
 ' Xot at all,' said Miss Yerschoyle, negativing 
 the suggestion with prompt decision. Her 
 suspicions were aroused, and she was at once 
 on the defensive. ' Besides, only second- 
 class girls are sent to school.' 
 
 ' Is that so?' said Gilbert carelessly, but 
 with a shade of sarcasm his sister did not 
 detect. ' Then of course it would be out of 
 the question. I know so little of these 
 matters. I only thought it seemed a dull 
 
 life for you here; but if you like it ' He 
 
 shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' I never found it dull till — till ' 
 
 Dorothy broke off.
 
 iio ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Till my father's death — or till my return ?' 
 Gilbert smiled, partly divining her meaning, 
 and more sure of it as he saw the slight con- 
 fusion of her look. ' I suppose it has made a 
 change.' 
 
 Dorothy sighed, but made no direct 
 answer. 
 
 ' I used to go to parties,' she said regret- 
 fully. ' Lawn-tennis and garden-parties. Of 
 course I was not grown up, but papa didn't 
 mind. Sometimes he used to take me him- 
 self, and sometimes — to the Courtneys and 
 people we knew well — I used to go alone. 
 It was nice/ finished Dorothy, her tongue 
 unloosed by the remembrance of past de- 
 lights. 
 
 ' Poor Dorothy !' observed her brother, with 
 careless sympathy. ' Well, you can go to 
 jjarties still, can't you? or have there been 
 none lately .f^' 
 
 She looked up with eagerness, whilst
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 171 
 
 yet some unusual embarrassment made itself 
 apparent in her manner. 
 
 ' Lady Courtney has one this week/ she 
 said quickly ; ' but ' 
 
 ' She has not invited you?' asked her 
 brother mth a smile. ' That was unkind.' 
 
 * It is not that,' said the girl, hesitating 
 again. * She did say she hoped I would 
 come ; but Miss Hare did not know — she was 
 not sure — whether you would wish me to 
 go.' 
 
 'I!' Yerschoyle raised his eyebrows. 
 MVhat possible objection could I have?' he 
 asked. ' You say your father allowed you to 
 go, and — is it because you are in mourning ?' 
 he said, as a possible solution of the problem 
 struck him. 
 
 ^ No — not that,' said the girl. ' It is not a 
 large party — only a few people, or Lady 
 Courtney would not have asked me ; 
 but '
 
 172 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Well, what is it ?' Gilbert spoke rather 
 impatiently as she paused again. ' What pos- 
 sible reason could I have to object?' he added 
 peremptorily. 
 
 At last it came out. 
 
 ' It was because you had not been asked. ^ 
 
 Dorothy spoke low, and flushed up to 
 the roots of her pale hair. She Avas in 
 ordinary matters a cool and composed little 
 person ; but even she felt she was trenching 
 upon a delicate subject. 
 
 Gilbert laughed shortly. 
 
 ' Pray don't hesitate on that account/ he 
 said. ' It would be hard indeed if you were 
 to suffer for my iniquities.' 
 
 He touched the horse rather sharply, and 
 when he spoke again it was on a different 
 subject. 
 
 The day was cloudless; but a slight breeze 
 was blowing on the high ground, and it was 
 not so overpoweringly hot as it had been of
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 173 
 
 late. Tliey had driven some miles, and had 
 gained the top of a gorse- covered eminence 
 which commanded the show view of the 
 neighbourhood. There had been silence be- 
 tween them for some time, wdien Dorothy 
 made an exclamation. 
 
 ' See, Gilbert ! there is the Mace carriage 
 waiting. They must have got out to see the 
 view. Ah, there is Lady Courtney — do you 
 see ? — at the edge of the hill, and some people 
 with her. May I geX down and ask her what 
 day it is to be — her party, I mean ? I can't 
 remember whether it is to-morrow.' 
 
 Gilbert assented and pulled up his horse, 
 ashamed of his first impulse, which had been 
 to refuse. The child clambered down and ran 
 oif across the heath and gorse to where bonnets 
 and parasols appeared on the brow of the hill. 
 
 Yerschoyle sat holding the fidgety horse, 
 without turning his head in the direction in 
 which she had disappeared. He did not see
 
 174 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 that a figure had detached itself from the group 
 for which Dorothy was making, and was cross- 
 ing the heath towards the Courtney carriage, 
 which stood waiting a few yards from the place 
 where the dogcart was drawn up. Something 
 had gone wrong with the harness, and he had 
 got down to set it right, when at the sound of 
 steps approaching along the path by which his 
 sister had disappeared, he spoke without turn- 
 ing or looking round. 
 
 'Wait a minute,' he said; ' I will help you 
 w^ directly ;' then, receiving no answer, he 
 turned quickly, with a sudden suspicion that 
 it had not been Dorothy whom he had 
 addressed, to see Eve Carringfcon standing 
 before him. 
 
 She had come along the narrow path be- 
 tween the high bushes of yellow gorse, and 
 now stood in apparent hesitation whether 
 to greet him or to pass on without speaking. 
 She had not forofotten the eveninof when he
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 175 
 
 had refused to recognise her. Now, however, 
 he started and lifted his hat as he spoke in 
 hasty apology. 
 
 ' Miss Carrington !' he said, ' I beg your 
 pardon ; I was waiting for my sister, and 
 hearing your footsteps I thought it was she.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Eve vaguely. ' She is with 
 Lady Courtney, I think. I met her. I came 
 — Lady Courtney wanted her parasol.' 
 
 ' Ah yes — the sun is still hot, is it not ?' 
 Gilbert glanced towards the carriage, and then 
 bent once more over the harness, as if to con- 
 clude the interview. Eve paused before, with 
 a sudden impulse, she spoke again. 
 
 ' Mr. Yerschoyle,' she said, with a slight 
 tremor in her voice — ' Mr. Verschoyle, why 
 did you not recognise me when we met?' 
 
 He lifted his head and looked steadily at 
 her. A faint flush had risen to her face, lier 
 bare hands were locked nervously together, 
 but her eyes met his.
 
 176 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' When ?' he asked. 
 
 * On Wednesday. You saw me — I know it 
 — when I was driving wdth Lady Courtney.' 
 
 For a moment he hesitated ; but if he 
 had meant to deny the charge, he changed his 
 mind. * 
 
 ' I should have thought that question 
 scarcely needed an answer,' he replied 
 slowdy. He was grave, perhaps a little cold, 
 but there was nothing offensive in his 
 manner. 
 
 ' And you mean I should not have asked 
 it ?' she said quickly. ' I did not mean to 
 annoy you ; but I could not bear that — that 
 you should think — I am sorry,' she finished 
 rather incoherently. 
 
 ' You have not annoyed me,' he said more 
 gently, now for the first time smiling. ' And 
 I will, since you wish it, promise to know you 
 
 for the future when ' he corrected himself 
 
 — ' should we meet again.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 177 
 
 He was looking full at her, as if taking 
 advantage of the opportunity to study her 
 face. As he did so, his own softened. Yet 
 after that one look he turned away. 
 
 ' Good-bye, Miss Carrington,' he said, gently 
 but decidedly. ' 1 do not suppose it is likely 
 that we shall often meet ; but I will not again 
 — forget you.' 
 
 If there was a double meaning underlying 
 his words, lightly spoken as they were. Eve 
 did not stop to consider it. That on the surface 
 was plain enough. Neither did she pause to 
 consider the wisdom of her next Avords — she, 
 indeed, had but little of the wisdom of the 
 children of this world. She saw in him, not 
 Gilbert Yerschoyle, almost a stranger, and 
 moreover a stranger of indifferent character, 
 in whose favour she had nothing to go upon 
 save her own groundless conjectures ; but a 
 man whom the world had chosen — as she 
 believed unjustly — to dishonour; a man to 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 whom no welcoming word had been spoken, 
 no welcoming hand held out, and again she 
 spoke rashly, inconsiderately. 
 
 ' Will you bring your sister to see me — 
 when I am at home again ?' 
 
 She had forgotten Patricia for the time, and 
 all that would make his presence, at Xortons 
 in especial, inexpedient and undesirable. As 
 to any other unwisdom of her request, any 
 possible construction that he might put upon 
 her invitation, the idea did not so much as 
 cross her mind. Such suspicions were slow to 
 occur to her, and Gilbert Yerschoyle, with all 
 his faults, was not a man with whom it was easy 
 to associate the idea of an unworthy vanity. 
 She had not misjudged him. He read her mean- 
 ing, with the exception, perhaps, of her rasli 
 confidence in his innocence, as clearly as if she 
 had put it into words. He smiled rather sadly. 
 
 ' You will bring your sister to see me ?' 
 she had said.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 179 
 
 ' I think — not,' he answered. ' You will 
 not misunderstand me when I say that it will 
 be better not.' 
 
 ' It will not/ she answered. ' Do not refuse 
 me.' 
 
 He looked surprised at her persistence. 
 
 ' If I did not refuse you,' he said with a half- 
 smile, ' one day you would be sorry that you had 
 asked me ; one day, perhaps, you would say — 
 not to me. I know — that I sliould Imve done 
 better if I had not taken you at your word.' 
 
 Long afterwards his words came back to 
 her; but now she put them away with a sort 
 of soft impatience. 
 
 ' That is my own affair,' she said. 
 
 He looked at her fixedly. 
 
 ' Zs' it your own affair?' he asked. 'Are 
 you sure that there is no one that has a right 
 to say that it is theirs ?' 
 
 She lifted her head gently yet proudly, and 
 
 looked him straight in the face. 
 
 12 2
 
 i8o ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Xo one,' she answered. ' Will you come?' 
 
 ' Since you wish it — yes,' he said at last. 
 
 ' Then good-bye.' She held out her firm, 
 Blio'ht hand. This time he did not refuse it. 
 
 ' Good-bye.' 
 
 Another moment, and she was gone. 
 
 ' Have I kept you too long ?' asked Dorothy, 
 running up a few minutes later, her tongue 
 unloosened by excitement. ' Lady Courtney 
 was there, and some other ladies ; they are 
 sitting on the heath looking at the view. The 
 2Darty is to-morrow, so it was lucky I asked. 
 Some people are staying in the house. Miss 
 Carrington is there.' 
 
 ' Do you know her?' asked Gilbert care- 
 lessly. 
 
 ' I have seen her at Mace. Papa knew her 
 uncle — Mr. Carrington, who died — but it was 
 too far off to go and call often ; Xortons is 
 nine miles from us. She is often with the 
 Courtneys. She was to have married the one
 
 ALLEGIANCE. iSi 
 
 who died — Mr. Harry Courtney — long ago, 
 and now they say she will marry Sir Cyril/ 
 concluded Dorothy shrewdly. 
 
 Gilbert made no response, although he was 
 not inattentive to what she said, and the child 
 ran on in her sharp, worldly way. 
 
 ' It would be a very good arrangement, 
 so everybody saj^s, and Lady Courtney would 
 be pleased, she is so fond of Miss Carrington. 
 Ah, there is Sir Cyril. He must be going to 
 meet them.' 
 
 ^ * * :?& * 
 
 Half an hour later the party on the heath 
 were still there, watching the sun sink lower 
 and low^er and the lights change upon the 
 opposite hills. Sir Cyril and Lord Ralston 
 had walked over to join them, and they were 
 scattered about upon the heather. 
 
 ' I suppose that was Yerschoyle whom we 
 met just now driving with his sister,' observed 
 Cyril, when a pause had occurred in the con-
 
 i82 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 versation. ' I used to know him when we 
 were boys, though he must be four or ^ve 
 years older than I am, but I should not have 
 recognised him.' 
 
 •' Yes — Dorothy ran across to speak to me,' 
 answered Lady Courtney. ' She said he was 
 with her.' 
 
 Patricia had started slightly as Yerschoyle's 
 name was introduced, and glanced rather ap- 
 prehensively at her sister — she never quite 
 knew what to expect of Eve ; but the girl was 
 silent. Lord Ralston, however, spoke. 
 
 ' Ah, the man we passed on the hill ?' he 
 said. ' AVhat an inconvenience it is for the 
 neighbourhood when that sort of thing 
 happens ! Something of the same kind, only 
 not so bad, took place in my own. A man 
 with one of the largest estates in the county 
 died, and some far-off cousin inherited — a 
 man whose father, I believe, was a retail 
 grocer. The son is respectable, as far as I
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 183 
 
 know ; but there is one of the largest houses 
 about practically closed. One had to leave 
 cards upon him, but it was impossible to do 
 more.' 
 
 ' At any rate we have the advantage of you 
 there,' observed Sir Cyril, laying his head 
 lazily back on the heather. ' It is not necessary 
 to leave cards upon Mr. Verschoyle.' 
 
