LI E) aAFLY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN IVLR5ITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 825 
 0555c 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 E Nobel 
 
 MARY ANGELA DICKENS. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 
 
 Limited. 
 
 189L 
 \_All rights reserved.^ 
 
CH^KLES niCKRNS AND EVANS, 
 CKYSTAL PALACE PKESS. 
 
8S3 
 
 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 
 > 
 
 >T " What a voice ! " 
 
 " How graceful ! " 
 
 " What wonderful eyes ! My dear, they'll 
 5 make her fortune ! " 
 
 ^ From all parts of the room such comments 
 j,9 came, in tones more or Jess audible, more or 
 J, less sincere. 
 ^ " She's too thin ! " 
 
 " All that excitement is out of place in a 
 :^ room like this." 
 
 " Where did the Tyrrell s pick her up ? " 
 
 There were about a hundred people in the 
 
 ; rooms ; all well-dressed ; all havinc^ the unmis- 
 
 J) takeable hall-mark of " society " ; all stirred, as 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 sucli an assemblnge is not often stirred, by one 
 common interest. It was about half-past four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and the warm May 
 sunshine, as it shone in upon them, was subdued 
 and chastened by delicate Indian draperies. 
 These had evidently been chosen with the most 
 careful reference to the papering on the walls, 
 and the tinting of the ceiling, which was all, 
 or almost all, that could be seen of the room 
 at the moment. The other inanimate details 
 — equally harmonious when they were visible — 
 were now obscured by groups of men and women, 
 groups which shifted and changed, coml)ined 
 and dispersed like the pattern of a kaleidoscope, 
 as people met one another, exchanged remarks 
 and comments — mainly on one topic — and passed 
 on in the same instant, as though the great 
 object to be attained by each individual was the 
 exchange of three words with every one in the 
 room in turn. The air was sweet, if a little 
 close and heavy, with the scent of quantities of 
 flowers. Every one was interested, eager, at 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 3 
 
 his or her best. John Tyrrell, the master of the 
 house, was an actor, successful and fashionable ; 
 he and his sister gave only odc *' at home" in 
 the course of the season, and they were by no 
 means indiscriminate in their choice of acquaint- 
 ances. To be seen at their house stamped an 
 individual as " somebody," if somebody only in 
 the world of fashion ; and with that curious 
 homage to intellect, which is as much an in'fetinct 
 of humanity as it is a social phase, the shallowest 
 titled or moneyed nonentity who crossed the 
 Tyrrells' threshold felt vaguely that something 
 was expected of him or her, and endeavoured, 
 more or less impotently, according to their kind, 
 to respond to the demand. 
 
 ** Selma Malet ! " 
 
 The name seemed to be in the very air, 
 so many people were asking the same question 
 and receiving the same answer. 
 
 " Miss Selma Malet ! " 
 
 It was echoed by an old lady sitting at the 
 end of the room with some disfavour. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 ''Selnica!" she re23eated, "ah, she's not an 
 English girl. I thought not. What country- 
 woman is she, I wonder ? These geniuses are 
 generally Poles or Russians." 
 
 She was a tall old lady, plain in countenance, 
 and, as compared with nearly every other woman 
 in the room, shabby in dress. Except for her 
 height, which was commanding ; her nose, which 
 was aquiline ; and her manner, which was 
 slightly supercilious ; she was as unlike the typical 
 Duchess as a woman could be. But a Duchess she 
 was, nevertheless, and the well-preserved, elderly 
 man to whom she spoke, a rather distinguished 
 art critic, responded with due alacrity. 
 
 " She is a Greek," he said, with the air of 
 one who knows, though he would have been 
 much puzzled to quote his authority ; ^' that 
 is to say her mother was a Greek — a very 
 beautiful woman with a terrific temper. She 
 stabbed her husband in a fit of jealousy, and 
 then died of remorse ; quite a girl she was, 
 about two-and-twenty." 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 5 
 
 " Dear me ! " ejaculated his auditor, with 
 a general air of disapprobation of such ill- 
 regulated proceedings, combined with a desire 
 for further details. ^^ This young woman takes 
 after her mother, no doubt. It is to be hoped 
 she will control herself better. Where has she 
 been brought up? Ah," she went on, ''here 
 is Miss Tyrrell. She will tell us all about 
 Miss Selma Malet." 
 
 A woman of five or six-and-forty — the only 
 woman visible wearing neither hat nor bonnet — 
 detached herself suavely from the group with 
 which she had been talking as the Duchess spoke, 
 and came towards her. She was beautifully and 
 elaborately dressed, and her whole personality, 
 from her wonderful auburn hair to her graceful 
 manner, was a triumph of artistic arrangement. 
 She was not beautiful, not even pretty ; but her 
 sallow face and light eyes seemed as essential 
 to the completion of her whole effect as the 
 admirably chosen colours of her gown. She 
 was too thin for grace, but she never made a 
 
6 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 movement which did not harmonise with every- 
 thing about her. 
 
 '* I have been on my way to you really 
 for ages," she said, sweetly, with that mixture 
 of deference to rank and consciousness of the 
 immeasurable superiority conferred on her by 
 her connection with art, which was one of the 
 secrets of Miss Tyrrell's success with society. 
 "Did I hear you speaking of Miss Malet ? I 
 hope you were pleased ? " 
 
 AVhatever her private opinion might have 
 been, the Duchess would have been a bold and 
 self-confident woman indeed if she had ventured 
 to confess to such bad taste as the tone in which 
 the question was asked imputed to any one who 
 might reply in the negative. 
 
 " Delighted ! " she replied, promptly ; " quite 
 charmed, I assure vou. Mr. Marsden," referring 
 to the man who still stood by, "Mr. Marsden has 
 been telling me her story. Most romantic, really." 
 
 Miss Tyrrell turned to Mr. Marsden witli 
 lier most artistic smile. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 7 
 
 " Which is your version ? " she said. '' There 
 is the Irish peasant version, the Italian princess 
 version, the Greek version, and — poor Selma ! — 
 of course, the barmaid version. Which is 
 yours ? " 
 
 The late authoritative biographer glanced 
 from the expectant Duchess to his hostess with 
 an expression which was anything but amiable. 
 
 " I'm afraid I must confess to what you 
 call the Greek version," he said, with a forced 
 laugh. ** Have I really been misinformed ? " 
 
 " Everybody seems to have been misin- 
 formed," said Miss Tyrrell, lightly ; " it is 
 impossible to say how it has happened." Miss 
 Tyrrell was perhaps hardly speaking the un- 
 varnished truth when she said these words. 
 
 " The facts are really ridiculously simple," 
 she continued. '* Selma Malet is an English 
 girl, and a lady, neither in the depths of poverty 
 nor rolling in riches. Her father w^as a man 
 of quiet literary tastes, and one of my brother s 
 oldest friends. Her mother was without charac- 
 
8 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 teristics of any kind, and died a natural death 
 about two years ago. Her father died — also a 
 natural and uninteresting death — about three 
 months later. All the interest attached to 
 Selma Malet centres in herself alone. My 
 brother expects great things of her. I hope 
 you agree with him, Mr. Marsden ? " 
 
 " Dear me ! " ejaculated the Duchess once 
 more, alluding to the very simple story Miss 
 Tyrrell had told. " Really ; is that all ? Well, 
 one would never think it from her — her appear- 
 ance, and — and her — manner. Dear me ! " 
 
 Miss Tyrrell smiled. 
 
 " It might be better for her," she said, " if 
 one of these romantic stories did belong to her ; 
 there is so much attraction to some people about 
 a romance. But I don't know, after all, that 
 we have not been just a little overdone with 
 Russians, and Swedes, and barmaids, and 
 Countesses. Such a beautiful artistic feeling 
 as Selma Malet's seems to me the more interest- 
 ing, when it developes itself in such an unex- 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 9 
 
 pected quarter. A young English lady and 
 au artist are curiously incompatible terms ! " 
 
 "Do you believe her to have great things 
 in her, Miss Tyrrell ? I have only heard her 
 once, remember." 
 
 Miss Tyrrell turned and laid a long, thin 
 hand emphatically on the speaker's arm. 
 
 *'Mr. Marsden," she said, "I believe her to 
 be a genius. She has a feeling and an en- 
 thusiasm for the artistic, which I have never 
 seen equalled. She absolutely lives for her art 
 alone, and I have very little doubt that her 
 artistic career will be positively triumphant. 
 I shall be much surprised if she is not the 
 sensation of next season. What delicacy, what 
 force, what resource she has already ! " 
 
 *' Very true," responded the gentleman thus 
 harangued. His tone was somewhat absent, and 
 his cogitations resulted, a moment later, in his 
 saying in a tone he had not yet used, a tone 
 of serious, business-like interest : " Will Miss 
 Malet recite again, or has she gone ? I've not 
 
10 CROSS CUREENTS. 
 
 soen her about the room. Will you intro- 
 duce me ? " 
 
 "Oh, 1 do hope we may hear her 
 again," added the Duchess, with quite new 
 enthusiasm ; "do bring her here, and let 
 me make her acquaintance, my dear Miss 
 Tyrrell." 
 
 Miss Tyrrell looked round the room. 
 
 " I hardly know whether she will recite 
 again," she said ; " she is very nervous and 
 sensitive. I do not see her at this moment. But 
 I will speak to my brother." 
 
 "There he is," returned the Duchess, 
 " talking to those American girls. Mr. Tyrrell 
 is never lost in a crowd." 
 
 The Duchess was right. There were men 
 in the room taller, many men louder in talk 
 and more lavish in gesture, than their host ; 
 but there was that about John Tyrrell which 
 seemed to act like a magnet on the consciousness 
 of every one near him. He was a man of 
 about three-and-forty, hardly above the average 
 
CROSS CUERENTS. 11 
 
 height, but admirably proportioned, and with 
 a quiet, unobtrusive grace of movement and 
 gesture which is seldom seen in a man, except 
 as the result of careful stage training. His 
 face and head were very striking. Twenty 
 years earlier, London — particularly feminine 
 London — had raved about his beauty ; his 
 wonderful eyes, his perfect features, his admir- 
 able colouring had taken the public by storm. 
 Behind all this physical perfection there had 
 chanced to be a powerful and active brain, and 
 everything that time had taken from him was 
 more than compensated by the added strength, 
 dignity, and intellectuality which it had brought. 
 The smooth-shaven, perfectly moulded mouth 
 and chin — though there were people who said 
 that John Tyrrell's mouth was his w-orst point 
 — were far stronger and more striking in the 
 man of three-and-forty, than they had been in 
 the youth of three-and-twenty ; the dark, ex- 
 pressive eyes were no less attractive for the 
 lines of thought which marked the forehead 
 
12 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 above them. The boy's manner had been fasci- 
 natmg ; the man's manner was irresistible. 
 
 His sister threaded her way through the 
 crowd, and touched him lightly on the arm. 
 
 " Come and speak to the Duchess," she said ; 
 *^ she is anxious to hear Selma again. Where 
 is she ? " 
 
 John Tyrrell laughed. 
 
 ''Down in the tea-room being improved 
 by Lady Dunstan," he said. " Where is the 
 Duchess ? " 
 
 The voice was the only one of the younger 
 John TyrrelFs good points to w^hich time had 
 not been kind. Great as was the effect he 
 could still produce with it on the stage, in 
 familiar conversation, when he was at no special 
 pains to control it, it was occasionally harder 
 than he was in the least aware of. 
 
 He crossed the room with his sister, stayed 
 for a few minutes talking to the Duchess, and 
 then left the room. As he disappeared, one 
 of those curious magnetic currents by which 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 13 
 
 such assemblages are sometimes touched, ran 
 through the room, and everybody informed 
 everybody else that Miss Selma Malet was 
 going to recite again. There was a subdued 
 murmur of expectancy ; an eager, interested 
 rearrangement of groups ; and then a sudden 
 silence and stillness. 
 
 There was a curious, curved platform at 
 one end of the room which had been designed 
 by Miss Tyrrell for such occasions as the present. 
 Two or three white leather chairs, shaped in 
 imitation of the Greeks' stone seats, were placed 
 upon it, several tall palms stood about, and 
 the piano was rendered as Grecian as circum- 
 stances would allow by a leopard skin which 
 was thrown across it. In the midst of these 
 artistic incongruities ; facing the fashionable, 
 curious crowd, as the hush fell upon it ; there 
 stood a tall, girlish figure in a green gown. 
 She paused a moment, motionless, every line 
 of her simple, unconscious pose absolutely 
 graceful with the natural grace of perfectly 
 
U CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 proportioned youth ; and then her eyes, which 
 had been a little shy, and even frightened, 
 as they rested on the rows of faces before 
 her, darkened and deepened as she looked away 
 into space ; the hot colour, which had rushed 
 to her cheeks in that moment of embarrassment, 
 faded ; and, with her lovely lips whitening 
 moment by moment with the force of the 
 passion her imagination created in her, she 
 began to recite. 
 
 Her voice, low and intense as she began, 
 rose and thrilled with emotion. The people 
 before her were nothing to her ; the occasion, 
 the interest she excited were nothing to her ; 
 her very individuality was swept from her in 
 her intense realisation of the burning lines she 
 uttered. Her beautiful, sensitive face, quiver- 
 ingly responsive to every shade of emotion ; 
 her delicate, expressive voice, and slight, graceful 
 gresture; seemed to be the natural and inevitable 
 handmaidens of the genius within her — hand- 
 maidens of which she was utterly unconscious. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 15 
 
 She was utterly unconscious, also, of the charm 
 they possessed for those who could have been 
 touched by nothing deeper. Even in that 
 well-dressed crowd there were two or three 
 on whom the power in her laid an irresistible 
 spell ; but against the majority — never in favour 
 of deep emotion — the passionate feeling beat 
 itself in vain. Selma Malet was very beautiful, 
 and very graceful ; she was also John Tyrrell's 
 protegee, and she was to be the sensation of 
 next season ; in all these capacities she was 
 interesting, and the rows of curious, admiring 
 faces remained curious and admiring to the 
 end. But of the striving, consuming genius 
 so near them, and yet so infinitely distant, 
 they had no conception. Society can appraise 
 talents, it worships success ; genius in embryo 
 it ignores or distrusts. 
 
 The broken, despairing voice ceased ; the 
 quivering face relaxed ; the far-away gaze died 
 out of the great, dark eyes ; and Selma Malet 
 moved hurriedly off the platform as the room 
 
16 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 filled with the sound of the polite applause 
 which is all such an audience has to bestow. 
 There was no one known to her near her as 
 she came down into the room, and the girl 
 was making rapidly and instinctively for the 
 door, when a hand was laid upon her arm. 
 She raised her eyes with a violent start ; they 
 were full of tears, and she was trembling from 
 head to foot. 
 
 '' Please let me go now," she murmured. 
 
 ''One moment, Selma," returned John Tyrrell, 
 " Mrs. Norman washes to be introduced to you." 
 
 " Oh, please " 
 
 But the girl broke off. A very old lady with 
 white hair, and eyes from which no years could 
 steal the beauty, was standing close beside her. 
 
 " My dear," she said, kindly, taking the 
 cold, shaking hand in both her own, "I will 
 not keep you. I loved and worked at the 
 art you have chosen for very many years before 
 you were born, and I want to tell you what 
 pleasure you have given me." 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 17 
 
 *'I did SO badly," faltered the girl. 
 
 Her voice, with the passion gone from it, 
 was very musical and youthful. 
 
 ** Yes, in one sense you did badly. You 
 are very youDg, and your power is very great. 
 It will take many years of hard work before 
 you can do it justice." 
 