 Eve moved uneasily. She had picked a 
 sprig of heather and stripped it of its 
 bells, which lay upon her palm in a purple 
 heap. She was struggling with a desire to 
 speak — to say that she was not ashamed to 
 know Gilbert Verschoyle, yet a feeling of 
 loyalty to her sister kept her silent. She 
 could not say anything before Lady Courtney, 
 or, worst of all, Lord Ealston, which might 
 lead to the discovery of the relations upon 
 which he had once stood to Patricia. Yet 
 she felt she could not remain there hearing him 
 discussed, and keeping silence.
 
 i84 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 'Will yoLi come a little way with me, 
 Cyril ?' she asked, rising as she spoke. * I 
 want to see if the white heather still grows in 
 that hollow away to the left.' 
 
 He sprang up gladly, and they walked 
 away together, whilst Lady Courtney looked 
 after them with satisfaction legible on her 
 face. 
 
 Eve was silent at first, and when she spoke 
 it was in a low hurried tone. 
 
 'I know Mr. Yerschoyle,' she said. She 
 had a dim sense that it was due to Cyril, her 
 Mend, that he should hear it. With him, at 
 least, Patricia's secret, even if he should guess 
 it, would be safe. 
 
 ' What do you mean ?' said her companion 
 sharply. ' You know him ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered, speaking steadily now 
 that she had begun. 'I became acquainted 
 with him through — an accident.' 
 
 Cvril was thoroughly roused.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 185 
 
 ' It Avas a most unfortunate one,' lie 
 answered, his face clouded with vexation. 
 ' AVhat was it ?' 
 
 ' I can't tell you. It involves — some one 
 else's affairs.' 
 
 Cyril asked no more; he probably knew 
 enouo'h of Mrs. Ross to have a shrewd 
 suspicion as to whose affairs were likely to 
 be involved. He walked by Eve's side in 
 moody silence, his face over-clouded. 
 
 * Cyril,' she said suddenly, ' do you mean 
 what you said just now ? do you mean that 
 one isolated act — a criminal one if you will — 
 should shut the doors of society on a man for 
 ever?' She knew that to bring forward her 
 own conviction of Yerschoyle's innocence, in 
 absence of even his own denial of guilt, 
 would be worse than useless; but surely, 
 even from another point of view she might 
 plead his cause. 
 
 ' I do,' said Courtney doggedly. ' Society
 
 i86 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 has its duties, and one of them is to keep 
 cheats and scoundrels out of it.' 
 
 His temper was ruffled, and he spoke hotly, 
 angered at the very fact that, however blame- 
 lessly, she had been drawn into an acquaint- 
 ance, slight as no doubt it was, with such a 
 man ; more angered that she should set herself 
 to plead his cause. Eve, for her part, gentle 
 and unresentful as she was, flushed with anger 
 at his tone. 
 
 ' Ai^e they kept out ?' she asked, with an 
 unusual touch of sarcasm. Across her mind, 
 little prone to thinking evil though it was, 
 had flashed the thought that in that society 
 to which Cyril had alluded some sinners, at 
 least, were permitted to go unreproved by 
 that very conventional code which protected 
 it so jealously from others. 
 
 ' What do you mean ?' he asked shortly. 
 ' If it is that there are certain offences that 
 society has agreed to pardon, whilst it
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 187 
 
 punishes others perhaps from a moral point 
 of view not more black, I do not wish to deny 
 it. I had not the framino^ of the laws of 
 society, and I am not bound to justify them. 
 They have been made, and it is my duty to 
 carry them out.' 
 
 'And you do not count Christian forgive- 
 ness and charity a duty ?' she asked. 
 
 ' I do not,' said Sir Cyril, ' not, at least, in 
 the sense you mean. Forgiveness is for 
 personal wrongs. If I see fit to forgive an 
 injury done to myself, I have a right to do 
 so. I have no right to injure and insult 
 society at large by condoning a sin against it.' 
 
 ' Then you mean that there is no restora- 
 tion for sinners — on earth ?' she added under 
 her breath, looking over to the distant hills 
 with eyes out of which anger had already 
 died, banished by pain. 
 
 * Of the kind you mean, none.' Cyril spoke 
 again with a touch of sternness. Eve made
 
 i88 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 no answer. AVords, which she would not 
 quote, were floating dreamily through her 
 brain ; w^ords which spoke of a possible 
 restoration and pardon — even for sinners. 
 But of Gilbert she spoke no more. 
 
 ' There is the white heather/ she said, 
 rousing herself. ' In the liollow, Cyril, do 
 you see ? Will 3^ou get it for me T 
 
 Only when they were returning a few 
 minutes later to join the others did he recur 
 once more to the subject. 
 
 ' Don't think me too hard, Eve,' he said. 
 ' If I said more than I ought, it was because 
 I could not bear the idea of your having been 
 brought into any sort of contact with such a 
 man as Yerschoyle. Forgive me if I was 
 angry.'
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ND you are sure you don't mind 
 being left alone ?' 
 
 Mrs. Eoss was speaking. It 
 was about a week since she and her sister, to 
 whom her question was addressed, had re- 
 turned from Mace, and the inquiry bore refer- 
 ence to a certain invitation which had reached 
 Patricia that morning; and had, as she rightly 
 conceived, a distinct bearing upon the hopes 
 and expectations which had been raised in her 
 mind during her stay at Lady Courtney's. Her 
 intimacy with Lord Ralston had continued to 
 progress most satisfactorily ; but he was a 
 cautious man, who objected to anything which
 
 I90 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 bore the stamp or semblance of haste, and 
 nothing had escaped him in actual speech 
 which could be regarded or construed in the 
 light of a pledge. He was not a man to be 
 carried away by impulse, and when he had 
 made his farewell to Mrs. Ross, it was with 
 the gratifying consciousness that, whilst he 
 could look back upon ten days most agreeably 
 spent in her constant society, he had not 
 allowed himself to be compromised in the 
 sli<i^htest deo^ree. 
 
 The same reflection, however, which had 
 consoled Lord Ralston when deprived of Mrs. 
 Ross's companionship, proved by no means 
 equally comforting to Patricia, and her spirits 
 had been proportionately raised by the un- 
 expected arrival that morning of a letter from 
 a sister of Lord Ralston's, with whom, she had 
 had, some years ago. a very slight acquaint- 
 anceship, which neither party had cared to 
 develop into anything more intimate, but
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 191 
 
 from whom slie now received a cordial invita- 
 tion to pay her a visit in the country, with a 
 further intimation that her brother would he 
 probably staying with her at the time. It 
 was, as Mrs. Ross felt, a decided move on the 
 part of his lordship, and she hoped the best 
 from it. 
 
 It is true that Patricia wondered a little, in 
 the pauses of the chase, whether the prize was 
 worth the winning; but such doubts as arose 
 she disposed of promptly, telling herself also, 
 what was indubitably true, that should she not 
 now become Lady Ralston, the popular voice 
 would not ascribe it to reluctance on her part. 
 Xo, she had, so she told herself, gone too far 
 to recede; and having thus made uj) her mind, 
 she was determined to win the game, and to 
 enjoy her success. 
 
 Of Gilbert Yerschoyle, as having any pos- 
 sible bearing upon her object or her future, 
 she had spoken but once, when Eve had intro-
 
 192 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 cluced his name. Even now Miss Carrington 
 could not always understand her sister. Per- 
 haps Patricia was right when she said that 
 Eve was slow of comprehension — that she 
 took twice the time of an ordinary person to 
 grasp an idea and make it her own. Certainly 
 she Avas not quick at doing so. She was what 
 her friends might have called single-minded, 
 and her enemies, had she possessed any, 
 one-sided; deficient, that is, in the acuteness of 
 perception which makes it easy to some to 
 enter into characters entirely different to them- 
 selves. She had a mental difficulty in seeing 
 more than one side of a question, or more 
 than one aspect of a truth. She was coming 
 by degrees, slowly and laboriously, to a fairly 
 correct estimate of Patricia ; but yet from 
 time to time she was taken by surprise, and 
 paused, as it were, to readjust her ideas with 
 the aid of the fresh light new revelations 
 afi*orded. With all her gentleness she was
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 193 
 
 severe in her moral judgments — severe, that 
 is, as to the particular type of character 
 which seemed to her worthless, and to that 
 type she was slowly but surely discover- 
 ing that her sister's belonged. It was of 
 a kind which, shallow as it was, and easily 
 read by those who held the key to it, was just 
 such an one as presented most difficulties and 
 most problems to her sister. It would have 
 been easier for Eve, in spite of her own purity 
 and innocence, to believe that a soul held a 
 sin than that it held nothing; to believe that 
 the light gaiety of Patricia's heedless talk was 
 a veil for something that lay below than that it 
 was the simple expression of her nature — one 
 of those natures to which it is not difficult to 
 believe that Providence, whilst bestowing upon 
 it other gifts great and small, has denied a soul. 
 
 On the present occasion, when Patricia had 
 been expounding her plans and hopes with 
 careless and characteristic openness, there was 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 a pause in the conversation whilst Eve 
 pondered. 
 
 ' And six months ago you were to have 
 married Mr. Yerschoyle,' she said musingly. 
 
 ' My dear Eve ' — Mrs. Ross spoke with some 
 impatience — ' what an inconvenient memory 
 you have ! Do try to forget that unfortunate 
 episode.' 
 
 * Have you forgotten it ?' asked the girl. 
 
 ' Except when you insist upon reminding 
 me of it, certainly,' said Mrs. Ross, laughing 
 lightly. ' Just now I am incapable of con- 
 jugating the verb aimer in either the present 
 or the past. J'aimerai Lord Ralston as soon 
 as ever he asks me to do so; and under these 
 circumstances even you, my dear Eve, will 
 perceive that it is, to say the least, undesirable 
 to go back upon the past.' 
 
 Eve had said no more, and the discussion 
 had drifted away. This morning, as they sat 
 at breakfast, Mrs. Smythe's invitation natu- 
 rally supplied the topic of conversation.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 195 
 
 ' You don t mind being left alone ? 1 feel 
 as if I was behaving badly in deserting you, 
 but as Mrs. Smythe's letter is so cordial it 
 seems a pity to refuse.' 
 
 ' Pray don't do so upon my account,' re- 
 turned Eve. ' I am used to being alone, and 
 I do not dislike it.' 
 
 Mrs. Ross laughed again, quite unaffronted 
 by her sister's candour. 
 
 * I sometimes think,' she said, ' when I am 
 in your company, Eve, that I have never 
 heard unvarnished trutli before, ^o doubt 
 other people would have felt as little regret at 
 my departure, but then they would have 
 thought it necessary to assume what they did 
 710 1 feel. Xo,' as the girl attempted an 
 apology, ' I knoAv you meant no offence, and 
 I am not the least hurt. To return to Mrs. 
 Smythe — I had quite forgotten I had met her 
 till Lord Ealston reminded me of it. She was 
 rather a dull woman. I imagine intellectual 
 
 13—2
 
 196 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 brilliancy is not a characteristic of the family,' 
 remarked Mrs. Koss easily; 'but still, under 
 the circumstances, I think I may as well 
 accept her hospitality, do not you ?' 
 
 * If you mean to marry her brother — yes,' 
 answered Eve slowly. 
 
 * And that we may consider a settled fact,' 
 said Mrs. Koss rather impatiently. ' And I 
 ma}^ leave Kit here ?' 
 
 * Of course — if you like. You are not 
 taking him with you ?' 
 
 ' No, certainly not. For one thing, he is 
 not invited. I dare say they don't know 
 such a person exists. And, besides, a child 
 is always in the way.' 
 
 Eve looked at her meditatively. 
 
 ' You don't care for him,' she observed, 
 rather as an undisputable fact than as a 
 question. 
 
 Patricia did not deny it. In domestic life 
 at least her frankness counterbalanced many
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 197 
 
 of her demerits, and went far to disarm 
 criticism. 
 
 ^ISTo/ she said. 'I know it is a received 
 maxim — one of those I was speaking of the 
 other day — that mothers should invariably be 
 fond of their children, but it is no more 
 infallible than the rest. I dare say I should 
 have liked him if he had been different — a 
 pretty little girl, or even boy, whom it would 
 have paid to dress ; but Kit, from a baby in 
 arms, was always unsympathetic. I often 
 wonder why I should have had such an 
 unprepossessing child. He takes after his 
 father's family. All the Bosses have his 
 sandy hair and light eyes. And then he is 
 so much too sharp. I really believe,' ended 
 his mother with irritation, ' there is not a 
 thing which that child doesn't know, and he 
 is only seven years old.' 
 
 'Poor Kit!' observed Eve. She did not 
 herself, it is true, like her nephew, and would,
 
 198 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 indeed, have been ready to endorse most of his 
 mother's criticisms; but, nevertheless, it seemed 
 to her a hard lot that the child should grow 
 up thus uncared for. 
 
 ' Oh, you needn't pity him,' said Mrs. Ross, 
 ' He gets all he wants.' 
 
 ' Except a little love.' 
 
 ' Which he can very well dispense with. 
 INFo, my dear Eve, believe me, neither Kit nor 
 his mother will make exorbitant demands in 
 that line.' 
 
 Eve did not continue the discussion, but it 
 recurred to her mind when, about ten days 
 later, on her return from seeing his mother off 
 to pay her visit to Lord Ralston's relations, 
 she encountered the child in the hall. She 
 paused and sat down on a couch, drawing 
 him to her. 
 
 ' Where were you this afternoon. Kit ?' she 
 asked. * Your mother was looking for you to 
 say good-bye.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 199 
 
 ' Was she ?' returned the boy indifFerently, 
 wrigghng himself free from the arm she had 
 put round him, not presumably because he 
 was in haste to go elsewhere, but simply from 
 a natural love of independence. Eve made nc 
 effort to detain him, and having obtained hi* 
 liberty he appeared not unwilling to continue 
 the conversation from a safe distance. ' I was 
 looking at Joe's rabbits,' he observed. ' He's 
 got three.' 
 
 ' It was a pity you were out of the way,' 
 pursued Eve. ' Your mother is gone.' 
 
 ' I thought so,' returned Mrs. Ross's son, 
 with no semblance of regret. ' I wish Marie 
 was gone too. I wish Marie was dead !' 
 
 ' Do you ?' asked Eve, somewhat startled 
 by the energy of the aspiration. ' Why ?' 
 She had a suspicion that Kit did not meet 
 with overmuch kindness at the hands of his 
 nurse. But whatever were the facts, he was 
 too discreet to reveal them, only glancing at
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 his aunt with a knowing look in his light- 
 blue eyes. 
 
 ' She's no good/ he said. ' I msh she was 
 dead.' 
 
 Eve asked no more questions, and attempted 
 no remonstrance, only sighing as she rose and 
 went upstairs. She was too conscious of her 
 own lack of affection for the child to feel her- 
 self entitled either to blame or to try to 
 improve him. Miss Carrington was no 
 believer in the good influence of kindness 
 dissociated from love ; and perhaps she was 
 right, though it is a doctrine that, universally 
 accepted, would be productive of some incon- 
 veniences for the world, and would leave more 
 than one philanthropist with idle hands. 
 
 She forgot her nephew, however, without loss 
 of time as she mounted the stairs and went 
 to her room. She had just remembered, in 
 connection perhaps with Patricia's departure, 
 that it was already more than a fortnight
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 20 r 
 
 since her return from Mace, and that Gilbert 
 Yerschoyle had not fulfilled his promise of 
 visiting Nortons. Perhaps he had repented 
 of having yielded, and did not mean to come. 
 She was sorry if it were so, and yet she was 
 content. She had done her best, had shown 
 him — she could not have done so more clearly 
 — that with her, at least, the opinion of the 
 world and the verdict of society had no 
 weight, and she was content to let the matter 
 rest, as one with which she had no further 
 concern. Eve's was no restless, active spirit 
 of partisanship ; her temper of mind was the 
 direct opposite of those who conceive it to be 
 their mission to reform the world, or to set 
 right the abuses of society. In Gilbert's case 
 it was simply that an injustice, a wrong, had 
 been forced upon her notice, driven home to 
 her the more by her sister's conduct ; and pity 
 for the man and indignation for the wrong 
 done to him had joined hands to induce her — •
 
 202 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 it might be on an unwise impulse — to set 
 herself, in so far as it lay in her power to do 
 so, to rectify that injustice and repair that 
 wrong — feeling all the time how miserably 
 inadequate were the means which lay at her 
 disposal for the purpose. She had performed 
 her act of reparation ; but that being done, she 
 was content to let the matter rest. Xo sting 
 of mortified vanity that her advances had been 
 declined rankled within her; she had simply 
 done her part, and the matter was, as far as 
 she was concerned, closed and done with. She 
 had, with this reflection, dismissed the subject 
 from her mind, when Jones knocked at her door. 
 
 ' Mr. Yerschoyle, miss. He is in the 
 drawing-room.' 
 
 The announcement came in curious apt 
 response to her reflections, giving them, as it 
 were, another colourino-. She was s^lad that 
 he had come. She knew now, what in her 
 charity she had not allowed to herself before,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 203 
 
 tlicat it would have been churlish and dis- 
 courteous on his part had he, after all, rejected 
 her overtures ; yet, for the first time, she 
 was conscious of a doubt of their wisdom. 
 As she lingered in her room, not hastening 
 her movements as she divested herself of her 
 jacket and hat, there flashed across her mind 
 the recollection of their first meeting in the 
 very room in Avhich he was now awaiting her, 
 of the question he had put to Patricia, and of 
 her answer. AVould not the remembrance, she 
 asked herself, of that day be with him now 
 even as it was Avith her, filling her with a 
 painful sense of shame, somewhat as if it had 
 been she herself who had dealt him the insult, 
 since it had been offered by her sister and in 
 her house? Had she had any right to insist 
 upon his exposing himself to the painful 
 associations connected with that scene? Her 
 hands trembled a little as she put them up and 
 smoothed the heavy hair on her forehead.
 
 204 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Yet, when a few minutes later she entered 
 the drawing-room, she betrayed no confusion 
 or shyness, and her manner was as quiet as 
 usual. If it had been otherwise, his greeting 
 was well calculated to set her at her ease. It 
 was that of an ordinary and not an intimate 
 acquaintance, and was perfectly free from 
 embarrassment. 
 
 • I should have given myself the pleasure 
 of calling before,' he said, ' but a variety 
 of causes combined to prevent me. Also I 
 did not know how soon you might be at 
 home.' 
 
 ' I have been back a fortnight,' she answered, 
 as she took his hand. ' I am glad to see you. 
 You have not brought your sister?' 
 
 ' Dorothy ? Xo. She was to receive a music 
 lesson this afternoon. Her education is being 
 conducted on the strictest principles, and it 
 is not often that I take courage to disturb 
 them.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 205 
 
 * You must bring her another day,' said Eve 
 kindly. * It must be a solitary life for her, 
 poor child.' 
 
 She does not seem to object to it,' said 
 her brother carelessly. ' I hinted to her the 
 other day that it might be dull, but she 
 treated the idea with contempt; and if she 
 likes it ' 
 
 He shruowd his shoulders as he chano^ed 
 the subject, and the talk went on as it might 
 have done between comparative strangers who 
 were as yet ignorant of each other's tastes or 
 habits, and had, moreover, no mutual acquaint- 
 ances to discuss. If at first there was some 
 slight awkwardness due to the sense which 
 will make itself felt under such circumstances 
 — the consciousness, namely, that there are 
 subjects to be avoided, ground which it would 
 be dangerous to break — it wore away quickly 
 before his conversancy with the world and 
 with general topics of conversation, and her
 
 2o6 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 gentleness and grace. Perliaps, indeed, the 
 very absence of surface subjects of mutuar 
 interest necessitated, or at least led to, the 
 discussion of ones more personal, which 
 would have naturally belonged to a longer 
 acquaintanceship or a greater degree of in- 
 timacy. The preliminaries were, so to speak, 
 more difficult than what would follow. By 
 the time that half an hour had passed, Eve 
 felt that she knew him almost well. 
 
 ' How much you have seen !' she observed, 
 when he had been describing a scene he had 
 witnessed in Spain with the peculiar vivid- 
 ness of description which was one of his gifts. 
 
 ' Xot more than most men of my age, 1 
 imagine,' he answered. ' There are different 
 sides of life, of course. I have seen a good 
 deal of the world, if you take that to mean 
 different places and countries — the outside 
 jDart of it, in fact — but that is natural to a 
 man who has had no settled home for eleven
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 207 
 
 years of his life. There is another side of 
 As^iich most men have had more experience 
 than I. I know next to nothing: of what is 
 called English society, and I have not a single 
 friend or even intimate acquaintance in the 
 world. Such a confession is an adverse criti- 
 cism on the man who makes it, is it not T 
 he said, reading her face with a half- smile. 
 
 ' Perhaps so,' she answered absently, as 
 she pictured to herself the life to which his 
 words pointed. He smiled at the unconscious 
 candour of her reply. 
 
 ' It is not so bad as it looks,' he said. ' I 
 have had, you know — disadvantages. Letting 
 alone others, my father disliked me, and my 
 stepmother detested rae. At the same time I 
 am bound to say that in my future career I 
 did my best to justify them.' 
 
 He was speaking with apparent ease and 
 with a touch of sarcasm, yet the impression 
 was conveyed to Eve's mind — she knew not
 
 2oS ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 how — that he was forcing himself to trench 
 upon the subject which he would have 
 naturally avoided. Was it bravado, to prove 
 to himself that he did not fear it, or w^as 
 it the instinct which leads to pressure upon 
 a sensitive nerve ? 
 
 Eve was silent. How could she answer 
 him — she, a stranger, who had no right even 
 to offer him sympathy ? How could she tell 
 him that if his life had not been what it might 
 have heen — and looking at his face, and listen- 
 ing' to his careless clever talk, thouo^h there 
 had been no recurrence of the tone that had 
 been offensive in it during their tete-a-tete 
 drive, she had a growing conviction that it had 
 not — that part at least of the blam.e rested 
 with those who had branded him with a false 
 accusation, and sent him out to fight his 
 battle with life thus weighted and shackled? 
 There was a short silence, and then he moved 
 to go.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 209 
 
 ' I may come again ?' he said as he stood 
 up ; adding with a smile, ' this tinie it is I 
 who ask. And yet I do not abandon my first 
 positioiiT— that the day may come when you 
 will say that I should have done better to 
 have stayed away.' 
 
 ' Xo,' said the girl. 
 
 He had smiled as he spoke, but she was 
 23erfectly grave. 
 
 ' Is that a promise?' he asked. 
 
 ' Yes — a promise,' she answered, as she drew 
 her hand gently away. 
 
 Five minutes later, when she passed again 
 through the hall. Kit w^as still there, playing 
 at marbles on the tiled floor. Moved by an 
 impulse, she stooped and kissed him, thinking of 
 another unloved childhood. How much of our 
 pity is made up of mingled motives ! Kit, for 
 his part, looked up with quick mistrust, doubt- 
 ing whether the unusual demonstration of affec- 
 tion might not be intended as the preface for 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 some fresh demand upon his obedience. His 
 suspicions, however, were allayed as Eve 
 turned awa}^, and he went back, feeling only 
 a slight natural surprise, to his interrupted 
 game.
 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 T was August, an August of cloud- 
 less dewy mornings, when the 
 moors and lawns lay covered and 
 sparklmg, for those who were up early enough 
 to see them, with gossamer, when the sun 
 shone on uninterruptedly all day from its 
 rising, veiled by the thin blue heat-mists of the 
 morning, to its going down in the purple and 
 gold which the stretches of heather and gorse 
 below seemed to reflect and intensify. 
 
 It was weather which makes all exertion, 
 whether physical* or mental, difficult, which 
 seems to invite to absolute idleness, inclining 
 us to select our lightest literature and our 
 
 14—2
 
 212 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 coolest dresses, and to put oiF any fatiguing 
 duties, any serious thoughts or disquieting 
 reflections which may j)resent themselves for 
 our consideration, to some more convenient 
 season. When Mature is doing her very best 
 to please us, and v^-hen it is. moreover, certain, 
 at least under English skies, that she will 
 not continue her good offices long, it would 
 be churlish and ungrateful in us — so we are 
 apt half unconsciously to still any scruples of 
 conscience which may arise — not to profit to 
 the utmost by the gifts which she bestows 
 with a lavish if capricious hand, or to let a 
 restless spirit of speculation or inquiry or 
 foreboding put us out of harmony with her 
 serene tranquillity. She has laid her com- 
 mands upon us to sleep and take our rest, and 
 we obev, conscious that the season for wakin^: 
 and taking thought for the morrow is never far 
 distant, but willing for the time to forget it. 
 Afterwards, when the east wind has come
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 213 
 
 back, when rain has followed the sunshine, 
 when, in fact, summer is over, then it will be 
 time to reflect and to speculate — to consider, 
 it may be, that ' summer is past, the winter is 
 come, and we are not saved.' Such seasons 
 there are in the spiritual and moral as well as 
 in the natural world — times when a lull has 
 come, as it were, in life, and we accept almost 
 necessarily, sometimes unconsciously, some- 
 times with gladness, a respite from all 
 troublesome or perplexing questions, and 
 allow ourselves to float unresistingly on 
 Nature's surface, forgetting that the tide may 
 be sweeping us away during our inaction, so 
 that when at last we rouse ourselves to take 
 up the oars once more, it is possible that we 
 may look round with startled eyes to find 
 ourselves between unfamiliar banks, and swept 
 along by a current of which we were alto- 
 gether unsuspecting. Thus, in some measure, 
 had it been with Eve Carrington.
 