 All consciousness of herself and her sur- 
 roundings seemed to fall away from Selma. 
 She looked straight into the fine old face, 
 without attempting to withdraw her hand, 
 which trembled no longer. 
 
 " I know," she said, simply. '^ I mean to 
 work." 
 
 " If you work, if your ambition is worthy 
 of your genius, and your life is worthy of both, 
 I think you will be the finest actress of your 
 age. My dear, be true to yourself. Good-bye." 
 
 With a sudden impulse, strange and pretty 
 to see in any one so old, the greatest actress 
 of a generation past bent forward and kissed 
 the girl on the forehead. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
18 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 All hour later Jolm Tyrrell, having seen 
 the last of his guests depart, turned to his 
 sister, who was sinking into the nearest seat 
 with a sigh of relief. 
 
 "Very well done indeed, Sybilla," he said. 
 "Flowers admirable, as usual, and the tea 
 and things capitally managed. Did every one 
 come J 
 
 " I think so," answered his sister, languidly ; 
 " every one except Lady Fanshawe. I am glad 
 you are satisfied." 
 
 " I really don't know why we asked Lady 
 Fanshawe," returned her brother. '' She's no 
 use. Where is Selma ? " 
 
 Miss Tyrrell looked round the room. 
 
 " I've no notion," she said. *' I told her 
 we would send her home. John, I think — 
 though it is very touching to see the dear 
 child so carried away — I really think she should 
 try to be a little less entetee. I could hardly 
 introduce her at all ; and she seems to have 
 nothing to say. An artist, even such a young 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 19 
 
 one, should at least be able to talk of her art 
 She hardly understands the obligations of her 
 position as yet. She might have made a far 
 deeper impression this afternoon than she has 
 done, I'm afraid ; and first impressions are so 
 important to a young artist." 
 
 John Tyrrell looked at his sister with the 
 faintest possible curl of the lip. 
 
 " I don't agree with you," he said. " She 
 could hardly have done better if she had known 
 what she was doing. You need not distress 
 yourself, Sybilla ; it won't last long, this ab- 
 sorption of hers. One season will make her 
 all you could wish. By Jove ! What a position 
 she will have ! " 
 
 He turned as he spoke, carelessly enough, 
 and went out of the room, downstairs, and 
 opened a door at the end of a long passage, 
 leading into a small room, from which the fast- 
 fading daylight had nearly departed. 
 
 It was difficult to say, at first sight, what 
 there was about the room which gave an in- 
 
 2 
 
20 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 stantaneous impression that it belonged to a 
 man. There was about it none of the usual 
 characteristics. It was not untidy, nor was it 
 bare ; on the contrary, it was carefully fitted 
 up with old oak ; all the appointments were as 
 tasteful as in a woman's sitting-room, the pic- 
 tures on the walls — principally proof-engravings 
 of famous pictures, with the artist's inscription 
 to John Tyrrell — would have been quite as 
 good company for an actress as for an actor. 
 The only detail in the room which could by 
 no possibility be connected with a woman was 
 the writing-table, and that one feature stamped 
 the whole room at once as the workshop of 
 a practical man. 
 
 It seemed to its owner at first that the room 
 was empty, and he paused on the threshold, 
 with his hand on the lock. 
 
 " Selma ! " he said. 
 
 There was a slight movement near the 
 window, and Selma Malet, who was sitting in a 
 great oak chair, hidden from him by its high^ 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 21 
 
 wide back, as she looked out at the eveniDg sky, 
 looked round to him. 
 
 "I am here," she said, softly, and there 
 was a little tremble in her voice. 
 
 John Tyrrell shut the door, and, crossing 
 the room, rested his arms on the back of the 
 chair in which she sat. 
 
 '* What are you doing here ? " he said. 
 
 Selma rested her elbow on the arm of the 
 chair, and leant her cheek on her hand. 
 
 *' I — I wanted to think," she said. " I 
 always think best in this room ; I've learnt so 
 much here. I'm afraid I must be stupid — 
 really very stupid, you know." 
 
 -Why?" 
 
 " Because I do that thing so badly — ^oh, so 
 badly. It seems as if all your help and teaching 
 were of no use. I — I do try." 
 
 The low, girlish voice broke suspiciously, 
 and the man looked down on her in silence 
 for a moment, with a curve of his mouth which 
 was half pityi half cynicism. 
 
22 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 **Look up at me, Selma." he said. He 
 waited until the girl turned her head and raised 
 her eyes with a little, deprecating smile at the 
 tears that filled them, and then he said : ** You 
 did not do badly. I have never heard you do 
 hetter ; and you pleased me very much." 
 
 A rush of bright colour swept over the 
 sensitive, upturned face, and the eyes danced as 
 the tears fell from them. 
 
 " Really ? Really ? " she cried, with an im- 
 pulsive clasp of her hands on the arm of the 
 chair. " Oh, if you are satisfied with me, I 
 am happy always, because I know that you 
 know." 
 
 For one moment, as he met those almost 
 worshipping young eyes, his own were touched 
 with an indefinable expression which curiously 
 suggested regret. 
 
 "Yes," he said, slowly, "yes, I do know." 
 
 " And you really think — you're not vexed ? 
 — 'you really think I can ? " 
 
 The look, whatever it had meant, from 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 23 
 
 whatever source it had sprung, disappeared from 
 John Tyrrell's face. Its ordinary expression 
 was even accentuated, and his voice was perhaps 
 harder than usual as he answered : 
 
 " I know you can. If you do as I tell you, 
 you shall." He paused a moment, and then 
 he asked, with a keen look at her : " You've not 
 told me how you've enjoyed the afternoon ? " 
 
 *' The afternoon ? " echoed Selma, vaguely. 
 '' Oh, the people ! Well, I was so vexed with 
 myself that I didn't think much. But now I 
 do think about it — it sounds horribly rude — 
 I'm afraid I haven't enjoyed it at all. Oh, Mrs. 
 Norman was nice ; " and the ready colour came 
 into her cheeks again. '*I love her! What 
 did she mean, I wonder ? Of course one means 
 to w^ork. And you really were pleased," she 
 repeated, as she rose and stretched out her 
 hands to him impulsively. " Oh, I am the 
 happiest girl in London. Now I must fly home, 
 Helen will think I'm lost. I wish she could 
 have come ; she was so disappointed." 
 
24. CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 S'he looked, indeed, radiantly happy, as she 
 ''flew," as she expressed it, upstairs to say good- 
 bye to Miss Tyrrell, as she "flew" into a cab, and 
 out again into a small house in Hampstead. 
 
 " Is Miss Helen in ? " she asked the servant 
 who opened the door. " Where is she ? No, 
 I won't have tea, thanks," and she ran lightly 
 upstairs. " Helen ! " she called ; '' Nell, Nell ! " 
 
 A door on the landing above opened quickly, 
 and another girl's voice, very like her own, but 
 rather older and less exquisitely modulated, 
 answered eagerly : 
 
 '' I'm here, dear ; come along ; " and a short, 
 bright-looking girl appeared at the top of the 
 stairs. 
 
 Selma rushed up to her, and kissed her 
 impetuously. 
 
 "I'm late," she said; "have you been in 
 long, Nellie ? " 
 
 " Not long," returned her sister. " Well, 
 have you enjoyed it?'' 
 
 "I'm in the seventh heaven," answered 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 25 
 
 Selma. " Mr. Tyrrell was very pleased ; really, 
 very pleased, you know. I was very miserable. 
 I thought I had done disgracefully. No, Nell, 
 it isn't nonsense. You don't know how stupid 
 I am ; and then he w^as so nice. So I know, 
 it can't have been as bad as I thought, and 
 I don't know what to do for joy." 
 
 They had passed into the drawing-room by 
 this time, and Selma had gently pushed her 
 sister into a chair, and was kneeling at her feet 
 and looking into her face with shining, excited 
 eyes. Quite suddenly she drew back a little, 
 and her face changed. 
 
 "Helen ! " she said, quickly. " Dear, has — 
 has anything happened ? " 
 
 Helen's face was flushed and trembling as 
 she looked into the happy, eager face before 
 her ; and there was a look in her eyes which 
 Selma had never seen there before. 
 
 "What is it, darling? What is it?" she 
 repeated, softly, kissing the hands she held in 
 both her own. 
 
•26 .CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Her sister suddenly drew her very close and 
 pressed her cheek against the dark, wavy hair. 
 
 "Humphrey," she whispered; "Humphrey* 
 Selma, I am going to be his wife, dear." 
 
 With a little low cry of wonder and delight, 
 Selma flung her arms impulsively round her 
 sister's neck, and they clung together without 
 a word in an embrace which was very close and 
 very tender. 
 
CHAPTEK 11. 
 
 Helen and Selma Malet were, for the time 
 being, living alone together in the little house 
 at Hampstead, enjoying what the latter called 
 an " interregnum of companions." 
 
 Two years earlier the loss of their father 
 and mother, within three months of one another, 
 had left them very desolate. They had no 
 brother and no other sister. They were very 
 fairly well ofi', however, and after much dis- 
 cussion and some opposition from their guardian, 
 they had set up housekeeping for themselves, 
 finally conceding to his insistance the chaperon 
 they had been very anxious to do without. 
 They had been fortunate in their first duenna ; 
 they had become very fond of her and she of 
 
28 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 them ; but when, uljout a month before the 
 TyrrelLs' '* at home," she had l)een obliged to 
 leave them hurriedly and her surce.ssor had 
 proved not to be immediately forthcoming, 
 they had persuaded their guardian — Selma best 
 knew how — to let them "chaperon one another" 
 in the intervah 
 
 Mr. Cornish, the guardian in question, was 
 their father's cousin, and the only relation 
 Helen and Selma had in England. But the 
 Cornish family was a host in itself, numbering 
 fifteen all told, and ranging in ages from the 
 father, who was nearly sixty, to Elsie, the 
 pet and baby of the family, who was nearly 
 six. The two girls had established themselves 
 very near the big house which accommodated 
 their numerous cousins, so that in the alarming 
 crises which were apt to arise in the household 
 economy — such as the intoxication of the cook, 
 or the insubordination of the housemaid with 
 reference to ** followers" — Helen invariably took 
 sage counsel with her guardian's wufe, who went 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 29 
 
 with both girls by the name of auntie. As a 
 matter of fact, it was Mrs. Cornish, and not 
 her easy-going husband, who had insisted on 
 the chaperon, and it was also Mrs. Cornish 
 whose permission had been absolutely necessary 
 for the present interregnum. 
 
 Though Selma had been all her life as much 
 at home in her cousins' house as in her own, 
 though she had known and loved them all 
 from her earliest childhood, they were nothing 
 in her life but the merest background, against 
 which the centre figure was John Tyrrell. He 
 had been an intimate friend of her father's, 
 even before Selma was born. He had been a 
 part of her life as long as she could remember 
 anything, and as long as she could remember 
 anything it had been he and he only who had 
 thoroughly understood and helped her. It had 
 been John Tyrrell who had overheard the two 
 little sisters of nine and six playing a game 
 invented and directed by the younger, in which 
 the tragic drowning of a doll in a washing 
 
30 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 basin formed an important feature. It was 
 John Tyrrell who had stood almost thunder- 
 struck at the lamentation of the bereaved parent 
 of six years, until he was roused by the 
 frightened cry of little Helen as she besought 
 her sister not to play ''like that"; and it was 
 John Tyrrell — a much younger John Tyrrell 
 than the man of to-day — who had picked up 
 the little actress as she passed from simulated 
 to very real sobs and tears, and kissed and 
 soothed her into quiet. From that day there 
 had existed a very curious and much laughed- 
 at comradeship between the young actor and 
 the baby girl; but her father and mother, 
 thinking it very possible that the precocious 
 germ of dramatic instinct might never develope, 
 and determined that no pressure or even en- 
 couragement from without should be mistaken 
 by Selma, as she grew older, for a vocation, had 
 exacted from Tyrrell a promise that he would 
 not talk to the child of his art, nor in any way 
 whatever encourage her dramatic tendencies. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 31 
 
 Of Selma's first play, eight years later, John 
 Tyrrell was the hero, and it was his acting 
 which then showed her for the first time what, 
 as she expressed it in childish, excited language, 
 was " the matter with her." The man who 
 received that girlish, enthusiastic admiration, 
 was no longer the man who had consoled the 
 overstrung child of eight years before ; but the 
 girl interested him, and when there was no 
 longer any room for doubt as to her destiny, he 
 took her in hand, and taught her and trained her 
 as no other man living could have done. He 
 was a hard master ; the genius and enthusiasm 
 which possessed her, and which nothing could 
 have repressed, appealed to him, almost in spite 
 of himself, and he exacted far more from his 
 pupil than he had ever exacted from himself. 
 And to Selma he seemed the very incarnation 
 of the art she loved. Every difficulty ; every 
 dumb, struggling emotion which seemed to 
 her overwhelming when she tried to deal with 
 it alone ; took definite and coherent shape for 
 
32 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 her in that little room in Kensington, as she 
 listened to John Tyrrell. The word spoken to 
 her there was her law ; the praise given to her 
 there made the highest satisfaction of her life. 
 
 Her uncle was her guardian in the eyes of 
 the law, and, in the outlines of her domestic life 
 with her sister, she knew that it was he who 
 was to be consulted and obeyed. But of all 
 the hopes and fears, the love and the labour 
 that made up her own individual existence^ 
 John Tyrrell was the arbiter. All her fervent, 
 burning young life was absorbed in the art to 
 which, in her imagination, she saw herself 
 devoted for as long as she should live. Un- 
 conscious as she herself was of the fact, her 
 uncle's authority was a shadow to her beside 
 the authority of John Tyrrell. 
 
 It was the morning after the Tyrrells' '' at 
 home"; a radiant May morning, into which 
 the atmosphere of late June — June as it should 
 be, not as it too often is — seemed to have 
 strayed by some delightful accident. It was 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 33 
 
 about eleven o'clock, and Helen Malet was 
 sitting at her writing-table, surrounded by 
 account-books with which her pretty, round 
 face looked somewhat incongruous, particularly 
 as it did not at the moment wear the por- 
 tentously business-like and practical expression 
 which Selma alw^ays declared meant a halfpenny 
 wrong in the week's accounts. Helen Malet was 
 two-and-twenty, with a bright, good-natured 
 face, to which the ready smile seemed the 
 most natural expression ; blue eyes, which had 
 hardly lost their childish frankness and sim- 
 plicity ; and smooth, brown hair. She looked 
 at times, in spite of her pretty eyes, older 
 than she really was, for she was a very sensible, 
 thorough-going housekeeper, and early responsi- 
 bility had set certain firm lines about her 
 mouth. On all the details which lay within 
 her sphere Helen was decision itself; out of 
 her sphere no one was more easily influenced 
 and led. 
 
 Her attention was apparently wandering 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
84 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 this morning, for she added the same column 
 three times over, and the consecutive results 
 were foity-two, twenty-nine, and a hundred 
 and five. At Last the front -door bell rang, 
 and Helen's cheeks turned, red. and hot ; not 
 so hot, however, as they became a moment 
 later, when the door opened quickly, and a 
 strongly moved woman's voice said : 
 
 " Helen, my child ! my dear child ! " 
 
 " Auntie ! " was all Helen's reply as she 
 hid her face on Mrs. Cornish's shoulder. 
 
 **My dear, if Humphrey were my own son 
 — and, indeed, you know there has been no 
 difi'erence in my love for him, dear fellow — 
 I could not wish him a better wife. And, 
 Helen, I don't think I could wish you a kinder 
 husband, much as I love you. Bless you, my 
 dear!" 
 
 Mrs. Cornish concluded with a hearty kiss, 
 and held the girl very close for a minute. She 
 was a woman of about five-and-fifty, with a 
 sensible, kindly face; and a firm, decided 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 35 
 
 manner; as a woman would naturally have 
 who should rule satisfactorily over a house- 
 hold of twelve children. She released Helen 
 at last, and turning the rosy face towards 
 her, looked at it with the slightest shade of 
 almost motherly anxiety in her eyes. 
 
 '* All the same, my dear," she said, ^' I 
 must say I'm surprised. I never thought it 
 would be Humphrey; and, to tell you the 
 truth, I never thought Humphrey would marry. 
 He's kindness itself and thoroughly to be 
 
 relied upon, certainly; but — but Well, 
 
 my dear, you know his ways; and I've no 
 doubt it will be all right." 
 
 " I think so, auntie," said Helen, very softly. 
 
 And Mrs. Cornish, though the doubts in her 
 mind were very far from being set at rest, 
 could not find it in her heart to put them 
 further into words. 
 
 " What does Selma say ? " she said, cheer- 
 fully, after a slight pause, in which she kissed 
 Helen again, very lovingly. "Is she at home 
 
 D 2 
 
36 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 — and visible ? " she added, with a smile. 
 Selma's working hours were sacred, and in no 
 Avise to be rashly intruded upon ! 
 
 But before Helen could answer, the door 
 opened quickly, and Selma herself came in, 
 bright and beautiful as the May morning. 
 
 *' Auntie, dear," she said, as she kissed Mrs. 
 Cornish, " I saw you come, and I knew you 
 and Nellie wouldn't want me just at first. Am 
 I too soon now ? " she added, as she took her 
 sisters flushed face, with a pretty, tender 
 gesture, between her two hands and kissed it. 
 
 For answer, Helen drew her arm through 
 Selma's, as Mrs. Cornish said, kindly : 
 
 "You are as pleased about it as your 
 cousins, then, Selma? That's all right." 
 
 " Of course I'm pleased, auntie," responded 
 Selma. " I'm pleased it's Humphrey, to begin 
 with. There was always a dreadful possibility 
 of Helen's marrying some one I couldn't get 
 on with. We don't quite always like the 
 same people, do we, Nell ? And I have so 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 37 
 
 wanted her to fall in love, because I know 
 she'll be so happy. It will suit her so to be 
 a married lady, won't it?" And she took up 
 her sister's left hand and played with it half 
 mischievously, half lovingly. 
 
 Mrs. Cornish looked at the lovely girlish 
 face with a smile. 
 
 '' It will suit you, too, some day, Selma," 
 she said. 
 
 "Me!" cried Selma, with a bright, rippling 
 laugh. " No, auntie — never ! I have my work, 
 you know. There isn't room in my heart for 
 another love." 
 
 Beneath the laughter in her voice there 
 were a thrill and purpose which were un- 
 conscious and unquenchable ; but on the sur- 
 face her tone was brightness itself. Selma 
 very rarely talked of her future, never paraded 
 her enthusiasm or her devotion to her art. 
 With Mrs. Cornish she was always especially 
 reserved, for she had an instinctive feeling 
 that the former would not understand her. 
 
38 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 And perhaps it was because Mrs. Cornish was 
 herself conscious of this barrier between them, 
 that she could never bring herself — though she 
 honestly and conscientiously tried to do so — • 
 to feel for Selma quite as she did for Helen. 
 
 "Well," she said, now, echoing the girl's 
 irresistible laugh almost in spite of herself, ''I 
 must go. You must come round to dinner to- 
 night — both of you. Your uncle wants to see 
 you, Helen, of course." She turned, with a 
 smile, from the crimson Helen to Selma, and 
 went on, ^' Come as early as you can, in time 
 for a cup of tea." 
 
 Selma did not smile back at her. The ex- 
 pressive face had lost all its brightness, and 
 the eyes were dark and grieved-looking. 
 
 *' Oh, I'm so sorry, auntie," she said. 
 " Don't think it's unkind of me — Nell, darling, 
 you w^on't ? — I can't come. Mr. Tyrrell wants 
 me particularly to see Coquelin, and Miss Tyrrell 
 is going to take me to-night. Oh, I'm so 
 sorry ! " 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 39 
 
 Mrs. Cornish's face changed slightly. 
 
 *'Can you not telegraph to Miss Tyrrell, 
 Selma ? " she said. " This is rather an occasion, 
 isn't it ? I think we shall think it kinder of 
 you if you make an eJBfort to be with us." 
 
 Selma put an impulsive, appealing hand on 
 her sister's. 
 
 " Oh, please, auntie dear !" she said. " Don't 
 put it like that ; I would directly if I could, but 
 it's the only night, and Mr. Tyrrell wishes it 
 particularly. Nell ! " 
 
 Helen, on whose ears no appeal from Selma 
 had ever fallen in vain, responded promptly to 
 this one. 
 
 ^' She must go really, auntie," she said, 
 eagerly, ^^ she can't help it. I shan't be a 
 bit hurt, dear," turning consolingly to Selma. 
 *' Don't look so miserable. I'll explain to — 
 to — Humphrey, and auntie understands quite. 
 Don't you, auntie ? Of course you must see 
 Coquelin ! " 
 
 Mrs. Cornish settled her mantle with the air 
 
40 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 of one who fixils to see the necessity pointed out 
 to her. 
 
 *'Well, Helen," she sairl, '* if you feel like 
 that about it, and if you are so ready to answer 
 for Humphrey, I shall not say any more. But I 
 must say 1 think it is a pity. Good-bye fur the 
 present, my dear. Bless you ! " As she took 
 the girl into her arms again. " Good-bye, 
 Selma ! " 
 
 " Please don't be vexed, auntie," pleaded the 
 girl, laying a caressing hand on her. Selma, 
 with her large eyes swimming in tears, and 
 her beautiful mouth quivering, was not to be 
 resisted even by Mrs. Cornish. The severity 
 died out of the latter's face, and she pressed 
 the detaining hand affectionately. 
 
 ''Vm not vexed, dear," she said, "at least 
 I shall not be vexed for long. Don't trouble 
 so about it." And, with a parting kiss of 
 forgiveness, Mrs. Cornish went away. 
 
 Helen did not go " round " to the Cornishes 
 in time to have a cup of tea. All the grown- 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 41 
 
 up cousins seemed to be making excited and 
 congratulatory inroads all day long, and when 
 at four o'clock in the afternoon the sisters 
 were left alone together, Selma, who was not 
 to be with Miss Tyrrell until seven o'clock, 
 half coaxed and half commanded Helen to stay 
 at home as long as possible. 
 
 Helen was sitting at the tea-table in the 
 little drawing-room, and Selma, having finished 
 her own tea, had abandoned her cbair, and was 
 half lying, half sitting by her sister's side, every 
 line of her figure in its careless, childish pose 
 as absolutely graceful as it had been when she 
 stood up to recite in John Tyrrell's drawing-room. 
 There had been silence between them for some 
 minutes, and Selma, who had been looking 
 straight away into space with a strangely 
 grave, far-away expression in her eyes, broke 
 it suddenly. 
 
 "Nellie," she said, ''you do understand, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 Helen started. Her thoughts, too, had 
 
42 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 been far away as she sat there so quietly 
 Avith such a happy light on her face. She 
 blushed guiltily. 
 
 *' What did you say, dear ? " she said. " I — 
 I'm afraid I didn't hear." 
 
 Selma laughed a low, musical laugh, and, 
 turning her head, kissed the other's hand as 
 it lay on her knee. 
 
 *' You're very happy, my dearest, are you 
 not ? " she murmured. 
 
 '' Yes, darliug ! " 
 
 " I'm so glad ! I can't tell you in the least 
 how glad I am for you. You don't know how 
 often I've thought about it for you, and wished 
 and wished that it would come. I could never 
 think of you in the future without seeing a 
 married Nell. There are some girls like that ! " 
 
 "Are there any girls not like that, Selma?" 
 
 Selma smiled. 
 
 " Numbers and numbers," she said, and then 
 her eyes glowed suddenly with an enthusiasm 
 which was very young and very pretty. " There 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 43 
 
 are girls like me," she said, softly, with a 
 thrill of happy pride in her voice. She paused 
 a moment, and her face flushed and paled 
 rapidly. Then she put herself aside, and re- 
 turned to the consideration of her sister's affairs 
 with a delighted, entirely impersonal interest 
 very strange to see in so young a woman on 
 such a subject. 
 
 "When did it begin, Nell?" she said, 
 eagerly. "I can't think how it is I've never 
 thought of it." 
 
 " Did you never think of it ? " 
 
 "Never! Not once. I'm — I'm just a 
 little surprised, dear, of course ; but you know 
 how fond I've always been of Humphrey. 
 You'll tell him, won't you, how very, very 
 sorry I am about to-night — or I'll write him 
 a little note, I think. Oh! that was what I 
 began to talk to you about," and the happy 
 face grew grave suddenly. " Yuu do under- 
 stand, dear, don't you ? " 
 
 " Of course I do. You are not troubling 
 
44 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 about that still ? You don't mind what auntie 
 said ? " 
 
 Selma let her beautiful head fall back on 
 her sister's knee, and looked straight upward. 
 
 "No!" she said, dreamily. "I mean yes. 
 I do mind, anl I like it." 
 
 ** Selma, what do you mean ? " 
 
 ** I don't know whether I can explain to 
 you quite. I don't want to gush ! You see 
 I must go to see Coquelin to-night, and when 
 one loves anything as I love my work," Selma's 
 voice sank to a mere murmur, "one is glad 
 to do hard things for it ; this is a tiny thing, 
 I know, but still it was hard to vex auntie. 
 Of course I should do it just the same if it 
 vexed you, my own dear ; but it would be 
 dreadful, and — it doesn't, does it ? " And 
 Selma, inconsistent, sensitive, and intensely 
 afifectionate, lifted herself into a sitting posi- 
 tion wdth her clasped hands on her sisters 
 knee, and looked beseechingly into the admiring 
 face above her. 
 
CKOSS CUKRENTS. 45- 
 
 It was fortunate that Helen's look was 
 answer enough, for before she could speak 
 the door opened, and a man stood on the 
 threshold. 
 
 *' May I come in ? " he said, quietly, and 
 Helen and Selma sprang to their feet with 
 the same cry, simultaneous, but very different 
 in intonation. 
 
 " Humphrey ! " 
 
 Humphrey Cornish was not the present Mrs. 
 Cornish's son. Mr. Cornish had been twice 
 married, and Humphrey's mother had died when 
 he was born. He was a brown-haired man, 
 rather under the average height, slight in build, 
 with plain, pale features, and very good dreamy 
 brown eyes— as great a contrast, even physically 
 speaking, to his strong, handsome stepbrothers 
 and sisters as it was possible to imagine. And, 
 mentally, the contrast was even greater. Hum- 
 phrey Cornish was a painter — the only member 
 of his family, within the memory of man, who 
 had developed the faintest taste for art in any 
 
46 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 form — and he was quiet aucl reserved to an 
 extent which, by the frank, outspoken family 
 of which he was so incongruous a member, could 
 only be defined as "odd." Selma sprang to- 
 wards him as he stood on the threshold, and 
 held out both her hands. There was always a 
 curious sympathy between herself and her silent 
 cousin. 
 
 *' Oh, I am so glad ! " she cried. " Hum- 
 phrey, I am glad you've come. I did so want 
 to tell you how very pleased I am ! '' 
 
 He pressed her hands closely, and looked 
 beyond her to where Helen stood, with a deep 
 light in his eyes, which seemed to shine oddly 
 on that simple, girlish face. 
 
 " Thank you," he said ; and then lie passed 
 on into the room, and Selma was seized with. 
 a sudden, irresistible desire to look into the state 
 of the weather. 
 
 When she turned round again, Helen and 
 Humphrey were standing side by side, as 
 strongly contrasted in every particular as it is 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 47 
 
 possible for a man and woman to be, but 
 with the same love-light shining alike in the 
 thoughtful brown eyes, and in the simple blue 
 ones. 
 
 "You are coming round to dinner, of 
 course?" said Humphrey. 
 
 ''Not Selma!" interposed Helen, quickly. 
 *'She is going to see Coquelin. She is rather 
 afraid you will think it unkind of her." 
 
 Humphrey put the idea aside with the 
 slightest possible smile, and looked across at 
 Selma. 
 
 ''You will get a great deal from him," he 
 said. ''Are you studying his method?" 
 
 " No," answered Selma ; " Mr. Tyrrell thinks 
 it would not be good for me. But he wants me 
 to see him just once. He says " 
 
 But Helen interrupted her. 
 
 " No," she said, with a laugh, " Selma, you 
 are not to begin to talk shop to Humphrey. 
 You will be late. Come and dress." 
 
 And in spite of Selma's protestation that 
 
48 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 it was still quite early — punctuality was not 
 one of Selmas strong points — Helen, who was 
 never known to be late for anything, took her 
 laughingly by the shoulders and marched her 
 out of the room. 
 
 The sensation she had made at the Tyrrells' 
 " at home," was not the last of the kind made 
 by Selma in all unconsciousness that season. 
 The next winter was to see her first professional 
 appearance on the stage ; and, much against 
 her will, John Tyrrell made her go several 
 times with his sister to large parties at some 
 of the best houses in London, and also 
 made her occasionally recite at them. This 
 last ordeal was terrible to the girl, though 
 she could hardly define even to herself why it 
 should be so. 
 
 "I hate it!" she said, to John Tyrrell, 
 passionately. ''I hate them all, and I hate 
 myself. What I do is bad enough, I know that 
 very well ; but I feel as if their praise, the 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 49 
 
 very way in which they listen to me, insulted 
 me somehow — as if I were almost insulting 
 myself! Of course, I will do it if you wish 
 it ; but please — please don't." 
 
 To such speeches as these John Tyrrell's 
 usual answer was a slight smile, over the 
 meaning of which the girl puzzled in vain, and 
 a few words of direction as to the poem she was 
 to recite on that particular occasion, the im- 
 mediate prospect of which had given rise to 
 her appeal. If he made her go out com- 
 paratively little that season, it was for reasons 
 of his own wholly independent of any views 
 of hers upon the subject. 
 
 The end of the season drew on ; John Tyrrell 
 and his sister arranged to leave London, as 
 was their custom, early in July ; and a day 
 or two sooner Helen and Selma were to go 
 into the country with the Cornishes. Although 
 Tyrrell was not nominally the manager of the 
 theatre at which he played, his importance 
 was so great that the arrangements — when he 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
60 CKOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 chose them to be so — were practically in his 
 hands, and it had come to be an established 
 fact that he never reappeared in London pro- 
 fessionally before November, when the new 
 play of his season — if a new play were necessary 
 — was produced. It was some years now since 
 he had decided that he could well afiford, both 
 financially and on the strength of his position, 
 to decline to curtail his holiday for the purpose 
 of rehearsals. He had arranged an engagement 
 for Selma for a part in a play to be produced 
 under his auspices, and with himself in the 
 leading part, in the November following, and 
 the day before she went away wuth the 
 Cornishes he took her to the theatre and in- 
 troduced her to the nominal manager, that 
 the business details might be finally settled, 
 and the contracts signed. When the short 
 interview was over he put her at once into 
 a cab, telling her that he should come and 
 see her to say good-bye later in the dny. 
 