 214 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 It was already more than three weeks since 
 Mrs. Ross's departure, but she had as yet 
 shown no disposition to return. She had gone 
 on from Mrs. Smythe's to pay a second visit 
 in the neighbourhood, from whence she was 
 to go back to spend another week at the 
 house of Lord Ralston's sister. Her letters 
 were not abundant, nor when they arrived did 
 they convey much information; yet her sister 
 gathered from what she said that she was 
 fairly satisfied with her visit to Mrs. Smythe, 
 although perhaps a little impatient for the 
 final denouement of what she called, with a 
 touch of humour, her romance. 
 
 Afi*airs had in fact progressed favourably, 
 though his lordship still refused to be hurried. 
 As some one — presumably a friend — said of 
 him once, the good steed caution had, in his 
 case, fairly got the better of his master and 
 run away with him; and the same critic had 
 sagely added, that the course that animal
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 215 
 
 takes when he once gets his head is apt t6 
 lead to the land of nowhere. For the present, 
 however, Mrs. Koss had made up her mind to 
 wait the more patiently, as in the interim she 
 was in the enjoyment of an agreeable shooting- 
 party, of a kind decidedly more congenial to 
 her than those which were wont to meet under 
 the auspices of the well-meaning but ponderous 
 Mrs. Smythe. 
 
 ' She is a wife and a mother, my dear,' 
 Mrs. Koss wrote to Eve ; ' need I say more ? 
 I hope not, for there is absolutely nothing 
 more to be said.' In Mrs. Ross's mouth 
 there could scarcely have been severer con- 
 demnation. 
 
 The Courtneys were also away, Sir Cyril 
 having gone with much reluctance to keep a 
 long-standing engagement in Scotland ; whilst 
 his mother, availing herself of the opportunity 
 of his absence to leave home likewise, was 
 paying a visit to a sister in Kent.
 
 2i6 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 With Mace deserted, Eve was more solitary 
 than usual. Though she was, of course, more 
 or less acquainted with all the neighbours, she 
 had always been a person of few intimate friend- 
 ships; or perhaps it would be more accurate 
 to say, with the one exception of the Court- 
 ney s, of none. Whilst her native gentleness 
 and courtesy prevented her being altogether 
 unpopular, people were accustomed to find an 
 intangible bar, which stood in the way of 
 liking growing into any sentiment more close 
 and familiar; and even those to whom she had 
 been known for the greater part of her life had 
 gradually relinquished the attempt to be inti- 
 mate with her. She was not consciously or 
 intentionally repellent, but there was some- 
 thing in her habitual reserve, almost amount- 
 ing to coldness, which discouraged advances; 
 she had few friends, and no constant asso- 
 ciates. 
 
 She did not miss them; but it might, per-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 217 
 
 haps, have been better for her had the life 
 she led ])een a less lonely one. Solitude, 
 whether of the body or of the mind, and 
 whether self-chosen or enforced, has its dangers 
 as well as its advantages. In Eve, as has been 
 observed before, it had fostered a habit, curious 
 in a nature so devoid of arrogance or presump- 
 tion, of leaning, to a degree scarcely suspected 
 even by herself, upon her own judgment; and 
 she sometimes forgot that, whilst the tribunal 
 of conscience — whether competent or incom- 
 petent — must be the court of final appeal for all 
 and in all cases, it is a moral loss Avhen its 
 causes are decided and its judgments given 
 without jury or counsel. 
 
 The three weeks that had gone l)y since Mrs. 
 Ross left, though gliding smoothly and unevent- 
 fully past, had not been unfraught with conse- 
 quences — consequences which set their mark 
 deeply on Eve Carrington's life. 
 
 It had not been many days before Gilbert
 
 2i8 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Yerschoyle had repeated his visit, bringing^ 
 this time, his sister with him ; and since then 
 it had come about — neither of them quite knew 
 how — that few days together elapsed without 
 bringing him over to Xortons. At first he 
 would come in only for a few minutes — in the 
 course of his ride, as he would explain with 
 somewhat suspicious care, to leave a book which 
 he had mentioned, or furnished with some 
 other like transparent pretext ; but by degrees 
 he forgot to make excuses for the frequency of 
 his visits, or Eve to expect them, and it came 
 to be almost a matter of course that every two 
 or three days should find him at Xortons, 
 usually in the late afternoons wdien she was 
 most certain to be at home and alone, sitting 
 with Eve either in the cool shaded drawing- 
 room or loiterino' too-ether in the warm still- 
 ness of the August evenings, or sometimes 
 mounting the hill which rose sharply behind 
 the house to watch the sunset fi:om its summit.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 219 
 
 Did Eve know Avhat she was doing ? 
 
 She told herself afterwards that she had not 
 — that she had never thought of the possible 
 consequences of those summer days, believing 
 herself to have seen in him only a wronged 
 and insulted man for whom the very intensit}' 
 of her compassion, coupled with her indigna- 
 tion against the world which had so dealt with 
 him, had blinded her to any other feeling with 
 which she mio:ht be OTowino; to reo'ard him. 
 
 It was not that he spoke much or often of 
 his past, or that he ever voluntarily laid claim 
 to her sympathy on behalf of it. As his inti- 
 macy with her grew and deepened, the morbid 
 tendency he had at first evinced to refer to his 
 position disappeared. He had not indeed 
 forgotten it — rather the recollection of what it 
 was gave the key-note to his conduct — nor had 
 he forgotten the bearing it had and would ever 
 have upon his future, but for the present he 
 chose to put the thought away. The future
 
 220 
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 lay in the shadow of the past, and he never 
 ignored it ; but he had, so to speak, mentally 
 rescued the present from the general darkness — 
 it was a Goshen in which he had taken a tem- 
 porary refuge ; acting, in so doing, with open 
 eyes. For whatever might be the case with 
 Eve, Verschoyle was not blind. He recog- 
 nised his danger, and, recognising, freely 
 accepted it, believing as he did that none was 
 involved to her. He had been told, and he 
 believed, that she was to marry Courtney — it 
 was another of the facts which belonged to the 
 future ; but even had it not been so, he would 
 still not have sought to link her life with his 
 own. This her influence, ranging itself 
 unconsciously against herself, had already 
 achieved, that whereas a month ago he would 
 not have hesitated to wrest whatever he might 
 from close-fisted life, life which had made him 
 an outlaw and a pariah, now, even had he con- 
 ceived it possible, he would have died sooner
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 221 
 
 than make her a sharer in his disgrace. Six 
 months ago he had concealed the very exist- 
 ence of that disgrace from the woman he then^ 
 sHghtly and carelessly, loved ; but now the 
 unconscious influence of Eve's generous fliith, 
 her gentle yet fearless defiance of the world, 
 had already borne fruit, and had called forth a 
 corresponding unselfishness in him. He was 
 no longer at war with all mankind. And 
 Avhat was, as yet, best in himself sided with 
 the world against himself, and made — would 
 have made her had she been to be won — Eve 
 Carrington safe from any endeavour on his 
 part to win her. If she would not take care 
 of herself it would have been for him to take 
 care of her. But — the reflection came in half 
 bitterly, yet setting him free — such care was 
 unnecessary; she had another guardian, and 
 since she was to marry Sir Cyril, since the 
 risk was only his own, he had a right to run it. 
 And so it came that day after day found him at
 
 222 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 Nortons, every hour of intercourse deepen- 
 ing the intimacy which had been of such 
 sudden growth, and which was fostered by 
 the pecuHar circumstances of the case and 
 situation. 
 
 Miss Duke, Eve's companion, had returned a 
 few days after Mrs. Ross's departure, but she 
 had been since then, for the most part, confined 
 to her room by a tedious, though not dangerous, 
 attack of rheumatism, so that she was rarely at 
 hand to interrupt the tete-a-tete nature of their 
 intercourse. It is true she had at first expressed 
 some slight surprise at the frequency of the 
 young man's visits ; but she was a simple- 
 minded woman, accustomed to defer to her 
 ex-pupil in every respect, and entertaining an 
 absolute confidence in her judgment, not 
 altogether, so far at least as worldly wisdom 
 was concerned, justified. For the rest, she 
 was a dreamer, living in a world of literature 
 and theory and speculation, upon whom
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 223 
 
 gossip, even if it reached lier ears, made but 
 little impression; and Yerschoyle's history, if it 
 liad ever been known to her, had faded long- 
 ago from her memory. 
 
 On one point Gilbert proved obstinate. 
 It was when, their acquaintance having 
 already ripened into friendship, the girl had 
 expressed a desire that he should meet other 
 guests at her house. He had met her pro- 
 posal with a decided refusal, which, whilst it 
 did not surprise, disappointed and perplexed 
 her. It was, perhaps, natural that they should 
 take different views of the matter, regard- 
 ing as they did the connection between them 
 from such different standpoints : for whilst to 
 Eve it was the beginning of a friendship, to 
 Gilbert it was — he knew it — the brief opening 
 chapter, soon to be finished and done with, 
 of a passion. To her, looking at it as stretch- 
 ing onwards through the coming years, it 
 seemed equally impossible and undesirable
 
 224 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 to avoid or even to postpone for long a 
 meeting between him and those others, whom, 
 should such an alternative be forced upon her 
 — as she hoped it would not — she was pre- 
 pared to sacrifice to him and to what in all 
 good faith she termed the sake of an injured 
 man. To Gilbert, looking at their intercourse 
 onlv hi the lio'ht of a brief interlude, to be 
 concluded, once for all, by her marriage with 
 Courtney, if not before, a different view of the 
 matter was natural. 
 
 ' No, let me come when you are alone,' he 
 said ; ' you have not found me backward to 
 do so ' — he lauo;hed. ' But trust me when 
 I tell you that what you wish would do me 
 no good, and you only harm.' 
 
 ' You will not ?' she said wistfully. 
 
 'I wish you would not ask me. I know 
 the world better than you do — thank God ! 
 won't you let me judge ?' 
 
 ' I must,' she said, smiling. ' I cannot
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 225 
 
 compel you to come if you are bent upon 
 refusing.' 
 
 He hesitated, struggling with himself before 
 he answered. 
 
 ' I will come,' he said abruptly. ' You 
 shall not say that I refused you anything. I 
 will come.' 
 
 ' Xo, no !' she cried eagerly. ' You know 
 best — you may be right. At any rate, I 
 would not for worlds have you come if you 
 dislike it. It was only ' she broke off. 
 
 ' Only that you wanted to show you were 
 not ashamed of me,' he said softly. ' That 
 was it, was it not ? But you know you have 
 every reason to be so — have I not told you so, 
 always ?' 
 
 She made no answer. If she had, it would 
 have been to sny that she would sooner be 
 ashamed of her dead mother, of all that slie 
 had ever reverenced, ever held sacred or noble. 
 But Eve seldom expressed her thoughts, and 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 ?.6 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 when she spoke again it was on a different 
 subject. 
 
 They were sitting under a great beecli 
 which formed one of an avenue stretching 
 from the house upon a gentle grassy slope. 
 At a little distance Dorothy, who had accom- 
 panied her brother that day, was engaged in 
 conversation with Kit, with whom ^liss 
 Verschoyle had, in spite of the inequality of 
 their ages, formed a friendship, fostered by 
 Kit's peculiar precocity and knowledge of the 
 world. Gilbert's colley, Ben, lay at his 
 master's feet, and above their heads the breeze 
 rustled the leaves, making a low whispering. 
 
 Their talk had wandered off to the first 
 occasion upon w^hich they had met. It was, 
 perhaps, natural that hitherto all mention of 
 that day had, as if by mutual tacit consent, 
 been avoided. Patricia's name had never 
 passed their lips. It was not, indeed, that 
 she was forgotten. To Eve, at least, the
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 227 
 
 thought that Gilbert had loved her sister and 
 that she had failed him, was continually, 
 painfully present, though whether it was the 
 first circumstance or the second that caused 
 her so keen a regret she did not know, neither 
 did she ask herself Instinctively, however, 
 she had shunned all mention of her name. 
 
 To-day, however, for the first time, they 
 had spoken of that meeting. It was Gil^ 
 bert who had introduced the subject. He 
 was moody this afternoon, but Eve had by 
 this time learnt to expect him to be variable 
 and she noticed nothing amiss. There had 
 been a short silence, and when she spoke she 
 had stooped to stroke the dog's smooth head, 
 and her face was hidden. 
 
 * I was sorry once,' she said, under her 
 breath, ' that I had asked you to come again.' 
 
 ' Were you ?' he asked, with a jar in his 
 voice. ' My words, then, were fulfilled after 
 all — even sooner than I expected.' 
 