 Selma was alone in the drawing-rocm when 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 51 
 
 he arrived, and he sat down with the air of 
 a man who was very much at home. 
 
 *' Well, Selma," he said. 
 
 Selma smiled absently. She was nither 
 grave and pale, and she did not answer him. 
 
 "How do you feel ?" he said, with a L^tnile. 
 ** How do you like Donne ? " 
 
 She leant back in her chair, and, clasping 
 her hands above her head, answered his first 
 question. 
 
 *' I feel strange," she said, in a low, dreamy 
 voice. " I've been feeling it more and more 
 strongly for the last two or three weeks, and 
 now — I can't tell you how strange I feel ! " 
 
 *' That is rather vague. Do you mean that 
 Donne and business details are disenchanting ? " 
 
 "No!'* she answered, instantly and steadily; 
 and then she went on, youthfully, " They are 
 a pity, of course — like parties and people— but 
 they are nothing really. I mean one gets 
 through all that ! " 
 
 John Tyrrell stretched out his hand, and 
 
 s 2 
 
 ^mm\v( OF 
 
52 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 took a rose from a bowl near him with a slight 
 smile. 
 
 " What is it, then ? " he said, as he flicked 
 it against his other hand. 
 
 " I feel so strongly that I have come to the 
 threshold. When I go away to-morrow, I go 
 away from one bit of my life for ever. Next 
 winter will be a new beginning, and — I have 
 been happy." 
 
 John Tyrrell looked at her keenly for a 
 moment. He seemed to take in and mentally 
 appraise every detail of the beautiful young face 
 and figure, every shade of expression on the 
 sensitive features. 
 
 *' Are you afraid ? " he said. 
 " No," she answered, *' I am not afraid," 
 and her voice was low and vibrating. '' I am 
 ready to face anything and everything." And 
 then she suddenly sprang to her feet, quivering 
 with excitement. '* There are so many Selmas!" 
 she cried. ^*So many Selmas in this one me! 
 When I look back I feel as though my hap- 
 
CROSS CURJEIENTS. 63 
 
 piest work was over, and when I look forward 
 — oh, when I look forward all the past seems 
 only preparation for the work before me, and 
 I'm half wild with longing for the time to 
 come ! " 
 
 And when he said good-bye, and left her, 
 half an hour later, the happy expectation had 
 not faded from her eyes. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 John Tyrrell and bis sister had always 
 more invitations for the summer months than 
 it was possible for them to accept, even though 
 they invariably divided their forces, and never 
 visited together. Miss Tyrrell was apt to be 
 quite plaintive on the hardship of having to 
 offer herself as a substitute for her brother, 
 but her own position in the fcishionable world 
 was so high and so assured that, as a matter 
 of fact, she was, and knew herself to be, little 
 less of an acquisition than John Tyrrell himself. 
 
 The month of July was spent by the latter 
 in yachting with some friends, and he had 
 arranged to stay on with the same party 
 until the second week of August. The sudden 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 65 
 
 ■collapse of this arrangement, owing to the 
 serious illness of the host, left him with a 
 week on his hands, and he wrote to some 
 old friends at whose place in Yorkshire he 
 was due on the eleventh of August, offering 
 himself to them nearly ten days earlier than he 
 liad been expected. 
 
 The delighted reply he received was full 
 of hopes that he would not find the house 
 unl)earably dull until the shooting began ; 
 and as his host, who had driven him from 
 the little Yorkshire station at which he arrived 
 one lovely August afternoon, led the way across 
 the large, silent hall into the apparently equally 
 silent drawing-room, it crossed Tyrrell's mind 
 that he might have been wiser if he had gone 
 abroad for the next ten days. He had heard 
 durino^ the five-mile drive across the moors 
 that there was only one other visitor in the 
 house at present ; but his host had not been, 
 communicative on the subject of that one, and 
 Tyrrell had accordingly taken it for granted that 
 
66 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 his fellow-guest was not likely to prove in- 
 terestinof, and had not been curious enouo^h 
 even to find out whether it was a man or a 
 woman. 
 
 The drawing-room itself was empty ; but 
 under the verandah, just out&^ide the French 
 windows, which stood wide open, stood a tea- 
 table. No one was visible to the two men as 
 they stood in the drawing-room doorway ; but 
 the indistinct murmur of women's voices came 
 to them, and, in response to her husband's 
 cheery call, Mrs. Oliphant came round the 
 corner from the verandah into the room. 
 
 " I am so glad, so very glad to see you," 
 said she, shaking Tyrrell warmly by the hand. 
 She and her fiue-looking husband were old 
 county people, rich and cultivated, making a 
 point of spending the season in town, and of 
 knowing every one worth knowing there. They 
 had been friends of Tyrrell's, however, long 
 before he had come under that category, and, 
 indeed, he had known them all his life. 
 
CEOSS CUEEENTS. 57 
 
 *' It is so unexpected'y delightful to get 
 you all to ourselves," she went on ; " and 
 perhaps it is inconsistent after that to say that 
 we should have made up a party for you, only 
 no one is to be had on such short notice. We 
 have one other guest, however, who has come 
 for a little country quiet, almost as unexpectedly 
 as yourself. So I hope you won't be dull." 
 
 She moved towards the window as she spoke^ 
 the two men following ber, and as she stepped 
 on to the verandah she paused and turned her 
 head to Tyrrell, who was still inside the room, 
 and unable to see more than the skirts of his 
 fellow-guest. 
 
 ** I had hoped to have the pleasure of 
 introducing you two to one another," Mrs» 
 Oliphant said. '* I am quite disappointed to 
 find that I am too late. It always seemed so 
 strange that you should not be acquainted, 
 having so many mutual friends." 
 
 She moved on as she spoke, and Tyrrell 
 stepped out of the room. 
 
^8 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 *'Lady Latter!" he exclaimed. "What a 
 delightful surprise ! " 
 
 Sitting in a low basket-chair by the tea- 
 table was a little dark woman, with an ngly, 
 piquante face, a very perfect figure, as modern 
 fashion understands the term, very perfectly 
 clad according to the latest dictates of the 
 same authority. An old-fashioned critic might 
 have objected not only to the cut of her gown, 
 but to the signification of her features. He 
 might have demanded whether the face of the 
 very cleverest of women should, at thirty-five, 
 be entirely destitute of any shade of womanly 
 sympathy ; whether any quantity of wit and 
 brilliancy could be cited as either reason or 
 excuse for such a pair of eyes as were lifted 
 to John Tyrrell's face. Their owner gave 
 him her hand with an air at once defiant 
 and provocative, and answered with a little 
 grimace, of which she perfectly well knew the 
 effect. 
 
 " What a pugnacious person you must be. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 59 
 
 Mr. Tyrrell ! Have we not quarrelled quite 
 eiiougli ? " 
 
 "By no means!" he responded, promptly. 
 *' One of us has to give in, you know. Lady 
 Latter has told you, no doubt," he added, 
 turning to Mrs. Oliphant, ''tliat during the 
 week she and I spent together on Lord South - 
 dale's yacht, the resources of the entire party 
 were severely taxed to keep the peace between 
 us. I wonder she did not persuade you to 
 send me to the Antipodes ! " 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant laughed. _ 
 
 " I am not afraid," she said. "On the 
 contrary, T expect to see you fight yourselves 
 into friendship. It is quite time, I'm sure. 
 You'll have a cup of tea, won't you ? " 
 
 " Thanks," he said, adding, as he took it 
 from her : " How green and quiet you are 
 here ! The drive from the station struck me 
 more than ever this afternoon." 
 
 Before Mrs. Oliphant could reply, a laugh 
 from Lady Latter forestalled her. 
 
60 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 "You must have had a terribly long journey, 
 Mr. Tyrrell," she said. *' I can only refer such 
 a very bad compliment as that to physical 
 and mental collapse. We may be quiet, we 
 may, indeed, be green ; but it is hardly civil 
 of you to tell us so — so soon." 
 
 John Tyrrell looked at her as she spoke with 
 a smile. 
 
 "You have scored, Lady Latter," he 
 answered. " I plead guilty to arrant stupidity, 
 and I apologise — to Mrs. Oliphant. She will 
 have mercy on me, I know, and you will not. 
 Pardon me if I add that I am afraid you 
 yourself can hardly be as brilliantly penetrative 
 as usual, or you would hardly need to be 
 reminded that no one who knew her could 
 speak of Lady Latter and quiet in the same 
 breath." 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant laughed. 
 
 "This is too bad! "she said. " Where will 
 you be by this time to-morrow if you begin so 
 soon ? " 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 61 
 
 "You are quite right, dear Mrs. Oliphant," 
 replied Lady Latter ; ** it is a pity to squander 
 valuable ammunition. I shall go in. I have 
 welcomed Mr. Tyrrell far more eflfusively than 
 he had any right to expect, and I have broken 
 to him something of what he has before him, 
 and now Fate sends him a respite. I am 
 not in fighting trim, and I shall go in now 
 and collect my forces. Until this evening, 
 Mr. Tyrrell." And with a little mocking gesture 
 of farewell she moved away into the house. 
 
 It was, on the surface, as Mrs. Oliphant 
 had said, a very strange thing that, until 
 three weeks before. Lady Latter and John 
 Tyrrell should have known one another only 
 by sight. They were both prominent members 
 of London society, they were constantly to 
 be met at the same houses, but they had never 
 been introduced. Lady Latter was very rich ; 
 she had money of her own, and her husband 
 was an Indian judge. The marriage had not 
 been wholly successful — Lady Latter best knew 
 
62 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 why — and when she took it into her head 
 to dedare that the dulness and monotony of 
 Indian society were no longer to be borne 
 by her, Sir George Latter had done everything 
 that lay in his power to further her future 
 residence in London. It was now five years 
 since she had set up her establishment in 
 Chelsea, and her house was one of the "smartest" 
 in London. She was not clever, nor was she 
 witty, but she had unlimited audacity ; and, 
 having determined to be a success, and being 
 perfectly aware that she was neither pretty 
 nor fascinating on conventional lines, she pro- 
 ceeded to make a line for herself, and substituted 
 '* dash " and "chic" for the commonplace 
 feminine graces. She was very amusing, people , 
 said ; there was nothing too cruel or too coarse 
 for her to say ; and, at the same time, she 
 had a most useful faculty — when she thought 
 it worth while to exercise it — of adapting her 
 conversation to her listener's taste. 
 
 The key to the apparent mystery of her non- 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 6a 
 
 acquaintance with John Tyrrell lay in her very 
 clever and far-sighted determination to stand out 
 from the crowd. Every one knew John Tyrrell, 
 every one raved about him. Therefore she de- 
 clared that, as an actor, he irritated her ; and, 
 as a man, she would not have him introduced 
 to her. Of course, this statement was hardly 
 formulated before it came to John Tyrrell's 
 ears, and the mutual friend who eventually 
 brought them together on board his yacht, with- 
 out previous warning to either, had been more 
 bold than prudent. His experiment, however, 
 had been crowned with success. John Tyrrell's 
 vanity was touched ; his reputation for fasci- 
 nation was at stake ; and, under the circum- 
 stances, it was quite impossible to him to 
 refrain from taxing his every resource to the 
 utmost. So clever a man could hardly fail to 
 take the right way with so shallow a woman, 
 especially as he found her very amusing and 
 not unattractive; and Lady Latter decided 
 with herself — with how little power to decide 
 
64 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 otherwise she herself hardly knew — that aa 
 incessantly sparkling war of wits between her- 
 self and John Tyrrell would give people quite 
 as much to talk about as her perseverance in 
 her alleged dislike to him. 
 
 Lady Latter was alone in the drawing-room 
 when John Tyrrell, a little earlier than he need 
 have been, came down after dressing for dinner. 
 She was evidently only just down, for she was 
 standing at the window looking out into the 
 garden. She turned as he opened the door. 
 
 ^'Ah, Mr. Tyrrell !" she said, lightly, ''Fate 
 is not kind to me. We have the field to our- 
 selves, and I am not ready to give battle." 
 
 "The obvious retort to that is that 1 am 
 afraid you must be ill," he answered. " But 
 as I believe that really is the case, I will offer 
 a flag of truce in the shape of very sincere 
 regrets, and refrain from seizing my advantage. 
 Mrs. Oliphant tells me you are a victim to 
 neuralgia ? " 
 
 "Yes," she answ^ered. "Too much season, 
 
OKOSS CUERENTS. 65 
 
 I suppose. The Oliphants and I were staying 
 with the same people about ten days ago, when 
 I really made the most ridiculous exhibition of 
 myself — had to go to bed, and so on — and she 
 very kindly persuaded me to come here and 
 try what country quiet would do for me." 
 
 "I'm afraid it has not proved exactly a 
 sovereign remedy," he said. 
 
 " Not quite," she assented. Not even the 
 traces of physical suffering on her face could 
 soften it, or make it womanly ; and it was more 
 audacious and cynical even than usual, as she 
 went on : ''It has occurred to me that country 
 quiet is hardly in my line. To tell you the 
 truth, I have been bored to death, and I dare 
 say I shall really be better for a little warfare. 
 It will surprise you, no doubt, but I was 
 actually charmed to hear that you were 
 coming 1 No," as he received the words with 
 a low bow, ** don't flatter yourself! Any man 
 would have done ! " 
 
 But she looked at the man before her as 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
66 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 though she were not at all inclined to quarrel 
 with fortune for sending him, and not another. 
 
 Their host, who w^as not particularly ob- 
 servant, though the kindest and worthiest of 
 men, had a serious conference with his wife 
 that night as to whether the same house would 
 hold their two guests for more than twenty- four 
 hours. 
 
 *' My dear, there will be a row," he said, 
 with prophetic apprehension. 
 
 And in spite of his wife's shrewd assurances 
 to the contrary, he was quite as much surprised 
 as relieved to see the combatants, after breakfast 
 the next morning, instead of flying from one 
 another to the remotest corners of the estate, 
 proceed together into the garden, where they 
 prepared to spend in skirmishing the hours 
 during which their host and hostess were in- 
 evitably occupied. They established themselves 
 under a large cedar, in connection with which 
 Lady Latter's fashionable hat and empire veil 
 looked inexpressibly incongruous. 
 
CROSS CUERENTS. 67 
 
 One long summer morning followed another, 
 and though there was little or no variety in the 
 manner in which they passed, Lady Latter's 
 neuralgia gradually disappeared. Mrs. Oliphant, 
 finding her two guests quite capable of amusing 
 one another, generally left them together until 
 lunch-time ; and in the cool of the afternoon 
 Lady Latter took to riding, sometimes with 
 Tyrrell and her host, sometimes with Tyrrell 
 alone. The rides became longer and longer ; 
 and possibly it may have been the horse exercise 
 which had such a beneficial effect upon her 
 constitution, certainly it was the fatigue it' pro- 
 duced which led to the lazily tolerant armistice 
 which usually reigned between herself and 
 Tyrrell during the quiet, sauntering evenings 
 with which the days closed. 
 
 There was no change in the brilliant weather 
 until the night before the eleventh of August, 
 when, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, it com- 
 pletely broke up. On the morning of that day, 
 on which a large party was to arrive for the 
 
 P 2 
 
68 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 shooting season, Mrs. Oliphant sat down to 
 breakfast with a countenance expressive of the 
 blankest despair. 
 
 " Isn't it too dreadful ? " she said, piteously, 
 addressing the table at large, as the wind 
 howled and the rain beat against the window 
 after a fashion which would have done credit 
 to November. ''After the lovely weather we 
 have had it really does seem too bad. How- 
 ever," she went on, turning to Lady Latter, *' I 
 am glad we have not been so unfortunate while 
 you and Mr. Tyrrell have been so dependent 
 upon the weather for any sort of entertainment ! 
 Tm afraid you might have quarrelled in earnest 
 if you had had a fortnight of such dreariness 
 as this," she finished, with a smile. 
 
 "Instead of settling down like a couple of 
 comparatively tame cats, our fate would have 
 been that of the celebrated natives of Kilkenny, 
 you think," replied Lady Latter, glancing across 
 the table at Tyrrell as she spoke. ''It is more 
 than possible! Well," she added, as they all 
 
CKOSS CUERENTS. 69 
 
 rose from the table, *' we must take refuge in 
 the drawing-room this morning, Mr. Tyrrell, and 
 please prepare yourself to be more amusing than 
 you were yesterday. The weather is depressing." 
 
 There was a fire in the drawing-room, not- 
 withstanding the assertion of the almanack that 
 it was the eleventh of August. In spite of — 
 or perhaps even by force of contrast with — 
 the grey, dripping desolation outside, the room 
 looked particularly bright and attractive as 
 John Tyrrell opened the door a little after 
 eleven o'clock. And Lady Latter, too, locked 
 attractive after her kind as she sat ensconced 
 in a large chair, with her very pretty feet 
 rather extensively exposed to view upon the 
 fender, and the current number of the most 
 popular society paper in her hand. 
 
 "You are late," she said, without turning her 
 head or shutting her paper as he came in. 
 
 "Don't tell me that," he said, as he shut 
 the door. " I've been painfully aware of it for 
 the last half-hour. OJiphant kept me." 
 
70 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 ** I told you to come and amuse me. You 
 should not have let Oliphant keep you." 
 
 He dropped into a chair near her with a 
 laugh. 
 
 *' How like a woman ! " he said. " Well, 
 here I am at last, at any rate, and desperately 
 anxious to be entertaining. I had a line from 
 Estcourt this morning with some rather fine 
 sketches of some of our friends at Pontresina. 
 Let US see if they will serve your turn." 
 
 He began to unfasten a roll of paper he 
 had in his hand ; but she stopped him w^ith 
 a petulant peremptory gesture. " No ! " she 
 said, ''I know they won't. Estcourt bores me 
 always. Besides, it's too late. I have the 
 blues." 
 
 Her manner, in spite of her obvious efforts 
 to make it so, was distinctl)^ not so lively and 
 callous as usual, and Tyrrell looked at her keenly 
 as she sat turning over the pages of her paper 
 before he said : 
 
 " I have the blues, too ; but I'm afraid to 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 71 
 
 hope the reason is the same in your case as 
 in mine." 
 
 She looked round at him quickly. 
 
 "What is the matter with you ? " she said. 
 
 " One of the pleasantest weeks I ever spent 
 comes to an end to-day." 
 
 She looked away again quickly with a rather 
 high-pitched laugh. 
 
 " We must have a mutual taste for battle," 
 she said. " Do you know I am absolutely sorry, 
 too, that it is over ! " 
 
 " It has not been all battle," he answered, 
 leaning forward, and speaking in a rather lower 
 tone, " it has not been all battle ; and it has 
 resulted in a lasting peace, I hope. Won't you 
 shake hands on it, and won't you let me try to 
 make our last morning as pleasant as possible ? " 
 
 She held out her hand with a shrug of her 
 shoulders and a light laugh. 
 
 " We will call it peace for the present," she 
 said, " and you may be as amusing as you know 
 how, for as long as you can keep it up." 
 
72 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 The dinner-table that night presented a very 
 striking contrast to the breakfast- table of the 
 morning. The two afternoon trains had each 
 brought a contribution to the Oliphants' shooting 
 party, and the house was now full to overflowing 
 of girls and mammas, shooting men, tennis- 
 playing men, flirting men, maids and valets. 
 The whole place seemed to be full of life, and 
 at half-past eight all that life, all the colour, 
 light, and gaiety in the house seemed to be 
 concentrated in the dining-room, where dinner 
 was in full swing. The cold, grey evening was 
 shut out ; the bright, well-decorated table was 
 brilliant with lamps and candles ; every one 
 of the sixteen new arrivals seemed to have 
 had his or her appetite for both dinner and 
 amusement whetted by the annoyances and 
 discomforts of a long railway journey on a wet 
 day, and to be bent on ignoring the dreadful 
 atmospheric possibilities hanging over the 
 morrow. The girls had, apparently, put on 
 their prettiest frocks and their prettiest smiles; 
 
gROSS CURRENTS. 73 
 
 the men had shaken up all their conversational 
 resources ; and, as their neighbours were 
 fortunately not disposed to be exacting, every 
 one was pleased. 
 
 John Tyrrell and Lady Latter were on 
 different sides of the table, each out of earshot 
 of the other's conversation, but, of course, each 
 well within the other's sight. Lady Latter's 
 neighbours apparently failed to interest her, 
 and she paid them very little attention. Tyrrell 
 had on his right hand a handsome and dignified 
 elderly lady, who was known to every one as 
 being well worth talking to; and on his left 
 a singularly pretty girl, who had made a success 
 on the stage by playing little, refined, modern 
 comedy parts admirably, because she was a 
 lady by birth and education, and had an acute 
 natural sense of fun, and who thought that 
 neither life nor art had anything more to offer 
 her in the way of happiness or success. She had 
 met Tyrrell several times, and late on in the 
 course of dinner she turned her bright, confident 
 
74 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 face ruthlessly from the young man on her 
 right, who thereupon was seized with a wild 
 conviction that all the lamps and candles had 
 suddenly gone out, and that nothing was left to 
 him but ice pudding, and said, in her pretty, 
 light voice : 
 
 *'I don't think we have met since the 
 Draycotts' ^ at home,' ITr. Tyrrell, when we 
 were both dreadfully bored, and one of us was 
 — well, let us call it fractious." and she lauofhed 
 musically. Xora Glynn had been a spoilt child 
 all her life, her success had turned her pretty, 
 empty head in no slight degree, and on the 
 occasion in question she had been as thoroughly 
 out of temper as only such a very pretty girl 
 would dare to be in public. 
 
 '•'I was much humiliated at failing so 
 ignominiously to make myself amusing,' Tyrrell 
 responded, as he echoed her laugh. " I hope 
 to be allowed some day to try again." 
 
 " How unkind of you ! " she said, with a 
 pretty Little twist of her shoulders. "I think 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 75 
 
 people who heap coals of fire on one are most 
 dreadful. Don't do it any more, please ; but 
 tell me about Miss Malet. I am so interested 
 about her, and I want so much to know all 
 about her. I should be so glad to know her 
 if you think she would like it." 
 
 Tyrrell looked at her with a smile lurking 
 about his mouth. He had taken her pretty 
 little measure long ago, and there was some- 
 thing irresistibly comic to him in her tone of 
 patronising friendliness considered in connection 
 with Selma. 
 
 " I am sure she would be charmed," he 
 said, gravely. " What do you want to know 
 about her ? You have heard her recite ? " 
 
 At this point of the conversation Nora 
 Glynn became aware that Lady Latter's eyes 
 were fixed upon her with an expression which 
 made the girl mentally apply to her the words, 
 "detestable thing." Nora Glynn did not like 
 Lady Latter at any time, so she proceeded to 
 push her dessert-plate absently on one side. 
 
76 CROSS CURRENTS 
 
 and, resting her elbow on the table, fixed her 
 eyes on Tyrrell's face with an expression of 
 absorbing interest in their conversation. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "I've heard her. I know 
 all about her in that way, of course. Personally, 
 I mean. She is coining out in November, isn't 
 she ? Is she dreadfully frightened ? Do tell 
 her from me that one soon gets over it. I 
 know just how she is feeling." 
 
 *' I will tell her," responded Tyrrell, with 
 the same unmoved gravity of demeanour. " She 
 will be most grateful to you. She is very 
 nervous, of course." 
 
 " Of course, poor girl ! She is very young, 
 isn't she, Mr. Tyrrell? I watched her the 
 other day, when a lot of people were saying 
 pretty things to her, and it struck me that 
 she must be really very young." 
 
 Tyrrell frowned slightly, and then he 
 laughed. 
 
 " She is not at her best in society," he 
 answered. " It is very difficult to get her to 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. "n 
 
 a party at all ; she is all for art in the abstract, 
 at present, and cannot see what society has to 
 do with it." 
 
 Nora Glynn sighed, and put her pretty head 
 sentimentally on one side. 
 
 **Ah, poor girl," she said, *' we all have to 
 go through it, Mr. Tyrrell, don't we ? and grow 
 older and wiser with time." Then, as Mrs. 
 Oliphant rose, she lingered a moment for Lady 
 Latter's edification, and said, with a bewitching 
 smile, also arranged to the same end : " She's 
 such a pretty girl, though, and every one will 
 make such a fuss with her that, no doubt, her 
 disillusionment won't be very bitter. She will 
 enjoy herself awfully next season. Oh, I must 
 go ! Lady Latter and I are quite the last." 
 
 Lady Latter passed her arm afiPectionately 
 through the girl's as she joined her, and they 
 went out side by side. But they were not side 
 by side when the men entered the drawing- 
 room later in the evening, and about Nora 
 Glynn's entire person was the air of one who 
 
78 CE,OSS CUERENTS. 
 
 has been snubbed and sat upon severely, but 
 so cleverly that she can only devour her 
 feelings in impotent silence. 
 
 Tyrrell was the last man to come in, and 
 Lady Latter was already surrounded. He passed 
 the little group of which she was the centre, 
 and sat down by the wife of a fashionable 
 novelist, who was one of the guests, a clever 
 and pretty little woman, with whom he was 
 on the friendliest terms. He did not see Lady 
 Latter follow him with her eyes ; he would not 
 have understood the odd, indefinable expression 
 in them if he had done so. It almost suggested 
 that she did not understand herself. 
 
 The evening passed on, and one by one 
 the men about her dropped away, reduced, 
 metaphorically, to cinders by her scathing 
 tongue, and wondering what had happened to 
 annoy her. 8he was sitting quite alone when 
 "good-nights" began to be said, and she rose 
 almost without speaking. 
 
 Tyrrell was holding the door open, and as 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 79 
 
 she passed him she stopped and held out her 
 hand, lifting her eyes suddenly to his face as 
 she did so. Their expression was enigmatical 
 no longer. 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Tyrrell ! " she said. 
 
 " Good night, Lady Latter ! " 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Nell ! Nell ! Humphrey ! Where are you 
 both ? Don't you know it's breakfast time ? 
 Dear me," falling into a lower tone of specu- 
 lative soliloquy, " what are engaged people made 
 of? Even Helen never knows when it's time 
 for anything. Ne-ell," and the voice rose to a 
 sweet, clear call again. " Ne-ell ! " 
 
 Selma was standing alone on a smooth grass 
 terrace looking over a large, rambling wilderness 
 of a garden beautiful in brilliant July sunshine. 
 Behind her was a long, low house built of stone, 
 which had grown grey and weather-beaten with 
 three hundred years' exposure to wind and 
 weather, and which was now tenderly sheltered 
 from further rough usage by luxuriant climbing 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 81 
 
 roses and wistaria which peeped in at the 
 mullioned windows, and reached even to the 
 quaintly-gabled roof. It was one of those old 
 manor houses to be so often met with in the 
 west of England : some of them degenerated 
 into the merest farmhouses, many of them 
 rapidly going to decay, but one and all pathetic 
 survivals of a race of country gentlemen which 
 has completely died away. Selma had made a 
 temporary speaking-trumpet of her two shapely 
 hands — which were a little tanned, as though 
 they had felt a good deal of sunshine lately — 4ier 
 head and figure were slightly thrown back, and 
 she was preparing to repeat her call when a 
 girl of about sixteen appeared in the doorway of 
 the house, and ran out to her. 
 
 " I see them, Selma ! " she cried, " at least 
 we did from the window upstairs. Shall I go 
 and call them ? You'll never make them hear ?" 
 
 " Oh, thanks, Nettie," returned Selma, gaily, 
 *'let us go together, shall we? It's easier for 
 two than for one. Which way ? In the orchard ? 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Oh, come along ! " And she ran swiftly along 
 the grass, followed by her cousin — a large, 
 brown-haired girl, who regarded her movements 
 at all times with a mixture of admiration and 
 awe. They had nearly reached the orchard 
 gate, and Selma had just pulled up with a merry 
 laugh at the breathless Nettie, when they became 
 aware of Humphrey and Helen coming to meet 
 them across the orchard, under the gnarled old 
 apple-trees. 
 
 "You dreadful pair!" called Selma, "can 
 you actually forget breakfast — in this air, too I 
 I've been shrieking for you ; every one else 
 has nearly finished. Fortunately Nettie was 
 late as usual, and she saw you from her window. 
 Humphrey, will it hurry you in the least if I 
 tell you that Roger is coming home ? " 
 
 " Roger ! " exclaimed Humphrey, in a tone 
 which was very seldom heard from him — a tone 
 of lively excitement. " Coming home ! You 
 don't mean that, Selma ! " 
 
 "You'd better make haste and ask Uncle 
 
CROSS CUERENTS. 83 
 
 Dick," she said, mischievously. " Perhaps I've 
 made a mistake. Come aloDg, Nettie," and she 
 vouchsafed no answer to the questions showered 
 on her by Helen and Nettie, making only 
 laughing and evasive retorts aimed at the quiet 
 Humphrey, who had retired into his usual shell 
 of reserve, but whose steps were considerably 
 quicker than usual. 
 
 The sunny dining-room, as Selma opened 
 the door, seemed to be overflowing with noise 
 and laughter proceeding indiscriminately from 
 two rows of boys and girls of all ages, jover 
 whose tea and coffee Mrs. Cornish was presiding 
 with motherly calm and decision, though her 
 face this morning was rather flushed, and her 
 hands hardly as dexterous as usual. Her 
 husband, at the other end, seemed to be rather 
 overwhelmed by the incessant applications he 
 received for the viands he was dispensing. 
 Mr. Cornish was not in the habit of coping 
 with the full force of his family; he usually 
 met them in detachments only. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 They were a straight-featured, fresh-coloured 
 family as a whole, with the exception of two 
 school-boys of thirteen and fourteen who had 
 developed, quite unexpectedly, sandy hair, and 
 whose mischievous, good-tempered, irregular 
 features were invariably adorned with freckles. 
 Sylvia, the eldest unmarried daughter, a girl 
 of twenty-two, who was sitting at her father's 
 end of the table looking after the younger ones, 
 with the baby of the family by her side, was 
 perhaps the most perfect specimen of the family 
 type. She was tall and well-made, with waving 
 brown hair of the ordinary Eoglish kind ; her 
 brown eyes were clear and well-opened, and 
 rather inexpressive ; and her pretty pink-and- 
 white features were not easily moved ; her 
 mouth was like her mother's, kind and decided, 
 but neither sensitive nor sympathetic. 
 
 The appearance of Selma and Nettie, followed 
 by the defaulting Helen and Humphrey, was 
 the signal for a chorus of some dozen voices all 
 uplifted in annouucement of the same piece of 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 85 
 
 news, " Roofer's comino; home ! " and as Helen 
 took her place by her aunt, Humphrey went 
 round to his father and took the open letter 
 held out to him. 
 