 15—2
 
 228 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Your words ?' she lifted her head, giancing 
 at him inquiringly. ' What do you mean ? 
 Ah, I remember/ smiling. ' No, it was not 
 that. But I remembered afterwards — after I 
 had made you promise to come — about — 
 about my sister, and I thought — I was afraid 
 it might have been painful to you to come here 
 again, and that I was wrong to have pressed it.' 
 
 He coloured under his dark skin, but it was 
 from a sudden feeling of anger rather than 
 from any other cause. The recollection of his 
 brief connection with Mrs. Ross came, as it 
 had come whenever it had recurred to his 
 memory of late, as a jarring inharmonious 
 note, bringing with it a sharp sense of shame. 
 How impossible and remote, how unworthy, 
 what he had called, even then half con- 
 temptuously, his love for her seemed now! 
 He hated that Eve should even know of it ; 
 more still did he resent the implication con- 
 tained in her words that Mrs. Ross could still
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 229 
 
 be anything to him ; the very idea seemed, 
 in his present unreasonable irritation, an 
 insult to them both — to Eve and to himself. 
 He made no immediate answer, resisting the 
 temptation to give vent to an angry retort, 
 and she spoke again, bending once more over 
 the doo;. 
 
 ' It was the first time I saw you,' she said. 
 
 ' It was not a favourable opportunity for 
 the commencement of an acquaintance. I fear, 
 from my own recollection of my conduct, that 
 it was not calculated to produce an altogether 
 agreeable impression.' 
 
 His tone was hard and jeering, but she was 
 preoccupied and did not notice it, as she went 
 on without considering the wisdom of her 
 words, or remembering the construction which 
 he might put upon them. 
 
 ' You had a right to be angry. I felt it 
 even then ; but — yes, you were angry.' She 
 remembered his face of governed passion, and
 
 230 ' ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 involuntarily shrank a little. ' If you sliould 
 
 ever look at me like that ' She broke 
 
 off with a certain tremor in her voice. 
 
 By this time Yerschoyle was at a white 
 heat of anger, utterly unreasonable though 
 it was. Mrs. Ross had certainly been right 
 when she called his temper defective. The 
 very reference to Patricia had, as has been 
 said, roused him to wrath; and, whilst every 
 word Eve had since uttered had added fuel to 
 the flame, her final involuntary putting of 
 herself in Patricia's place was more than he 
 could bear. 
 
 ' Excuse me, Miss Carrington,' he said ; ' it 
 would be impossible. You forget that ]\Irs. 
 Ross had first jilted and then lied to me. Of 
 the last I am sure you would be incapable; 
 and the first,' smoothly, ' by the nature of the 
 case, you will never be in a position to do.' 
 
 The scorching colour rushed to the girl's 
 face, up to her very broAV. Xever since her
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 231 
 
 jseconci meeting with him, on the occasion of 
 their drive to Mace, had she heard the tone in 
 Gilbert's voice, sneering, almost insulting, 
 which was there now. It was as if her very 
 reference, innocent as it had been, to the past 
 had sufficed to bring back his worst self, lately 
 exorcised. Slie was absolutely silent. A leaf, 
 dead before its time, fluttered slowly down 
 from a branch overhead and lay, like a golden 
 coin, on her white dress ; and the colley woke 
 and snapped lazily at a fly. Otherwise all was 
 still. Perhaps half a minute passed before 
 he spoke again. 
 
 ' Forgive me,' he said in a low bitter tone ; 
 ' I have so long been treated like a scoundrel 
 t':at I forget at times that I am a gentleman.' 
 
 Still she did not answer. He stooped and 
 took the hand which lay on the dog's black head. 
 
 ' Miss Carrington,' he urged ; ' Eve — forgive 
 me.' 
 
 ' Yes,' slie said. She did not raise her eyes
 
 232 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 — they were full of tears — but her lingers 
 closed for a moment on his. It was the mis- 
 fortune of the girl's life that all that was 
 wrong, all that was blameworthy in him she 
 laid not to his own account, but to that of the 
 world which had made him what he was, 
 feeling only at each token of it a deeper 
 compassion. Even his faults seemed to her to 
 cry for atonement instead of blame — wounds 
 
 that he had sustained in the battle of life. 
 # # m « * 
 
 Half an hour later they were in the hall 
 waiting till the dogcart should be brought 
 round in which Gilbert and his sister had 
 driven over. What had passed between them 
 out of doors had been left behind; yet its 
 shadow, as such shadows do, still lay upon 
 them both, giving them an unusual sense of 
 constraint as they talked of trivial and in- 
 different matters. 
 
 Gilbert was leaning against the stone frame-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 233 
 
 work of the window, the sun rusthig his crisp 
 black hair as he stood, his face in shadow, 
 looking down at Eve, who sat absently 
 playing with a spray of heliotrope. He was 
 struofsiinof with a desire to ask her foroiveness 
 once more, to gain her assurance before he 
 went that all was as it had been between 
 them ; yet some instinct warned him that 
 such explanations were best avoided, such 
 words safest unsaid. He roused himself and 
 spoke. 
 
 ' Your favourite flower, is it not?' he said, 
 stooping to touch the blossom she held. ' The 
 second time we met — when I drove you to 
 Mace — I remember that you wore it.' 
 
 She did not answer at once. She was 
 thinking how much had passed since that 
 chance meeting, how long ago it seemed. 
 
 ' If I had not met you that day ' she 
 
 said slowly, and then paused. 
 
 ' You would certainly have been late for
 
 234 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 dinner,' he finished with a half-laugh. * Was 
 that what you were going to say ?' 
 
 She was silent, vaguely hurt. Perhaps he 
 guessed it. He sighed impatiently, glancing 
 out of the window with something not unlike 
 a hope that the dogcart might be in sight. He 
 was not commonly in haste to go, but to-day 
 he was indistinctly conscious that he stood on 
 dangerous ground. The scene that had passed 
 between them had shaken their ordinary foot- 
 ing, and he had a sense that the part he had 
 to play was becoming too difficult. Deliver- 
 ance, however, was not yet at hand, and he 
 turned to her again. 
 
 ' We Avill not begin to reckon up the gains 
 and the losses resultino- from that meetinof,' he 
 said gently, though his tone was still jest- 
 ing. ' It would be too difficult a calculation, 
 and the gains, I fear, all on one side.' 
 
 Again there was a silence, upon which the 
 children's voices broke.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 235 
 
 ' And this is Sir Reo^inald Carrinofton,' Kit 
 Avas announcing in the voice of a showman. 
 He was displaying the pictures, mostly of 
 defunct Carringtons, which adorned the hall, 
 to Dorothy Yerschoyle, and had now paused 
 below a portrait of particularly unprepossess- 
 ing appearance : ' This is Sir Reginald Car- 
 rington. He was a bad, wicked man, who 
 killed his own brother; and he would have 
 been killed himself, only he ran awa}- before 
 they could catch him, and never came back no 
 more. ' 
 
 Dorothy's response came in a lower key, 
 and the listeners did not catch the drift of it. 
 It was, however, apparently unsatisfactory, 
 for when Kit spoke again, his voice was raised 
 in angry assertion. His small hand was lifted, 
 and he was pointing up at the picture with a 
 view of emphasizing his remarks. 
 
 * God never forgives people who do wrong,' 
 he declared domineeringly, as if in defence of
 
 236 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 some attribute of the Deity which had been 
 profanely called in question. 
 
 ' It is wicked to say that/ returned 
 Dorothy, her quiet voice this time audible. 
 ^ It is wicked to say that. It is not true. 
 God does forgive people when they are sorry. 
 It is only bad men who don't.' 
 
 ' Well then, if He does forgive them He 
 punishes them all the same,' declared Kit 
 triumphantly, shifting his ground. ' I know 
 He does. That is wdiy Cain, and Sir Jiegi- 
 nald Carrington too,' again indicating the 
 ])icture with a wave of his hand, ' had to go 
 about wandering all their lives. He may 
 forgive people, but He punishes them all the 
 same.' 
 
 Dorothy might perhaps have attempted a 
 further remonstrance, but without waiting for 
 a reply Kit dragged her off to inspect some 
 fresh object of interest ; feeling, perhaps, that 
 having, at least in his own opinion, made a
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 237 
 
 decided hit as well as shown a laudable know- 
 ledge of Biblical history, it was as well to rest 
 upon his laurels and not to risk defeat by 
 unwisely continuing the discussion. 
 
 Eve had been lending a half-attention to 
 the argument, and she started when Gilbert 
 spoke. 
 
 ' Do you endorse Kit's theology, Miss 
 Carrinii^ton ? ' he asked. His tone was lio-ht 
 and not without a suspicion of a scoff ; yet 
 she felt that something lay below the surface 
 of his words, though what it was she did not 
 understand. 
 
 'Kit's theology?' she repeated question- 
 ingly. 
 
 ' Yes. Do you, too, hold the view — not 
 an uncommon one, by the way — that retribu- 
 tion accompanies forgiveness ?' 
 
 She paused, her brows a little drawn 
 together as in thought, before she answered. 
 
 ' I do not know,' she said at last. ' God's
 
 -38 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ways are different from ours. Perhaps His 
 punishments may be what we call re^vards, 
 and our rewards His punishments. - I cannot 
 tell.' 
 
 Gilbert moved restlessly. At times the 
 very characteristics which attracted him in 
 Eve from their unlikeness to all that he had 
 known before, woke in him a sort of impa- 
 tience, so far was she removed from the world 
 in which he had ever lived and in which, even 
 now, he was most at home. It was with a 
 certain relief that he heard the wheels of the 
 dogcart grind the gravel outside, and turned 
 to take leave.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IX o'clock had just struck from the 
 church clock in the village below, 
 its echoes reaching faintly to the 
 top of the moor to which Eve, with her little 
 nephew, had climbed. A sort of attachment 
 had grown up between the two since they had 
 been left in solitude, and Kit was by degrees 
 alk)wing the distrust with which he regarded 
 mankind in general to lessen in her favour. 
 ' To believe every man to be guilty till he is 
 proved to be innocent,' had been the maxim 
 upon which his conduct had been for the most 
 part based ; and perhaps, considering the 
 nature of his experience, it was a not alto-
 
 240 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 gether unwise one, though, like other people, 
 he was liable at times to carry it too far. It 
 was, indeed, only with the extremest caution 
 that he was relaxing his practice in his aunt's 
 favour. To-day, however, he had been pleased 
 with her. She had not only left Marie, to her 
 own indignation, behind, but had permitted 
 Kit's — in his nurse's eyes — undesirable ally, 
 Joe, the stable-boy, to carry up to the heath a 
 basket of fruit, with which the children were 
 at present regaling themselves at a little dis- 
 tance, whilst, a book on her knee, she watched 
 the chano^ino' colours of the skv and hills 
 from under the group of solitary fir-trees 
 Avhich crowned the summit. 
 
 There she was still sitting, when another 
 figure ascended the narrow pathway by which 
 they had mounted, and Gilbert Yerschoyle 
 greeted her. His first words savoured some- 
 what of reproach. 
 
 * You might have left word where you were
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 241 
 
 to be found,' he said. ' It is liuiniliating' to 
 be indebted to chance alone for the fact that 
 I did not have my nine miles' ride in vain.' 
 
 ' I did not expect you to-day,' she answered 
 apologetically. 
 
 ' Because it is so short a time since I Avas 
 at Xortons last ? I confess it, and I did not 
 mean to come when I started ; but the road 
 I took led near here, and now that I am 
 come I cannot regret it.' 
 
 ' Why should you?' she returned; ' you are 
 in time to see the sun go down.' 
 
 It w\as, in fact, already nearing the top of 
 the opposite hill and sending its straight level 
 rays across from the horizon, whilst behind 
 them the eastern sky was still steel-blue. 
 Gilbert had thrown himself dowm on the 
 heather at her side, and they sat witnessing 
 together wdiat he called the whole of the trans- 
 formation scene. 
 
 ' Which does the managers the utmost 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 credit,' he observed approvingly. ' Xo, I 
 retract — I confess I was flippant and deserve 
 rebuke. ' 
 
 Eve had lent him but a half- attention. It 
 was only when, having at last reached their 
 climax, the colours began to fade and the vivid- 
 ness of the effect to die away, that she spoke. 
 
 ' It has been the best day of all the year,' 
 she said, with a sigh. 
 
 * The best ?' answered Yerschoyle, looking 
 not at the sky, but at the outline of her face 
 defined against it. ' Let me give you some- 
 thing, then, in remembrance of it.' 
 
 He had taken out a small reliquary, carved 
 in gold, and laid it in her hand. 
 
 ' What ! a relic ?' she asked, smiling yet 
 surprised. 
 
 ' No, only its shrine. It is empty.' 
 