 The Eoger whose home-coming was thus 
 vociferously announced was the present Mrs. 
 Cornish's eldest son. As a good-tempered, 
 sunny-faced boy of fourteen, with no aptitude 
 whatever for books, he had attracted the atten- 
 tion of his godfather, a practical, observant man, 
 who was going out to New Zealand as a colonist. 
 He had offered to take the boy, who was tall 
 and well-grown for his age, and put him in the 
 way of making a fortune for himself in some 
 twenty years' time. Mr. Cornish was a bar- 
 rister, and his practice — large as it afterwards 
 became — had not at that time kept pace with 
 the growing demands of his family. It was 
 very difficult to say what was to be done with 
 Roger, if he continued to smile good-humouredly 
 on his school examiners instead of answering 
 their questions ; and, after much anxious 
 
86 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 thought, and with the greatest reluctance, his 
 parents at last gave in to the boy's own earnest 
 entreaty and let him go. Twelve years had 
 passed since then, and the boy had never been 
 home since — the boy who went away with his 
 young face so white and set in his determination 
 not to cry under his mother's farewell kisses, 
 would never come home any more. But the 
 man who had taken his place was now actually 
 on his way back, and it was no wonder that 
 Mrs. Cornish's eyes were bright and moist as 
 she returned Helen's congratulatory kiss. 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," she murmured, as 
 she squeezed the girl's hand tightly for a minute. 
 *' Yes, he will be in England in about a fort- 
 night, he says. My dear boy!" 
 
 And then a sudden shriek from all the 
 younger members of the party at once recalled 
 her to her practical, everyday self again. 
 
 "Mother, can't we go for a picnic? Can't 
 we go to Blue Eocks because Eoger is coming 
 home?" 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 87 
 
 The house Mr. Cornish had taken for August 
 and September was in one of the prettiest parts 
 of Somersetshire, about two miles from the 
 coast. Roomy as it was, the Cornish family, 
 in the exuberance of their holiday spirits, 
 seemed to fill it to overflowing ; and the 
 graceful, old-world associations which lingered 
 round its old oak fittings and its oriel 
 windows, were somewhat rudely dissipated by 
 cheery young voices and restless young feet. 
 Only Selma seemed to harmonise with those 
 quaint, suggestive old rooms ; and Humphrey 
 had surrounded himself and her with an atmos- 
 phere which was almost eerie in the eyes of 
 his brothers and sisters by sketching her several 
 times as his imagination saw her in those old 
 rooms in bygone days. 
 
 The country round, both coast wards and 
 inland, was very beautiful. One of the younger 
 Cornish boys had announced it as his conviction 
 that it had been planned by a beneficent Provi- 
 dence for the express purpose of giving people 
 
88 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 "jolly places to spend the day in"; and 
 Humphrey, on hearing this announcement, had 
 considerably mystified its author by giving it 
 as his opinion in a few whimsical words, which 
 he dropped into the talk going on about him 
 with no apparent destination for them, that 
 it had been arranged to withhold man from 
 wasting good canvas and paint. There were 
 heathery hills to climb ; there were shady woods 
 to explore ; there were, as the same acute young 
 Cornish boy expressed it, *' jolly old ruins where 
 one can poke about for ever"; and, above all, 
 there was the sea. 
 
 Blue Rocks was the name of a little cove 
 about eight miles from the Cornishes' house 
 — which was known round the county as the 
 manor house — one of the most delightful little 
 places in the neighbourhood. It was ten miles 
 from a railway station, and three miles from 
 even a cottage ; which was an advantage, 
 inasmuch as ** trippers" were never to be met 
 there, and a disadvantage, inasmuch as a picnic 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 89; 
 
 there was rather an undertaking. As Nettie 
 Cornish remarked, however, later on in the 
 day, ** Mother would have let us go anywhere 
 to-day ! " and Blue Rocks was popular with 
 the whole party. 
 
 It was very hot, even by the sea, that 
 day, and after the drive in the morning sun, 
 and the dinner on the sands, with all the ex- 
 citement incident on such proceedings, a hush 
 came over the picnic party — a hush only to 
 be met with in the neighbourhood of the 
 Cornish boys and girls, when their irrepressible 
 holiday spirits were overcome with sleep. 
 
 The first to finish her share in the general 
 siesta was Selma. She moved, stretched her 
 pretty arms above her head with a little yawn, 
 and looked about her. Two of her girl cousins 
 were near her, one apparently absorbed in a 
 book, but really fast asleep, the other not 
 attempting to conceal or disguise her slumbers. 
 Selma sat motionless for a little while, leaning 
 back against her rocky couch, and her dreamy 
 
90 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 eyes grew rather wistful as they rested on the 
 sleeping faces. There was a distance between 
 herself and her cousins which, try as she might, 
 she could never bridge ; and it was one of 
 her inconsistencies to be always vaguely dis- 
 tressed by it. All her brightness could never 
 make her one of them ; and there came to 
 her now and then moments when her girlishness 
 felt keenly what she could never have defined 
 to herself — that never while girlhood lasted 
 could she be quite as other girls. 
 
 The wistful eyes wandered away presently 
 and fell upon little Elsie, the five-year-old pet 
 and plaything of the entire Cornish family, the 
 only moving figure visible as she played happily 
 with the plaything she loved above all others — 
 sea-sand. Selma's eyes brightened as she saw 
 the little figure ; she raised her head, and, 
 leaning forward, called softly : 
 
 " Elsie, come and play with me." 
 
 Elsie looked round as the inviting voice fell 
 on her ears, in large-eyed, wondering surprise. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 91 
 
 She was a pretty little fair thing, and she re- 
 garded her beautiful cousin at all times with an 
 awe and amazement which all Selma s advances 
 could not overcome. Selma was always pleasant 
 with children, but she could never make them at 
 home with her ; she never could understand the 
 reason, and the expression in Elsie's face as she 
 looked round — coming on her own thoughts of a 
 moment before, as she watched her sleeping- 
 cousin — hurt her. She rose, and going to the 
 child, knelt down by her on the sand. 
 
 " Let us go for a little walk, Elsie," she said, 
 softly, quite unconscious that her beautiful, 
 appealing voice bewildered the little fair head as 
 mysterious music might have done. " We are 
 all alone together, you and I. Every one else is 
 so sleepy. We must keep each other company. 
 Where would you like to go ? " 
 
 Elsie made no answer. Her eyes were fixed 
 on her cousin with a fascinated expression in 
 their blue depths. 
 
 '*I know!" went on Selma. '*You would 
 
92 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 like to go up into the little wood where we saw 
 the squirrels as we came this morning, wouldn't 
 you, Elsie?" 
 
 Elsie's cheeks grew pink. To see the squirrels 
 " close " had been her heart's desire since the 
 fleeting and fascinating glimpse she had had of 
 them from the carriage as it drove past the wood 
 in question in the morning, and after a moment 
 of struggle her longing conquered even her shy- 
 ness of Selma. 
 
 " Yes," she whispered. 
 
 '^ Then well go together now," returned 
 Selma, happily. " It's quite close, and we shall 
 be back in time for tea. It will be lovely, won't 
 it ? " 
 
 Elsie seemed to think it, on the whole, a 
 doubtful joy ; but she thought again of the 
 squirrels, and put her little fingers into Selma's 
 outstretched hand. 
 
 Helen and Humphrey strolling along the 
 cliff above saw them start hand in hand, Selma 
 in her 1)1 ue cotton frock and shady hat, with her 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 93 
 
 graceful head bent towards the small figure by 
 her side : in its little pink smock and big sun- 
 bonnet, with its serious face lifted shyly and 
 dubiously to the lovely eyes above it : and 
 smiled involuntarily at the sight. Their faces 
 had been rather grave — very few words had 
 passed between them since dinner, and there was 
 something in the way in which Helen pressed the 
 arm through which her own was passed, some- 
 thing in the clasp in which he held her hand, 
 suggestive of a mutual difficulty and a mutual 
 comfort. 
 
 They had been engaged now for more than 
 two months, and Mrs. Cornish, strongly disap- 
 proving of long engagements, had been anxious 
 for some time that something definite should be 
 settled as to their marriage. The income brought 
 to Humphrey by his profession was at present 
 quite insufficient to support a wife, but Helen 
 had something of her own, and Mr. Cornish, 
 urged thereto by his wife, had ofiered to make 
 his son an allowance which should make the 
 
94 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 joint income sufficient to marry on. But, to 
 Mrs. Cornish's extreme indignation, Humphrey 
 had quietly refused his father's offer. He could 
 not marry on such terms, he said ; he intended 
 to wait for his wife until he could keep her 
 himself. 
 
 Over and over again, since his refusal had 
 been made known to her, his stepmother had 
 argued the point with him, and only the day 
 before they had had a long discussion on the 
 subject — if that could be called a discussion to 
 which one party contributed a long harangue and 
 the other monosyllabic and perfectly even-tem- 
 pered and courteous responses. She had asked 
 him what he proposed to do, supposing he never 
 '' got on," and never sold any pictures, and he 
 had only smiled. She had pointed out to him 
 that she considered it quite unjustifiable of a 
 man to propose to a girl and then keep her 
 waiting indefinitely, and he had answered that 
 Helen was content; and when, in utter exaspera- 
 tion, she had informed him that she should 
 
CKOSS CUTIRENTS. 95 
 
 speak to Helen, he had quietly intimated that 
 she was of course quite at liberty to do as she 
 pleased. She had spoken to Helen, and Helen 
 had proved as impracticable as Humphrey. She 
 would wait contentedly, she said, quite happy in 
 Humphrey's love and trust, until he wanted 
 her. 
 
 She had said the same thing to Humphrey 
 himself, very simply and frankly as they walked 
 up and down on the cliff together, and the 
 silence which had succeeded her words and his 
 answer — more eloquent even than speech — lasted 
 until Selma's voice, as she passed with Elsie 
 under the cliff, roused Helen. After a glance at 
 Humphrey's grave, preoccupied face, she broke 
 the silence by saying, cheerfully : 
 
 " Humphrey, I've been going to ask you 
 so many times what you think about Selma. 
 Do you know I don't know at all ? " 
 
 " What I think about Selma ? " he responded 
 absently. His thoughts were still fixed on the 
 consideration of their own future, and Helen, 
 
96 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 partly to draw him out of his depression, and 
 partly because she was really anxious for an 
 answer, went on : 
 
 "About her — her powers, I mean, dear. 
 She always seems to me beautiful, and 
 wonderful, you know, whatever she does ; but 
 I sometimes think I can't judge of her quite, 
 because she is — Selma ! " Helen propounded 
 this theory with perfect simplicity and gravity, 
 as if it contained a profound revelation. 
 Humphrey looked at her seriously-considering 
 face with eyes which were very tender and 
 amused, and she went on : "Oh, Humphrey, 
 do you think she will be happy ? " She looked 
 up at him as she spoke the last words, and it 
 seemed to her that his face grew grave. "You 
 do think she has talent?" she repeated, with 
 a little hesitation in her voice, half anxious 
 and half proud. 
 
 " I think she has genius, Nell." 
 "Oh, Humphrey, do you really?" cried 
 her sister, with a bright flush of pride and 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 97 
 
 joy on her cheeks. '^And you think she will 
 be happy ? " 
 
 Humphrey did not aoswer at once, and 
 Helen, watching his face, tried in vain to read 
 its expression. At last he turned and looked 
 at her with a slight smile, which struck her 
 vaguely as being, as she expressed it, *' sad 
 somehow." 
 
 " I have told you that I think she has 
 genius," he said. 
 
 " Then she will be a success ? " 
 
 The same smile touched his lips, but his 
 voice was curiously relieved, as though her 
 last question was easier to answer, as he said 
 instantly, ''Yes." 
 
 Helen heaved a little sigh of satisfaction, 
 and said no more. She was satisfied as to her 
 main point, and though she was vaguely con- 
 scious that she did not quite read Humphrey's 
 face, she was well accustomed to the fact that 
 many of what she defined to herself as " Hum- 
 phrey's fancies" went over her practical head. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
98 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 and that their love for one another was quite un- 
 touched by it. Once, early in their engagement, 
 when he had told her what it was to him to 
 talk to her about his work, she had looked at 
 him with her simple blue eyes full of wistful 
 anxiety. 
 
 " Humphrey," she had said, " I'm afraid I 
 don't always understand." And Humphrey's 
 eyes had satisfied her on that point for ever, 
 though his lips said only two words: "You 
 care." 
 
 While Helen on the cliff was having her 
 mind so far relieved as to her sister's future, 
 Selma herself was giving her whole mind to 
 the entertainment of little Elsie, who trotted 
 along by her cousin's side, along the sands, 
 and up the footpath to the road, silently and 
 gravely. She told the child wonderful histories 
 about squirrels and fairies, imagined and related 
 with a charm which older people than Elsie 
 would have found it difficult to resist ; she 
 showed her flowers growing in the hedgerows, 
 
CKOSS CURRENTS. 99 
 
 and birds flying among the branches ; and by 
 degrees she was rewarded by little shy answers, 
 and laughter, and a more confiding touch of 
 the small hand she held, until — as they entered 
 the cool wood ; with its moss-grown banks, and 
 tall, gently stirring trees ; its little rippling 
 streams ; and its wonderful ever-shifting light 
 and shade ; above all with its population of 
 squirrels — the little thing forgot her shyness 
 altogether, and chattered, listened, and laughed, 
 **as though I were Helen or Nettie," thought 
 Selma, delightedly. They were so happy to- 
 gether — Elsie so enraptured with the " skirrels," 
 which seemed to be out in unusual force that 
 afternoon, and Selma so pleased at being able 
 to satisfy her — that they went on and on 
 without thinking of time, and when Selma 
 stopped at last to look at her watch, she found 
 that it was nearly five o'clock. 
 
 "Oh, Elsie," she said, "we've come too 
 far." 
 
 Elsie's little face grew suddenly grave. The 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CBOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 sudden stop, and Selma s tone — more dismayed 
 than she herself knew — had awakened her to 
 the fact that she was all alone with Selma, and 
 a long way from her natural protectors, and 
 her tea. 
 
 *'Tea will be waiting for us," went on 
 Selma, brightly. ''They'll never guess where 
 we are, will they, darling? Come, Elsie, and 
 
 let us see how fast we can w^alk. Oh " 
 
 she stopped short, looking consideringly at a 
 path which joined the road close to where 
 they stood. " I wonder whether that would be 
 a short cut," she said, after a moment; "is it 
 too steep for you, darling, I wonder ? " 
 
 They were on the side of a thickly wooded 
 hill, and the path in question went straight 
 down it, while the road by which they had 
 come wound round for a considerable distance. 
 Both path and road evidently led eventually to 
 the main road by which alone they could reach 
 the shore, and the path obviously saved at least 
 twenty minutes' walk. Selma glanced at the 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 101 
 
 serious little face, and thought that the child 
 looked tired ; she was afraid, too, that if they 
 were missing at tea-time, Mrs. Cornish would 
 be anxious about Elsie, and she determined to 
 try it. 
 
 " It's a beautiful little road, Elsie, isn't 
 it?" she said, cheerfully. ** Eight through 
 the squirrels' homes. Come along, darling ! " 
 But before they had gone very far Selma 
 began to wish that she had kept to the road. 
 
 The path at first was fairly wide, but it 
 was rough and uneven, and in spite of aH her 
 encouragement and help she felt the child's 
 steps grow slower and more uncertain, and 
 Jber ear caught a little ominous catch in the 
 breath as the little feet stumbled now and 
 then over a more than usually rough piece of 
 ground. 
 
 At last, when they were nearly half-way 
 down, one of these stumbles was nearly a 
 fall, and the catch in the breath became a 
 Jittle sob. 
 