 ' A relic of faith,' she said softly, lifting it 
 and examining the elaborate tracery and deli- 
 cate work. ' The most pathetic of all.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 243 
 
 'And the best authenticated/ added Ver- 
 schoyle, with a half- laugh in which there was 
 yet no mockery. ' It is, however, a relic of 
 somethino' besides a lost faith. It has a 
 special history of its own.' 
 
 ' Tell me,' she said. 
 
 ' You would care to hear it ? It is nothing 
 much after all. It is only that it belongs to 
 one of the happiest days of my life. There 
 was nothing to make it so, or only physical 
 causes — perhaps after all the best.' 
 
 ' The best ?' repeated Eve inquiringly. 
 
 ' I think so. No reason that you can give 
 for being happy is so good that a hole can- 
 not be picked in it — therefore it is safest to 
 have none.' 
 
 ' Where was it ?' asked Eve, without heed- 
 inof his dio^ression. 
 
 ' In Spain. The sun was shining as only 
 {Spanish suns can; I had just recovered from 
 a fever, and I was nineteen, abroad for the
 
 244 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 vacation. Life, in spite of everything, was 
 pleasant. Pleasant! it is a poor word for 
 Avhat I felt it then. I spent the entire day 
 out of doors, lying in the sun, in absolute idle- 
 ness and absolute enjoyment, though I had 
 nothing to enjoy except life and youth. 
 There is nothing, after all, like those two 
 combined. What comes after may be better 
 or worse, but one has always a past ; it is the 
 special privilege of youth alone to have none. 
 Even if it were one to be proud of — I am not 
 speaking of my own — I fancy I would rather 
 have the sheet clean.' 
 
 ' With its possibilities untested ?' she said. 
 She waited, her eyes wandering over the 
 distant hills up which the mist was beginning 
 to creep, then spoke again. ' It is only death,' 
 she said, ' that limits the possibilities of life.' 
 
 ' Is that your creed ?' He spoke with a 
 touch of scepticism, yet he smiled. ' I think 
 I could name other limitations. Well, that day
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 245 
 
 has stood out ever since as Avhat our pious 
 friend the carver ' — indicating the reliquary 
 with a laugh^ — ' would no doubt have called a 
 foretaste of Paradise. How irrational we are !' 
 
 ' And the reliquary ?* asked Eve. 
 
 ' It caught my eye as I was going home in 
 the evening, and I bought it. It was after all 
 an ominous purchase, was it not — an empty 
 shrine ?' 
 
 She Avas still looking at the little golden 
 case, touching it softly as if it had indeed held 
 something sacred. 
 
 * And the next day ?' she asked. 
 
 ' Was like all the other days. You can't 
 imprison a rainbow. But I have always kept 
 the reliquary. I grew afterwards to have a 
 sort of superstition, and looked upon it in the 
 light of a pledge that happiness is after all 
 possible. You ' he paused — ' have re- 
 deemed the pledge, so it is rightly and justly 
 yours.'
 
 246- ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 They were silent. His thouglits had already 
 quitted that distant day to occupy themselves 
 with matters nearer home ; but Eve was still 
 thinking of what he had told her, of the 
 picture he had drawn, and was remembering, 
 with the dull, aching pain the thought always 
 brought her, the wasted years that lay between 
 that day and this. When, however, she at 
 last spoke, it was upon a different subject. 
 
 ' You are always making me feel my ignor- 
 ance,' she said. ' You have seen so much, and 
 I have lived in such a narrow world. I ' 
 
 He interrupted her. 
 
 'You are not going to tell me that, like 
 your namesake, you long for the fi^uit of the 
 tree of knowledge ? You are unwise, believe 
 me. Besides, what is the use ? However 
 much we learn, we end as Ave began. First, 
 we know nothing and are content — like Ben,' 
 indicating the dog who lay beside him ; ' next, 
 one learns a little and is wretched because one
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 247 
 
 does not know more ; then, after that, one 
 learns, if one is wise, to be content again — like 
 nie — because one finds out that nothing can 
 be known.' 
 
 ' Is that wisdom ?' she said. * Then I am 
 not Avise. I want to know more.' 
 
 ' Take Life for a teacher, then ' — he was still 
 onl}^ half in earnest — ' it will tell you all you 
 want to know — perhaps more,' he added in an 
 undertone. 
 
 ' You recommend it ? Tell me what it has 
 taught you.' 
 
 'God forbid!' he said hastily. 
 
 * And yet you recommend it to me ?' 
 
 * It is a wise teacher, and suits its lessons 
 to the pupil. Yours — will be in a different 
 language from mine.' 
 
 She looked at him wistfully, partly under- 
 standing his meaning. 
 
 ' Is there no interpreter ?' she asked, with a 
 vague sense of pain.
 
 -48 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' None/ he answered — his lightness had 
 died away, leaving in its place a gravity not 
 untouched with bitterness — ' none, at least, 
 that we will invite to act as mediator.' 
 
 Again there was a short silence, and when 
 he spoke again he had recovered his usual 
 manner. 
 
 ' To return to the subject of your ignor- 
 ance,' he said. ' Life's pages are " fair and 
 unwritten still " ?' 
 
 She did not answer at once. When she did, 
 she looked not at him, but before her at the 
 fading sky. 
 
 ' No — not that/ she said. ' I have loved.' 
 
 A jealous pang shot through him, keen and 
 sharp, accustomed as he was by this time to 
 knowing that he loved her, and that his love 
 was vain. His voice, however, w^as only a 
 little smoother and colder as he replied. 
 
 ' Ah,' he said, ' I should not have asked the 
 question. I apologize.'
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 249 
 
 ' Why not ? I have wanted you to know. 
 We are friends.' 
 
 'Are we?' he e:ave a short lauoh. 
 
 ' I thought so,' she answered in her soft 
 voice, hurt and perplexed by his tone and 
 manner. 
 
 ' Well, it is a word of many meanings,' he 
 answered, still half scoffing, ' so perhaps you 
 are right;' then more gently, as he caught the 
 troubled bewiklerment of her face, ' In which- 
 ever of them, however, you employ it, I am 
 proud that you should apply the term to me. 
 The world would be empty indeed without its 
 friendships.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said dreamily, answering his 
 words; 'they are God's best gifts to His 
 creatures.' 
 
 ' Xo,' he said. 
 
 She turned, startled, to look at him. As 
 she did so, a deep, slow flush covered her face 
 and mounted to her brow, but she did not
 
 250 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ask him what he meant. After a moment he 
 Avent on. 
 
 ' And now, will you tell me what it w^as 
 that you wished me to know?^ 
 
 He did not doubt that she had been allud- 
 ing to Cyril Courtney, but certainty must 
 come sooner or later, perhaps the sooner the 
 better, and he was not a man to shrink from 
 it. Yet his hand, hidden in the heather, was 
 clenched as he waited for her answ^er. 
 
 ' It seems so long ago,* she said, * and yet 
 it changed everything, for I did love Harry 
 Courtney.' 
 
 'Harry Courtney!' he exclaimed involun- 
 tarily. He had, till then, forgotten that long- 
 past story of which Dorothy had once given 
 him the outline, and he drew his breath with 
 a sharp sense of relief. At least it was not 
 to his living rival that the tender vibrations 
 of her voice belonged. ' And he died ?' he 
 said very low.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 251 
 
 ^ He died/ 
 
 ' Poor beggar !' he said. Achate ver the words 
 might be, there was nothing light in liis tone. 
 
 She turned her eyes upon him. 
 
 ' Is life such a good ?' she asked. 
 
 ' Life is what we make it. I am sorry 
 from my soul for Courtney, who died. I am 
 more sorry for — some, who live.' 
 
 She had been looking full at him as she 
 spoke with her jDeculiar absent gaze — a gaze 
 which seemed to look beyond the body into 
 the soul; but as he answered, there suddenly 
 sprang into it a more vivid personal feeling — 
 something that was almost a question. Whether 
 or not he read it he made no answer, and pre- 
 sently she continued. 
 
 ' It was so long ago. Five years are so 
 long.' 
 
 * And yet — through that eternity' — involun- 
 tary sarcasm was in his tone — ' you have re- 
 membered him?'
 
 252 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' I remember him, but ' — she paused, look- 
 ing at him with a sort of dumb trouble in her 
 eyes, Avhich for the first time sought to find 
 utterance, and which yet failed to discover the 
 words in which to clothe its meaning — ' not 
 as I once did.. I am not unhappy/ 
 
 'Thank God for that!' he said rather 
 huskily. 
 
 * Xo,' she answered slowly. * Faith to re- 
 member would have been a o-reater sfift.' 
 
 ' Are you sure?' he said. 
 
 His voice was not perfectly steady. He had 
 turned away to pluck some long dead grasses 
 that grew near, and was winding them round 
 his fingers as he battled with himself. She 
 would marry Cyril — of that he was no less 
 convinced than before — whether she was en- 
 gaged to him already, or whether, as was 
 more likely, it was an understood and implied 
 arrangement not yet definitely and irrevocably 
 fixed. But that she did not yet love him he was
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 253 
 
 equally certain ; and with that conviction came, 
 for the first time, the temptation, fierce and 
 sudden, to claim her, to attempt at least to 
 win her. He might fail — it might be impos- 
 sible ; so far, he knew, she cared for him only 
 out of her tender compassion and, as she had 
 said, as a friend ; but could he not change 
 that compassion to something else ? Why, at 
 any rate, should he give her up tamely, with- 
 out a struggle? A¥hat was it to him even 
 if, as he did not believe, Courtney had her 
 promise ; what were promises and pledges to 
 him who was at war with the world, and had 
 a rio'ht to force out of its closed fino^ers what 
 it had never been willing to give him ; what 
 fealty did he owe to its law^s, its creeds, and its 
 formulas of honour? None, and none w^ould 
 he pay. He had already turned to her, already 
 the words were on his lips wdiich should have 
 decided both their destinies, when he paused. 
 What was he doin*]: — what was he 2:oin2r to do? 
 
 O DO
 
 254 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 In his defiance of the world had he forgotten 
 that, owing no loyalty to it, there was a 
 deeper loyalty, a purer faith, which he owed 
 to lier^ and which sealed his lips? Was she 
 to be the innocent victim of his quarrel with 
 fate? Had he not sworn to himself that, bad 
 as he was, he would never be so base as to 
 seek to drag her into his disgrace, to darken 
 her life with the shadow which lay upon his 
 own, and offer her a stained name; and was it 
 possible that now, at the first provocation, the 
 first gleam of a possibility of success, he was 
 ready to break his vow ? It was scarcely a 
 minute — she had hardly had time to wonder 
 at his silence before he turned to her atrain 
 and spoke quietly, as if continuing the con- 
 versation where it had left off. 
 
 ' Believe me,' he said, ' forgetfulness is not 
 infidelity. If it comes, receive it kindly.' 
 
 It was nearly seven o'clock when they 
 turned homewards. Kit had run on before,
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 255 
 
 whilst they followed more slowly. Long after- 
 wards they both remembered that hour ; the 
 slow loiterinof descent throuo^h tlie sweet- 
 scented pines, down the narrow path where 
 two could scarcely walk abreast, over the slip- 
 pery carpet of tir-needles; the red-brown of the 
 straight tree-stems ; the dim light struggling 
 throuo^h, makino^ a orreen dusk around them — 
 all went to make up a picture that lived long 
 in their memories. 
 
 Once Eve stumbled on the steep, slippery 
 path, recovering her footing, however, the next 
 moment. 
 
 * Give me your hand,' said Gilbert, in a low 
 voice. She placed it at once in his, and thus 
 hand in hand they descended the hill. A 
 silence had fallen upon them which neither 
 broke till they emerged upon the open grassy 
 ground, studded by patches of gorse, which 
 lav at the bottom of the descent. Then Eve 
 paused for a moment, drawing her hand out
 
 2^6 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 of his, and givin^ a long sigh. It was as if, 
 leaving the darkening woods, some spell had 
 been broken, which removed, they returned 
 to common, everyday life. Kit, running up 
 hot and breathless, possessed by a new idea, 
 completed the effect. 
 
 ' I may ride your horse ?' he cried eagerly, 
 before he had reached them. ' Jim won't let me. 
 I may ride him up to the house, mayn't I ?' 
 
 ' I think you had better not,' returned Yer- 
 schoyle. ' Tatters' temjDer is uncertain, and 
 he might not like it.' 
 
 ' I don't care — I want to ride him,' cried 
 the child. He was tired and cross. ' Joe 
 says I couldn't keep on, but I could.' 
 
 ' I am afraid Joe is right,' said Tatters' 
 master carelessly. ' You must wait a bit 
 before you ride Tatters, my lad.' 
 
 Eve had laid her hand on the child's- 
 shoulder, bending to speak to him, but he 
 wrenched himself away, beside himself with
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 257 
 
 anger and disappointment. He raised his 
 small hand and shook it at Gilbert. 
 
 * I hate yoLi!' he cried. 'I hate you, and 
 Marie says ' 
 
 Eve had bent forward again to interrupt 
 him, speaking in a different voice from any he 
 had heard from her before, and he paused half 
 frightened. Gilbert, however, interposed. 
 
 ' Let him speak, Miss Carrington,' he said 
 quietly. ' AVhat does Marie say, my boy ?' 
 
 * She says you are no better than 2, for cat ^ 
 said the child sullenly. He was quite igno- 
 rant of the meaning of the word, but shrewdly 
 conjectured that it was a forcible form of 
 abuse, in which, it may be observed, he knew 
 his nurse to be an adept. The next moment 
 he had turned and run quickly down the 
 slope. 
 
 The blood had rushed to Eve's face, and 
 fading i^way as quickly, left her white. 
 
 ^Yoifhear, Miss Carrington,' said Gilbert. 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 If the blow had told, not race of it appeared 
 in his voice, or in the face — smiling and 
 unmoved, if a trifle hard — which he turned 
 towards her, ^ You cannot at any rate com- 
 plain that you have not had warnings suffi- 
 cient. I myself, Marie, even Kit, to say 
 nothing of others ' — he glanced keenly at her 
 — * have united to caution you against me/ 
 
 She made no reply ; she would have found 
 it impossible. The hot tears were forcing 
 themselves to her eyes. Even as he spoke 
 one fell on the white bare hands locked 
 together before her. As Yerschoyle saw it 
 his tone changed to one of impatient pain. 
 
 ' For God's sake don't do that/ he said ; * it 
 is not worth it.' He took the hand on which 
 the drop had fallen. ' What unlucky chance 
 ever sent me across your path ?' He was 
 speaking in low rough tones, not looking at 
 her face, but at the hand he held. Suddenly 
 she lifted her eyes, darkened and dilated, to his.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 259 
 
 * Why should you bear it ?' she asked 
 passionately; * why ' 
 
 She broke off, but her eyes were still fixed 
 upon him. He raised his own slowly, look- 
 ing at her with a sort of surprise, which 
 changed into something else as her meaning 
 flashed upon him. 
 
 * Why ?' he repeated vaguely ; ' why ' 
 
 ' Forgive me,' she said quickly. ' I did not 
 mean to ask. I had no right — you know 
 best.' 
 
 He made no reply. He had dropped her 
 hand, and they were walking slowly on. In 
 the garden they parted, sadly and gravel}\ 
 The sun had gone down, the light was fading, 
 and the mist rose thickly around them as he 
 took his leave and turned away. 
 
 17—2
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 HE weather had at last broken up, 
 with not uncommon suddenness, 
 after the long spell of sunshine and 
 drought. The day after that on which A^er- 
 schoyle and Eve had witnessed the sunset 
 together from the moor, broke in clouds and 
 storm, and since then rain had continued more 
 or less incessantly. 
 
 Gilbert's visits, however, had not been 
 intermitted on account of the unfavourable 
 weather ; there was, indeed, an additional 
 inducement to him to come often in the 
 fact that a term was approaching to the possi- 
 bility of his continuing to do so. Patricia
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 261 
 
 had at last fixed a definite date for her return. 
 She was expected back at Nortons early in 
 September, and her former lover knew and 
 recognised the fact of which Miss Carrington 
 was more dimly conscious, namely, that with 
 Mrs. Ross's return the ease and frequency of 
 their intercourse must cease. It w^as as well 
 — so he told himself — that the inevitable end 
 should come soon ; but not the less did he 
 continue, even more recklessly than before, to 
 make the most of Avhat yet remained, post- 
 poning till afterwards the consideration of 
 what should follow. 
 
 One afternoon — it was towards the end of 
 the fourth week in August — he entered the 
 drawing-room where Miss Duke and Eve were 
 sitting together, and where tea had just been 
 brought. The rain, which was coming down 
 outside in torrents, was dripping from his hair 
 and coat ; and though Eve looked up with
 
 262 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 a soft welcome in her face, her first words 
 were of remonstance. 
 
 ' How wet you are !' she said. ' How could 
 you come in such weather ?^ 
 
 He laughed as he answered her question 
 with another. 
 
 ' Are you aware that it is three days since I 
 was here last ? Miss Duke, I am sure, has 
 missed me.' 
 
 He had turned to the old lady, taking her 
 hand with the courteous deference that he 
 never failed to show her. 
 
 ' Yes, certainly we have missed you,' she 
 answered, kindly — a gentle well-wisher of all 
 mankind, she had a special liking for Mr. 
 Yerschoyle, even though she had begun of 
 late to feel increased uneasiness at the length 
 and number of his visits — ' but that is no 
 reason that you should come so far in weather 
 like this. Eve is quite right ' — laying her 
 hand upon his sleeve — ' you are wet through.*
 
 ALLEGIANCE, 263 
 
 ' That is not a serious matter,' he replied. 
 ' I am more than repaid — since I have been 
 missed.' 
 
 He was still addressing Miss Duke, but his 
 eyes sought Eve's, and as she met them she 
 smiled. 
 
 ' Will you not at any rate go and get dry ?' 
 she said. ' There is a fire in the housekeeper's 
 room. Jones will show you the way.' 
 
 ' Would it be troubling you too much to 
 ask you to show me the way ?' he asked, with 
 a suspicion of audacity in his voice. ' It is 
 quite true — I am desperately wet, but still my 
 courage is not equal to facing the housekeeper 
 in her own domains unprotected. Won't you 
 come ?' 
 
 She hesitated a moment, then, acquiescing, 
 she rose and led the way through the long 
 passages to the housekeeper's room. Mr. 
 Verschoyle's fears had been groundless, at 
 least for the present ; the room was empty,
 
 264 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 though a fire burning on the hearth and an 
 open work-box on the table indicated that it 
 had been recently occupied. Eve knelt down 
 and stirred the red coals into a blaze. 
 
 ' Rendal is so old,' she observed, ' she is 
 always chilly, and has a fire almost all the year 
 round. It is fortunate for you to-day. Come 
 near and dry yourself 
 
 He bent down, laughing as he shook the rain 
 from his hair and coat. He was, as she had 
 seen at a glance, in his happiest mood; even 
 then she felt, with a transitory thrill of pain, 
 how rare such moods were with him, how 
 quickly they passed and were succeeded by his 
 habitual gravity and gloom. His dark eyes 
 were lit, his whole manner was that of a man 
 who has, for the present at least, thrown care 
 to the winds, and is determined to accept what 
 life offers without thought of future or past, 
 save inasmuch as the memory of the one and 
 the uncertainty of the other may serve to
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 265 
 
 enhance present enjoyment. Perhaps his long 
 ride through rain and wind had something to 
 do with it — he felt he had in some sort earned 
 liis reward. 
 
 Eve was sitting on the hearthrug, whilst he 
 knelt over the fire. Ben, who had somehow 
 forced his way in, in spite of his master's 
 remonstrances, lay on the rug beside her, his 
 smooth wet head on her knee, in absolute con- 
 tentment. 
 
 ' You are ruiniiio; him, Miss Carrino;ton,' 
 expostulated Verschoyle. ' He used to be 
 obedient, but I can do nothing with him now. 
 He expects to get his own way in everything — 
 it is bad for dogs as well as men,' 
 
 'It is *a choice of evils,' returned Eve, 
 stroking the dog's sleek coat. ' If indulgence 
 is bad, contradiction is worse.' 
 
 ' Well, perhaps you are right,' said Ver- 
 schoyle, with a low laugh. ' Ben fully agrees 
 with you, at any rate. But it is a dangerous
 
 266 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 theory — one is tempted to put your principles 
 to the test.' 
 
 She looked at him, smiling ; the fire had 
 given her a faint unusual flush, and shone in 
 her blue eyes. 
 
 ^ Try me,' she said. ' I will not contradict 
 you.' 
 
 'What! you promise blindly? What rash- 
 ness. Miss Carrington ! how do you know 
 to what test I might not put you ? If, for 
 instance ' he paused a minute, grown sud- 
 denly grave — ' if I asked you to discard what 
 on your own showing is a token of something 
 that no longer exists, of what is dead and 
 gone, would you do it ?' 
 
 His eyes were fixed on the hand where 
 Harry Courtney's diamonds shone. He had 
 spoken on an impulse as they caught his eye 
 — they had often done so of late, wakening 
 within him sudden jealousy of the dead man 
 who — he knew it, however he might wil-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 267 
 
 fully strive to blind himself to the fact — had 
 been his only real rival in Eve Carrington's 
 heart. She lifted her eyes to his with a sort 
 of troubled inquiry. 
 
 ' It was there once,' she said, faltering. 
 
 ' And now the ring is a " relic of faith," ' he 
 said, recalled at once to himself, and quoting 
 the words she had used a few days before, with 
 a slightly enigmatical expression. ' Well, you 
 may be right. At any rate, I meant nothing. 
 I was only demonstrating to you the danger 
 of rash promises.' 
 
 A short silence fell upon them. Outside 
 the wind swept round a corner of the house, 
 tilling up the pause with a sound which had 
 in it a curiously human note. Eve raised her 
 head and listened intently. 
 
 ' Was it a cry ?' she asked. 
 
 ' No,' said Gilbert reassuringly. ' Nothing, 
 at least, but the wind; and nobody minds how 
 much it cries, poor thing. Don't listen to it.'
 
 268 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Why not ?' she asked. 
 
 ' You might hear too much.' He was smil- 
 ing, yet half serious. ' The presages that 
 sounds are said to convey are symbolic, if 
 nothing else. Listening long enough we shall 
 be sure to hear death foretold — and it is the 
 one prophecy which is certain to be fulfilled.' 
 
 She looked wistfully into the fire. 
 
 ' Has not life its prophets too ?' she asked. 
 
 ^ The less is contained in the greater. Life 
 always carries the germs of death.' 
 
 ' It is a gloomy creed,' she said with a shiver. 
 
 ' Then forget it,' he said hastily ; ' it is pro- 
 bably not true — for you.' 
 
 He changed the subject, exerting himself 
 so successfully to efface any impression his 
 words might have made that when, a little 
 later, Mrs. Eendal returned to her room, 
 Eve's rare low laugh greeted her on the 
 threshold. The door was ajar, and neither 
 of them noticed the old wom^an, as she stood
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 269 
 
 for a moment watching them. She had a 
 shrewd, kindly face, but as she looked at the 
 oToup before her it was anxious and dis- 
 turbed. She had known and loved the girl 
 half her lifetime, and it seemed to her that she 
 detected a new ring in her voice, that a new 
 expression lay in the eyes that were even now 
 lifted to Yerschoyle's. Whatever might be 
 Miss Duke's ignorance of his story, it was to 
 Mrs. Rendal, no less than to the rest of the 
 household, well known, and she was asking 
 herself what but harm could come of an inti- 
 macy between such a man as he and her 
 young mistress. A moment later Eve had 
 seen her. 
 
 ' Ah, Rendal,' she said. ' We have invaded 
 your premises. This is Mr. Yerschoyle — he 
 has been drying himself at the fire.' 
 
 The old woman had advanced, and stood 
 looking at the stranger. 
 
 ' I remember Mr. Yerschoyle,' she said,
 
 270 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' though it is twenty years since I saw 
 him — it was when I was living with Lady 
 Courtney/ 
 
 Was it intentionally that she introduced the 
 name ? She had addressed Eve, but her eyes 
 were on Gilbert, distrustful and scrutinizing. 
 He had risen with ready courtesy, and had 
 taken the old woman's hand. 
 
 ' Then we are old acquaintances,' he said, 
 ^though I am afraid I cannot expect you to 
 remember me.' 
 
 * Is he changed ?' said Eve, her eyes resting 
 with unconscious pride on his dark, handsome 
 face. ' Would you have known him, Eendal ? 
 What was he like ?' 
 
 ' I think I should have known him,' she 
 answered slowly. ' He is changed, of course, 
 but his eyes and hair are the same.' 
 
 He passed his hand overthe short black waves. 
 
 ' Ah, there are grey hairs in it now, if you 
 look close enough,' he said with a smile.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 271 
 
 ' You must let me come and see you another 
 day, Mrs. Kendal.' 
 
 He took her hand again before he follo^ved 
 Eve to the drawing-room. The housekeeper 
 looked after them with a sigh. 
 
 ' No good will come of it,' she said, as she 
 took up her work again. ' Yes, he looks just 
 as he did then — he was always a bad-tempered 
 boy.' 
 