102 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Selma stopped. 
 
 "Elsie, darling," she said, "shall we go 
 back to the road ? " 
 
 And then, to her unspeakable dismay, the 
 little hand slipped out of hers, and Elsie 
 dropped into a sitting posture on the path, 
 and burst into piteous little sobs and tears. 
 
 ''Elsie's frightened," she sobbed. "She's 
 tired. She tan't do on. The ground's all 
 little hills, and she wants Sylvie. Oh ! she 
 wants Sylvie." 
 
 Selma fell on her knees beside her, and 
 took her remorsefully into her arms. 
 
 "Elsie, sweetheart," she said, "don't — oh, 
 don't ! I'll take you to Sylvia ; I truly will. 
 Oh, my darling, don't cry ! " 
 
 But Selma, in spite of all her efforts to that 
 end, had never been regarded by Elsie in the 
 light of a familiar friend, and the disconsolate 
 little weeper refused to be comforted or re- 
 assured by her now, looking upon her indeed 
 as a fascinating but deceiving vision, who had 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 103 
 
 lured her away from Sylvia, her own especial 
 comforter. She refused to contemplate the 
 possibilities alike of going on or of goiug back ; 
 and as she was a delicate, excitable little mortal, 
 the more she wept the more utterly unnerved 
 she became, and the less heed she paid to poor 
 Selma's distracted representations. Selma kissed, 
 coaxed, reasoned — it never entered her head to 
 scold — and Elsie wept more and more bitterly. 
 Slight and fragile as the child was, Selma dared 
 not attempt to carry her either up or down 
 that steep, uneven path ; and, ridiculous as was 
 the position, she was nearly at her wit's end, 
 She determined on a last appeal. 
 
 "My pet," she said, putting both arms 
 round the sobbing child as she knelt on the 
 path beside her, and pressing her lips tenderly 
 to the little tear-stained cheek, ''try and stop 
 crying — only try. I'll go down backwards, and 
 hold your hands tight all the way, and then 
 you can't be frightened. Trust me, darling, 
 won't you ? I wouldn't have you hurt for 
 
104 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 anything. Oh, sweetheart, won't you? Won't 
 you try?" 
 
 She had an answer, though Elsie only cried 
 more piteously than ever. A man's voice from 
 below said suddenly : 
 
 " Is anything the matter up there ? Can I 
 be of any service ? " 
 
 < 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Startled by such a wholly unexpected sound, 
 Selma turned in the direction from which it 
 came, and sprang to her feet, stretching out 
 her hand to the slender trunk of a neighbouring 
 tree as she did so to steady herself on the 
 steep, uneven ground. Her hat had fallen 
 off, the long, level rays of the afternoon sun 
 lighted her hair, and touched her slight figure, 
 as she stood ; and as the man to whom the 
 voice belonged proceeded to follow it quickly 
 up the hill, and came suddenly in sight of 
 her, he stopped abruptly, as though the sunlight 
 — the sunlight in which she stood — had dazzled 
 him for the moment She waited, with her 
 startled, troubled eyes fixed on him as though 
 
106 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 lie had sprung out of the earth, for him to speak, 
 and after that instant's pause he lifted his hat 
 and said : 
 
 " Pardon me, but I heard your voice, though 
 I could not see you from down below, and I 
 was afraid there might be something wrong. 
 Can I be of any assistance ? " 
 
 His voice was very pleasant, full, and manly, 
 and he spoke with straightforward directness, 
 which was perfectly simple and perfectly 
 courteous. Selma hesitated a moment, and he 
 added, with a momentary glance at Elsie : 
 
 " Has the little girl hurt herself ? " 
 
 In spite of the irrepressible admiration in 
 his eyes — wonderiog, almost reverent admira- 
 tion, such as her own eyes had never met 
 before — there was a natural frankness about 
 his face and manner which inspired Selma with 
 sudden confidence. 
 
 *' Thank you," she said, " no, she is not 
 hurt, but she is too tired, and the path is 
 steep, and has frightened her. I " — and Selma's 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 107 
 
 perplexed face broke into a smile at the worck 
 — **it's very absurd, but I can't get her any 
 further." 
 
 The bronzed face of the man before her 
 reddened under the sunburn at her smile, and 
 he said, hastily : 
 
 " Is she very shy ? Do you think she would 
 let me carry her ? " 
 
 " Oh," said Selma, with a pretty pink flush 
 of confusion coming into her face, " oh, it's 
 very kind of you ; but — but perhaps she will 
 try and walk now. Elsie, darling, come I " 
 
 But Elsie made no attempt to respond to 
 the appeal made to her, and Selma involuntarily 
 turned from the ^child to her unexpected helper 
 with an expression of despair. 
 
 " May I ? " he said, with a smile. And then, 
 as she rose with a deprecating, " Oh, thank 
 you," he stooped suddenly and unexpectedly 
 and picked the weeping Elsie up in his arms, 
 bringing her suddenly face to face with a very 
 good-natured pair of blue eyes. 
 
108 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Elsie did not resent the treatment. Misery 
 and desolation had already fallen on her little 
 soul ; it seemed to her that tribulation could 
 go no further, and any change might possibly 
 be for the better. Consequently she suspended 
 her sobs for a moment, and scrutinised the 
 blue eyes wistfully. Apparently their expres- 
 sion was reassuring, for the tears flowed more 
 slowly. 
 
 '* You're not afraid of me, little one ? " 
 The tone was so confident and kindly, that 
 little Elsie did what many an older person 
 would have done under the same circumstances 
 — gave the answer that was evidently expected 
 of her. She shook her head. " I'm goinor to 
 take you part of the way home on my shoulder. 
 You'll like that, won't you ? " 
 
 " Elsie wants to go to mother. She wants 
 her tea." 
 
 •' That's all right, then ; Elsie's going." 
 He perched her comfortably on his shoulder, 
 and turned to Selma for further directions ; 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 10^ 
 
 theD, feeling a little shudder pass through the 
 child as she looked down the steep incline, he 
 took her into his arms again, so that she should 
 not see it, as he said : '' Were you going up or 
 down ? '' 
 
 " Oh, thank you so nauch," said Selma, 
 gratefully ; '' I am so very much obliged to 
 you. Down would be far quicker for us, if 
 it is not too steep. We want to get into the 
 Farstone Road. It is so kind of you." 
 
 She lifted her eyes shining with gratitude 
 as she spoke, and he murmured, hastily : *' Not 
 at all," turning in the direction she had 
 indicated. 
 
 The light was beginning to fade a little by 
 this time in the wood, and the half-mile which 
 lay between them and the road would have 
 been by no means easy walking for a man 
 with a child in his arms, Selma thought, even 
 at the best of times. But the man behind 
 her stepped confidently on, talking and laughing 
 to Elsie all the time, never allowing her to 
 
110 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 feel either frightened or shaken until he stood 
 with her on what slie called the '' nice, un- 
 jogging road." 
 
 ** Thank you very much indeed," said Selma, 
 then. " Elsie, dear, say ' thank you very much/ 
 and come." 
 
 But Elsie did not see the situation from 
 the same point of view. 
 
 " Thank you very much," she said, obediently 
 enough ; but then she added, pathetically, and 
 without attempting to move : '' Elsie's welly 
 tired." 
 
 Her friend in need turned hastily to Selma, 
 and said, before she had time to recover herself : 
 
 " May I not carry her home ? " 
 
 ''Oh," began Selma, crimsoning, "I — I 
 couldn't allow you to do such a thing. We 
 are not going home ; our party is picnicking on 
 the shore, and they will be getting so anxious. 
 Elsie, darling, it's a lovely, smooth road now ; 
 you can walk beautifully." 
 
 But Elsie's little nerves had been a good deal 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. Ill 
 
 shaken ; the small mouth trembled ominously ; 
 and two big tears made their appearance, to 
 tender-hearted. Selma's infinite dismay. 
 
 " Oh, don't cry again, darling ! " she ex- 
 claimed, appealingly. And then she raised 
 her eyes to the blue ones which looked at her 
 over the little fair head, as the man said again : 
 
 "Please let me carry her. It is really a 
 very little way to the shore." 
 
 " It is out of your way, I'm afraid," she said, 
 hesitatingly. 
 
 ** It is not of the least consequence, I assure 
 you," he said, eagerly — as the road in question 
 led only to the open sea, he could not well 
 assert that it was his way home, though he 
 looked as though he would willingly have done 
 so. " I'm afraid your friends will be getting 
 anxious." 
 
 "It is most kind of you," she faltered. 
 
 ** Elsie " But he had taken her hesitating 
 
 words for consent, and the next instant they 
 were walking down the road side by side. 
 
112 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 There was a short pause. 
 
 It was quite five- and- twenty minutes' walk 
 to the shore, and Selnia felt that it could not 
 pass in total silence ; but for the moment, 
 though why it should have been so she could 
 not have explained, she was unable to produce 
 a single remark even upon so simple a subject 
 as the weather. She was much relieved when 
 the unconscious cause of her embarrassing 
 position broke the silence by saying suddenly 
 to her bearer : 
 
 " Does you live here ? " 
 
 He seemed to rouse himself from thoughts 
 of his own at the sound of the little voice, 
 and he withdrew his eyes from the distant 
 horizon, on which they had been rather 
 elaborately fixed as though to prevent their 
 wandering to the figure by his side, to meet 
 Elsie's enquiring face, and answer cheerily : 
 
 **No, I live a long way oflf ! " 
 
 Selma seized the opening, and dashed 
 valiantly into the conversation. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 113 
 
 '' The country about here is beautiful, isn't 
 it ? " she said. 
 
 **Very!" he answered, quickly. ''Do you 
 know it well ? " 
 
 The conversation from this excellent starting- 
 point should have gone on swimmingly ; but, 
 of course, he could not speak to her without 
 turning his head towards her, and as she met 
 his eyes, Selma felt her cheeks grow pink and 
 hot under her shady hat, .and her own eyes 
 dropped hastily. She was so well accustomed 
 to the admiration with which men always 
 looked at her that it seemed to her their 
 ordinary expression, and she simply never 
 noticed it at all ; but she had never before 
 been looked at quite as this man looked at her, 
 and though she did not resent it, it rendered 
 her entirely incapable of carrying on the con- 
 versation. Fortunately Elsie saved her the 
 trouble. 
 
 " We live a long way off, too," she remarked, 
 reflectively. " We live in London, don't we, 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
114 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Selma ? Oh, please " — with a sudden little cry, 
 and a clutch at the throat of her friend — " oh, 
 please don't tumble Elsie ! " 
 
 He laughed apologetically, and not quite 
 freely. 
 
 "Did I nearly tumble Elsie?" he said. 
 " I'm very sorry. So you are Elsie ! " 
 
 There was a moment's pause, and then he 
 turned to Selma with a new expression on his 
 face, and a shade of constraint in his frank 
 manner. He was evidently anxious to make 
 conversation, for he produced the brilliant and 
 oricfinal remark : 
 
 o 
 
 " What wonderful weather we are having ! " 
 But the sight of the lovely, flushed face she 
 turned to him as she cast about in her mind for 
 an equally inspiring response, apparently over- 
 whelmed him with confusion, and he went on, 
 breathlessly, as he looked back again at Elsie : 
 
 " What a pretty name Elsie is, and what a 
 pretty bonnet you have ! Will you tell me how 
 old you are ? " 
 
CROSS CURREJSTS. 115 
 
 *' I'm five/' was the prompt and confidential 
 response. "Dick comes next — he's quite old, 
 he's eleven. Nettie " 
 
 Elsie's catalogue of her family's respective ages 
 was cut short by a little cry from Selma. 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed, *' I've lost my 
 charm ! " 
 
 She stopped short in her quick walk as she 
 spoke, and the man beside lier stopped too, 
 looking at her in blank bewilderment. 
 
 "I — I beg your pardon," he said, "you've 
 lost— what?" 
 
 " My charm," she answered, " from my 
 chatelaine. Oh, what shall I do ? " 
 
 " Shall we go back, and look for it," said he ; 
 •'* is it— is it a large thing ? " 
 
 Selma tried to laugh, but her eyes were 
 bright with the tears which always rose so 
 readily to them as she said : 
 
 " Oh, no ; thank you very much. It's such 
 a little thing, we should never find it — I may 
 
 have dropped it somewhere in the wood. Please 
 
 I 2 
 
116 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 don't mind about it, it can't be helped ; only 
 — only it was given me a long time ago by 
 a friend, and I was fond of it. Shall we go 
 on ? " She moved on as she spoke, and he 
 followed her reluctantly. 
 
 " What was it like ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, only a little gold heart," she answered, 
 trying to speak lightly. "Please don't trouble 
 about it. Look, Elsie, there is the sea. Mother 
 will think we are lost ! " 
 
 As she spoke they reached the turn of the 
 road from which a narrow lane led down to 
 the seas-hore, and Elsie's friend stopped short. 
 
 " Is — are all your party there ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," said Selma, wondering rather at the 
 question ; and then she said, hesitatingly, and 
 rather to her own surprise, " Will you not come 
 and let Elsie's mother thank you for herself? 
 She will be so much obliged to you." 
 
 He reddened suddenly all over his bronzed 
 face, and hesitated for a moment. Then he put 
 the child down rather abruptly. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 117 
 
 "You are very kind," he said ; ''no, I won't 
 do that, thanks. Good evening ! " and before 
 Selma could recover from her astonishment, or 
 Elsie could thoroughly realise that she was 
 standing on her own two tired little feet, he 
 had turned the corner of the road by which 
 they had come, and disappeared. At the same 
 moment two of the Cornish boys ran round 
 the other end of the lane from the shore, and 
 greeted Selma and Elsie with a shout of 
 surprise. 
 
 "Wherever have you been, Elsie?'.' they 
 called, instinctively addressing their little sister, 
 and not her unusual companion. " We've been 
 hunting and shouting and tearing about all over 
 the place, and you look as if you had been 
 standing there all the time. What are you 
 looking for ? " 
 
 " He's gone ! " responded the child, as they 
 all four met in the middle of the lane. 
 
 " Who's gone ? " demanded one of her 
 brothers, while the other said : 
 
118 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 ''Please, Selma, mother's rather anxious; 
 shall I run on and tell her you're all right ? " 
 
 "We'll all run," answered Selma, hastily. 
 "Jim, take Elsie's other hand. Come, darling 
 — that's right," and three minutes later they 
 ran literally into the arms of the whole Cornish 
 family, and every one was asking questions at 
 once. At last Elsie's shrill little voice rose 
 suddenly above all the others, as Selma was 
 explaining, and apologising to Mrs. Cornish a 
 little aside. 
 
 ''He found us in the wood," she announced. 
 "And he was a nice, big man — wasn't he, Selma? 
 — and he carried Elsie all the way. It's a pity 
 Selma's too big to be carried. He kept on 
 looking at her all the time, and I spect he must 
 have been finking 'bout that ! " 
 
 A shout of laughter greeted this observation, 
 and all the cousins and Mrs. Cornish turned 
 simultaneously to Selma. 
 
 "My dear," said her aunt, " I hope he wasn't 
 rude ? He was on his way home from work, 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 119 
 
 I suppose ? " And then, surprised at Selma's 
 crimson cheeks, she added, in a lower voice : 
 *' Was it unpleasant, my dear 1 " 
 
 There was a bright colour in Selma's cheeks 
 as she answered, and her words seemed to 
 tumble over one another in a way very un- 
 usual to her. 
 