 Meanwhile, unconscious of Mrs. Rendal's 
 disapproval, Eve and Yerschoyle sat talk- 
 ing together, whilst Miss Duke, as was 
 generally her custom, played the part of a 
 listener, allowing her thoughts to wander 
 away whilst her fingers were occupied with 
 her soft white work, and her kind old eyes 
 looked over from time to time at her 
 companions. Perhaps, notwithstanding tlie 
 weather without, it was one of the most 
 sunshiny hours that they Iiad yet passed. 
 It was also, though of this they were happily
 
 2 72- ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ignorant, the last of its kind which they were 
 to know\ 
 
 ' Have you told Mr. Yerschoyle that your 
 sister is to be here next week?' asked Miss 
 Duke, at a pause in the conversation. ' You 
 have not met dear Mrs. Ross yet, I believe?' 
 turning to Gilbert. ' We are hoping to have 
 her back in ten days at the latest.' 
 
 Eve glanced tow^ards him w^ith involuntary 
 deprecation. 
 
 'Yes — he knows,' she said, answering Miss 
 Duke's question. 
 
 Gilbert had read the meanirn^ of her em- 
 barrassment, half amused and yet resenting 
 it ; and as Miss Duke, always inclined to be 
 absent, subsided once more into her ow^n re- 
 flections, he rose abruptly and crossed over to 
 the girl. 
 
 ' Miss Carrington,' he said, very low, 'you 
 must retract.' 
 
 'What?' she asked, rather breathlessly.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 273 
 
 He was smiling, yet she could see he was 
 angry. 
 
 ' An assertion you have made, not once, but 
 again and again, though not in words — an 
 accusation you might surely have known me 
 by this time too well to have brought against 
 me. Is it possible that you can believe that 
 your sister is anything to me ?' 
 
 ^ She is not ?' she asked, faltering. 
 
 ' Nothing — less than nothing,' he answered, 
 still with low, impatient vehemence. ' It was 
 no more than a passing fancy, and now I — I 
 have forgotten it.' 
 
 He had almost forgotten more than his 
 fancy for Patricia. He had almost forgotten 
 himself and his hard-won, hard-kept resolu- 
 tions, everything but Eve herself, as he stood 
 over her looking at her downcast face, still 
 with that anger born of love darkening his 
 own. 
 
 ' And you,' he went on with suppressed 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 passion, ' you supposed — you imagined for an 
 instant that I still — that she could be any- 
 thing to me now ?' 
 
 ' Forgive me,' she murmured. 
 
 ' You are sorry ?' he asked, bending eagerly 
 down ; ' you will promise ' 
 
 ' General Cartwright.' 
 
 The door had been thrown open, and a 
 visitor announced. They both turned, and 
 Eve, rising, advanced to meet the new comer, 
 a tall, soldierly old man with a thin, square 
 face and iron-grey hair growing far back on 
 his temples. 
 
 As Yerschoyle heard his name, and, turn- 
 ing, saw him, he remembered, through all his 
 annoyance at the unwelcome interruption, 
 that the General had been one of his father's 
 closest friends, and that he himself had, as a 
 boy, been in the constant habit of frequent- 
 ing his house on the most intimate terms. 
 Neither, however, made any sign of recogni-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 275 
 
 tion till Eve, her own greeting over, spoke 
 Gilbert's name in introduction. 
 
 There was a pause. The General had 
 glanced in his direction, looked him steadily- 
 over, and then, with a frigid bow^, had turned 
 awa}'. The dark colour sprang to Yer- 
 schoyle's face. 
 
 ' Yes, it is very wet, as you say ' — General 
 Cartwright had seated himself, and, totally 
 is^norinof the introduction which had taken 
 place, was speaking to Eve in answer to some 
 observation of hers on the weather which had 
 preceded it — ' but I never stay indoors on 
 account of rain. An old soldier, you 
 know ' 
 
 Eve had looked from one to the other of the 
 two men, and as she looked at once she 
 understood the situation. She had been taken 
 by surprise by General Cartwright^s entrance, 
 when her thoughts were otherwise engagec], 
 and so had, for a minute, lost sight of the 
 
 18—2
 
 276 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 bearings of the case ; but now, realizing them 
 with sudden force, and brought for the first 
 time face to face with the fact of Gilbert's 
 position as regarded the world, the even 
 current of her blood was stirred, and without 
 a moment's hesitation she threw herself un- 
 wisely into the breach. 
 
 ' Do you not know Mr. Verschoyle ?' she 
 said again, interrupting her visitor's flow of 
 talk in a clear ringing voice wdiich compelled 
 an answer. 
 
 ' I do not,' said the General. The meaning 
 of his words and tone was unmistakable. 
 
 Eve's eyes lightened ; already she had turned 
 to him ; in another moment the words would 
 have been spoken which should have made her 
 sentiments towards the two men plain, when 
 Gilbert came quietly forward. He had been 
 watching her, half touched, half impatient, with 
 a full perception of her meaning and of her 
 probable course of action, and now interposed.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 277 
 
 ' I have trespassed too long on your 
 patience, Miss Carrington/ he said with the 
 tone and manner of an absolute stranger who 
 had called on business which was now con- 
 cluded. ' I need detain you no longer.' 
 
 He scarcely touched the hand she held out, 
 and then, with a bow to Miss Duke, was gone. 
 
 ' An old soldier, you know^,' said the 
 General, resuming the thread of his discourse 
 as he settled himself in his chair and put 
 down his hat on the floor, 'is not particular 
 about a few drops of rain, and ' 
 
 Eve never knew how the next few minutes 
 passed. She had at once perceived Gilbert's 
 intention, and perceiving it she did not ven- 
 ture, even for his own sake, to disobey him ; 
 his look and tone had laid a command and a 
 prohibition upon her which she dared not dis- 
 regard. He had forbidden her, as plainly as 
 if it had been in spoken words, to avow his 
 friendship or to take up his cause, and hers
 
 278 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 was the rare and absolute loyalty which would 
 not disobey him even in his own service. 
 Perhaps, however, he did not realize how 
 hard a task he had laid upon her as she sat 
 talking. of indifferent matters, of the weather, 
 of her sister's return, of Mrs. Cartwright who 
 was ill ; and all the time with only one image 
 before her — Gilbert's face as she had seen it 
 last, hard and cold ; only one thought in her 
 mind — how to make up to him! At last, 
 taking a swift resolution, she rose. 
 
 * You will excuse me one moment ?' she 
 said with a smile. ' There is something to 
 which I must attend.' 
 
 She went quickly out, leaving her visitor to 
 Miss Duke. General Cartwright, for his part, 
 was puzzled and perplexed, and indistinctly 
 conscious that there was something unusual 
 about the atmosphere ; but he was not a clever 
 man nor a shrewd observer, and arriving at 
 the conclusion, naturally drawn from Yer-
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 279 
 
 schoyle's manner, that his visit had been 
 simply one of business, connected, perhaps, 
 with some outlying parts of the Nortons 
 estate which touched upon his own, he de- 
 cided to make no reference to the young man's 
 presence. He was himself sorry for what had 
 occurred, and yet, remembering the past, and 
 remembering too how Gilbert's offence had been 
 treated by his father, he did not see how, as 
 his father's friend, he could have acted other- 
 wise. To condone in any way that which had 
 been so heavily visited would have been a 
 tacit condemnation of the course which had 
 been pursued with regard to it, and such a 
 condemnation, even had his own sentiments 
 and views been less rigid than they were, he 
 could never have brought himself to pass. 
 
 Eve, meanwhile, had gone out into the hall. 
 A thick grey shawl lay on a chair, anrl 
 wrapping it round her mechanically she 
 opened the hall door and passed out. The
 
 28o ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 rain had intermitted, but an occasional heavy 
 drop was blown violently in her face, and the 
 wind swept round the house and whistled 
 through the great trees. 
 
 She glanced rapidly down the approach. 
 On the right, some hundred yards off, were 
 the stables, to which, as she knew, Gilbert 
 would have gone to seek his horse ; to the left 
 lay the road which he v/ould have to traverse 
 on his way home. Her resolution was taken. 
 She moved quickly in the latter direction till^ 
 reaching the avenue where the trees shut out 
 the house from view, she stood and waited, 
 leaning against a chestnut, her breath coming 
 quick and short. 
 
 It w^as only two or three minutes before 
 the horse's hoofs drew near ; another, and she 
 had come forward, speaking his name. 
 
 * Mr. Yerschoyle.' 
 
 He started and pulled u]) his horse. She 
 had advanced and now stood by his side, her
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 281 
 
 pale face raised, the dark, heavy hair on her 
 forehead ruffled by the wind. But yet she did 
 not speak. She had come to meet him rather 
 from an overmastering necessity of seeing him 
 once more, of making up to him in some way, 
 she knew not how, for the insult he had re- 
 ceived in her house, from an impulse with 
 which she had not reasoned and had had no 
 power to resist, than from any more deliberate 
 plan ; and now that she was close to him she 
 had nothing to say. 
 
 Gilbert, for his part, was for a moment 
 silenced by profound surprise. 
 
 'Miss Carrino^ton/ he said, after that mo- 
 mentary pause. ' What is it ? What are you 
 doing out here in the rain ?' 
 
 The temporary lull was over — the rain was 
 once more falling heavily, and was blown in 
 thick driving gusts upon her bare head and in 
 her face. 
 
 She made no answer. She had not heard
 
 282 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 his question. Suddenly, as she stood there 
 below, looking up into his face, dark and 
 stern as it was, she knew — knew for the first 
 time, but with a certainty as stunning as it 
 was sudden — that she loved him. Five 
 minutes ago when she had left the house — ■ 
 nay, one minute ago when she had come 
 forward to meet him, he had still been the 
 man she had been sorry for, the guest who had 
 been insulted in her house. As she had waited 
 for him under the dripping trees, with all her 
 pulses beating and throbbing, she had still 
 — strange as it may seem — been in ignorance 
 of the real meaning of the bitter passion of 
 resentment that had filled her, foreign as it 
 was to the experiences of her nature, of the 
 personal sense of indignant rebellion as if, 
 nav, a thousand times more than if it had 
 been she herself who had been subjected to 
 the insult; but she would never be ignorant 
 again. The veil had been roughly, violently
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 283 
 
 torn away; and as she stood, her head thrown 
 back, the rain beating upon her face, her eyes 
 wide open, . dazed, confused, Winded as it 
 were by the shock, she knew that she loved 
 Gilbert Yerschoyle — loved him with a love so 
 different, so absolutely unlike the tender un- 
 impassioned affection she had borne Harry 
 Courtney, that the latter had lent her no 
 experience or clue by which to read aright 
 the meaning and interpretation of that which 
 was mastering her now. 
 
 There had been no long pause. Five 
 seconds had scarcely elapsed before he spoke 
 again, yet they had been long enough to 
 set Eve Carrington in a world where she 
 miofht look in vain for the old familiar land- 
 marks, and where all things were become 
 new. 
 
 ' You must not stay here,' he said, growing- 
 surprise in his tone. ' You must go in.' 
 
 Still she scarcely heard him. She had
 
 i84 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 turned away and laid her head against the 
 horse's glossy neck, as if thus to hide what 
 she felt might be written on her face. 
 
 He spoke again, more gently : 
 
 'Are you troubled about what has hap- 
 pened? There is no need. It had to come — • 
 I always knew it. It is well, perhaps, that it 
 has come now.' 
 
 The w^ords penetrated to her as through a 
 mist, dimly. She w^as vaguely conscious of 
 their meaning ; she remembered indistinctly to 
 Avhat they referred. Somebody had insulted her 
 — him — w^hat did it matter ? Just now^ she 
 could realize nothing save the one great over- 
 wdielming certainty borne in upon her, com- 
 pared w^th which all else faded and paled 
 into insignificance. She was not glad, not 
 sorry — she w^as only supremely conscious of 
 the fact. She w^as absolutely speechless. She 
 had lifted her head, but stood with it turned 
 aw^ay so that he could not see her face.
 
 ALLEGIANCE. 285 
 
 ^ Good-bye/ he said, speaking once again. 
 His voice was low and a little stern, like 
 that of a man who suffers, but is master of 
 himself. 
 
 Slowly she turned and lifted her eyes to 
 him as he sat above her, bending from the 
 saddle, his face grave and severe and worn. 
 For perhaps half a minute they looked into 
 one another's eyes. Suddenly as he looked his 
 face changed, the brow contracted, and the 
 firm mouth quivered. Again the longing, 
 heaten down and trampled under foot before, 
 had arisen with gathered force; again he was 
 cursing his fate and almost rebelling against 
 it. The impatient horse was chafing at the 
 bit; her eyes had dropped; she was waiting, 
 still and motionless, as she would have waited 
 for ever only to be near him, asking nothing 
 more; but when he spoke nature had once 
 again been crushed doAvn, and what he would 
 have called honour had triumphed.
 
 286 ALLEGIANCE. 
 
 ' Good-bye,' he said. 
 
 For a moment his hand lay on her wet, 
 dark hair, and then he was gone, and she 
 stood alone in the wind and the rain under 
 the swaying branches. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BltXlNG <1 SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
 G., C. d- Co. 
 
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