 '* Oh no, auntie," she said. " He was — it 
 wasn't — it was a gentleman." 
 
 A sudden silence fell upon the assembled 
 Cornishes. Not one of them dared to tease 
 Selma on such a subject as they would. have 
 teased one of themselves, and an awkward con- 
 sciousness took possession of them that the laugh 
 had been a mistake. There was a moments 
 pause, and then Selma — with a quick, curious 
 movement, as if she were throwing something 
 from her — flung herself into the breach. 
 
 " It was an adventure," she cried, gaily ; 
 " really and truly an adventure. There we 
 were up a tree — as the boys say — only we were 
 at the foot of a tree ; and there we should have 
 
120 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 stayed, if the birds had been kind enough to 
 feed us, until Elsie grew up, and I grew grey. 
 But Providence created a young man — a nice, 
 blue-eyed young man — on purpose to walk 
 through that particular wood at that particular 
 moment. He came from nowhere, and — he has 
 gone back to where he came from. It's my 
 belief that he wasn't real at all, and 1 shall 
 take him for my own young man. Auntie, 
 have you had tea ? Elsie and I are starving, 
 simply ; aren't we, darling ? " 
 
 Tea had been waiting for nearly an hour, 
 and the sentiments of the whole party found 
 a mouthpiece in Nettie, who observed, in a tone 
 of extreme satisfaction, as they all arranged 
 themselves on the sand in the poses each found 
 most suitable to the consumption of food under 
 the circumstances : 
 
 " Tea is real, at all events ! " 
 
 "Yes, Nettie, tea is real. But, after all, 
 what is tea ? " returned Selma, with mock pathos. 
 She had seated herself next to Helen, throwing 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 121 
 
 her hat down on the sand by her side as she did 
 so, and she half propped herself against her 
 sister's shoulder, her soft, dark hair all ruffled 
 about her forehead as she continued, in the same 
 tone : ** Do you consider tea a substitute for 
 a nice young man, Nettie ? — some cake, please — 
 for a handsome young man, with beautiful blue 
 eyes, and nice curly brown hair ? I can't con- 
 sole myself with fleeting joys like tea. I've lost 
 
 my heart to an unreality. Oh ;" her flushed, 
 
 excited face changed suddenly ; " oh, talking of 
 hearts, Nell, I have had a real loss — my 
 charm ! " 
 
 "Your little gold heart — the thing Mr. 
 Tyrrell gave you when " 
 
 " Yes ! " interposed Selma, hastily. *' I am 
 so sorry." 
 
 " Oh, Selma, so am I ! " 
 
 Mr. Tyrrell had given the little trinket to his 
 pupil many years ago, when she had conquered 
 her flrst great difficulty ; and Helen knew how 
 fond her sister had been of it. She was rather 
 
122 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 surprised that the cloud over Selma's face passed 
 almost immediately. 
 
 " Where do they make young men like 
 that ? " she exclaimed, merrily, addressing the 
 company at large, as she handed her cup to 
 the boy who was sitting — or rather sprawling — 
 next her, that it might go to Mrs. Cornish to be 
 refilled. " No, thank you, Jim, I'm not hungry," 
 as the same boy handed her bread and butter, 
 with such grace as his position allowed. " He 
 was like a young man out of a story-book, with 
 bronzed features, and powerful hands, arjd all 
 that kind of thing. I believe he was specially 
 made for this occasion only, wasn't he, Elsie ? " 
 
 Elsie looked seriously up into the sparkling, 
 dancing eyes as Selma leant suddenly across 
 Helen with a swift, graceful movement, and 
 turned back the big sun-bonnet, which nearly 
 hid the little face. 
 
 '*What is "peshally made,' Selma?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Selma laughed a gay, excited, ringing langh. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 123 
 
 '' What is ' 'pcshally made/ Elsie ? " she re- 
 peated. " Well, it means that no one but you 
 and I has ever seen your * big, nice man.' And 
 it means that we shan't see him ever again. 
 Do you see ? " 
 
 *' Not see him ever again ? " said Elsie, re- 
 gretfully. ''Yes, Elsie sees. Isn't it a pity, 
 Selma, he was maked like that ? " 
 
 Selma laughed again ; and declaring that 
 adventure had taken away her appetite, she let 
 herself drop gradually backward on the sand 
 with her hands clasped under her head, and 
 began to talk. She was in one of those moods 
 of wild spirits in which she now and then in- 
 dulged, in which she was perfectly irresistible. 
 Nothing was too fanciful or too ridiculous for 
 her to say. Everything done or said by any 
 member of the party seemed to call out her sense 
 of fun ; and she absolutely revelled in nonsense 
 ■ — nonsense which was always graceful and 
 fascinating, as Selma in her wildest moments 
 could not fail to be. Her eyes danced, and her 
 
12-1 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 cheeks glowed ; her sweet, bright voice rang 
 with merriment ; her whole personality seemed 
 radiant with happy youth and excitement. 
 
 She kept every one, from Mrs. Cornish to 
 little Elsie, in fits of laimhter until the time 
 came for going home, and then there was a 
 general clamour from the young Cornishes '' to 
 go in the carriage with Selma." There were two 
 wagonettes, and a division was finally effected 
 by which Selma and two or three boys and girls, 
 with Helen and Humphrey to act as ballast, 
 were packed off as the first detachment. 
 
 During the first mile the occupants of the 
 other carriage could catch the laughing tones of 
 Selma's voice as she made fresh fun out of every- 
 thing they passed, and were devoured w^ith envy 
 at not being able to hear the words. But 
 gradually her voice dropped out of the chatter 
 kept up between Helen and the younger ones. 
 She had been the last to get in, and was sitting 
 at the end of the wagonette, steadying herself 
 with one slender hand on the end rail, and 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 125 
 
 — half-unconsciously and involuntarily at first — 
 her eyes wandered from the laughing faces on 
 her right to what lay beyond Humphrey, as he 
 sat immediately opposite her. 
 
 The moon was rising, and her words became 
 fewer and less lively, and her voice grew softer 
 and slower. Under the magical spell of the 
 moon the landscape seemed to evolve itself, 
 mysterious and unfamiliar in that always 
 mysterious light, out of the vague shadowiness 
 of summer darkness ; and, little by little, all 
 unconsciously, she moved her head so that she 
 saw nothing but that slowly strengthening light, 
 stealing on so peacefully, conquering darkness 
 so gently and imperceptibly. The voices about 
 her died into distance and unreality ; she hardly 
 heard them ; the actual world seemed to recede 
 and retreat, leaving her alone in that mysterious 
 world where every soul must be alone for ever 
 with its own longings and its own regrets — the 
 world of beauty, whereof the atmosphere is 
 aspiration. Her eyes grew deep and dark, and 
 
126 CEOSS CUEKENTS. 
 
 her face, very beautiful with that sensitive 
 receptive hush on it, paled slightly as she 
 watched, and trembled a little now and then. 
 
 There was auother silent occupant of the 
 carriage, who watched her face during the drive 
 almost as intently as she watched the rising 
 moon, and as Humphrey gave her his hand 
 when they reached home that she might follow 
 Helen — the children had jumped out of the 
 carriage and rushed in — he said, quietly : 
 
 " It has been lovely, hasn't it ? " 
 
 Selma flushed hotly, and turned quickly 
 towards him. He smiled slightly, and she 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " Humphrey, how did you know ? How 
 like you ! Why, you had your back to it ! " 
 
 " I saw it in your face," he said, with a 
 smile; ''and I saw the sky behind you." 
 
 " It — it took hold of me, somehow," she 
 said, shyly ; and then, as he nodded without 
 a word, she slipped her arm through her sister's, 
 and smiled brightly up at him, as she ex- 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 127 
 
 claimed : *'Nell, you've given me the very nicest 
 brother in the world ! It's sweet of you ! " 
 
 Helen laughed. 
 
 " I'm so glad you're satisfied, Selma ! " she 
 said. ^' You are satisfied, too, are you not, 
 Humphrey ? " 
 
 And as he turned to her, with that look 
 in his eyes which never shone in them for 
 any one but Helen — a look so different from 
 the sympathetic interest they held for Selma, 
 that when it lighted them they hardly seemed 
 to belong to the same man — they all three 
 moved away into the house, and the two girls 
 ran upstairs, nominally to get ready for supper, 
 though, as Selma observed, supper was a farce, 
 when it seemed about three minutes since tea. 
 
 Selma had just tossed her hat on to the 
 bed when they heard the larger wagonette, 
 with the rest of the party, roll up the drive. 
 There was a stir of arrival, an unusual kind 
 of cry, as though every one downstairs had 
 suddenly and simultaneously exclaimed, and 
 
128 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Nettie daslied headlong into the room, and 
 cast herself breathlessly on to a chair. 
 
 " What do you think ? " she gasped. 
 
 *' Oh, what, Nettie ? " 
 
 " Koirer's come." 
 
 " Come ! " exclaimed Helen and Selma, in 
 the same breath. ** Not really?" 
 
 "He has! He was waiting in the break- 
 fast-room. Father wouldn't say until mother 
 came, and I haven't seen him yet. Oh, isn't 
 it exciting ! " 
 
 And Nettie bounded up from her chair 
 and cast herself frantically upon Helen's neck. 
 
 "He wasn't to have been in England for 
 another week or ten days," said Helen, as she 
 kissed the girl. " Oh, isn't auntie delighted ? 
 Was the letter delayed, I wonder?" 
 
 "Yes — no — I mean a little. He meant it 
 to be a surprise. Oh, isn't it too thrilling ! " 
 cried Nettie, again, as Mrs. Cornish's voice, 
 curiously excited and unsteady, was heard 
 callino: from the foot of the stairs. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 129 
 
 " Helen, Helen and Nettie, come down, my 
 dears." 
 
 Helen turned to Selma, as the excited 
 Nettie dashed out of the room as impetuously 
 as she dashed in, and put two quite trembling 
 hands up to her hair; her cheeks were very 
 rosy. 
 
 " Am I tidy, Selma ? " she said hurriedly. 
 " Humphrey is so very fond of Roger, you 
 know. He was talking about him this after- 
 noon. Put me straight, Selma. Oh, don't you 
 think I'd better change my dress ? " 
 
 " You're beautiful, dear," answered Selma, 
 reassuringly, as she gave a few quick, deft 
 touches to her sister's hair. "You needn't 
 do anything at all. There, go down." 
 
 "You're coming, Selma? Oh, do come 
 with me ! " 
 
 Selma laughed. 
 
 "Very well, Nell," she said; "we'll go 
 down together." 
 
 They were far too preoccupied with the 
 
 VOL. T. K 
 
130 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 introduction for Helen to give a thonglit to 
 the state of Selma's personal appearance. The 
 wavy hair was rather loose and tumbled, and 
 made the face it framed — pinker in the cheeks 
 than usual with excitement — look even younger 
 and lovelier than usual; she still had in her 
 dress a bunch of white roses she had gathered 
 in the morning, withered now, but still fragrant 
 and graceful. 
 
 They went down the shallow old staircase 
 arm-in-arm, and as she laid her hand upon the 
 drawing-room door, Selma turned and smiled 
 brightly and encouragingly at the palpitating 
 Helen. She turned the handle and pushed the 
 door a little open, and then, quite suddenly, to 
 Helen's astonishment, she stopped short ; her 
 whole face changed, and a crimson flush rushed 
 over it, dying her very throat. 
 
 " Oh, Helen ! " she whispered ; '' oh, Helen ! " 
 
 From within the room, which was hidden 
 
 from the two girls on the threshold by a screen, 
 
 a man's voice was audible — a full, manly voice 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 131 
 
 which Helen had never heard before. But 
 before she could sufficiently recover from her 
 surprise either to go on into the room or to 
 ask an explanation of her sister, little Elsie ran 
 across the hall towards them, and Selma caught 
 her quickly by the hand. 
 
 " Come in, Elsie ! " she said, rapidly ; 
 *' Helen, we mustn't wait ! " And she pushed 
 Helen gently before her, following closely with 
 Elsie's hand held tightly in her own, her eyes 
 fixed on the ground, and her colour coming and 
 going as she breathed. 
 
 Mrs. Cornish's words, "Eoger, here is 
 Helen ! " were not needed. The tall man who 
 was standing between herself and her husband 
 near the drawing-room window turned quickly 
 as the girls entered, and as she saw his face 
 Elsie dropped Selma's hand and ran past Helen 
 towards him, crying delightedly : 
 
 '' Oh, it's him ! It's him ! Selma, he wasn't 
 'peshally made ! " 
 
 K 2 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Every one was very much, and very un- 
 reasonably, surprised that Selma should not 
 have known her cousin when he came to her 
 rescue in the wood. As she had been only 
 five years old when he left England, and he 
 had sent home no photographs, recognition 
 might nearly as well have been expected of 
 little Elsie, even if they had been familiar 
 playfellows before his departure. And as a 
 matter of fact, even in her babyhood, Selma 
 had never seen Roger Cornish. 
 
 They were sitting in the garden on the 
 morning after Roger's arrival, when this dis- 
 covery was made — Mrs. Cornish, with her 
 colonist son on the grass at her feet, Helen, 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 133 
 
 Selma, Humphrey, and a selection of the boys. 
 The latter were anxious as to their new brother's 
 capacity for larks — from which point of view 
 Humphrey was eminently unsatisfactory — and 
 were at present at that stage of their investiga- 
 tion which consisted in monosyllabic responses 
 to his advances, and in hovering about on the 
 outskirts of their elders' conversation to devour 
 the unconscious candidate for their approbation 
 with eyes and ears. 
 
 As far as the evidence of their eyes went, 
 youthful popular opinion had decided that Roger 
 looked ''jolly''; and, as far as it went, popular 
 opinion was right. Roger Cornish was a tall, 
 broad-shouldered young fellow, with bright 
 brown hair, which, short as he kept it, insisted 
 on curling defiantly ; a full beard, a little lighter 
 in colour ; and well-opened blue eyes. There 
 was a great deal of energy and steady reliability 
 about his face, but very little trace of thought 
 in the abstract, and the good-natured eyes were 
 as simple and direct in their gaze as a child's. 
 
134 CROSS CUERENTS. 
 
 There was a breadth about his figure, and a 
 depth ill his voice, which made him seem older 
 than his twenty-six years, and which curiously 
 contradicted his eyes and his boyish laugh. 
 
 The little group, with the exception of the 
 investigating contingent which fluctuated as 
 curiosity and restlessness dictated, had been 
 established under the fine old trees which were 
 one of the chief attractions of the Manor House 
 garden, ever since breakfast, and there was that 
 half tentative, half familiar air about it which 
 always pervades such a family reunion. The 
 new Koger was a stranger to his brothers and 
 sisters, a stranger almost to his mother, and they 
 were strangers to him. The common interests 
 which are the bonds of family life had all to 
 grow up between them ; and in the instinctive 
 mutual consciousness of this, the mutual desire 
 to hasten the process, there had hardly been a 
 pause in the cpick, interested fire of question 
 and answer. 
 
 More than an hour had passed in this way, 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 135 
 
 when, after the first short silence, Mrs. Cornish 
 said, with a smile : 
 
 '* Of course it is absurd to expect that Selma 
 should have known you, and yet I can't help 
 feeling quite aggrieved that she did not. I 
 don't like to think that you were so near me, 
 dear boy, and that I didn't know it. Why 
 didn't you come straight to me when you knew 
 who she was ? " 
 
 Eoger's sunburnt face reddened, and he 
 glanced furtively in Selma's direction. 
 
 '< I_I did think of it," he said. " I knew 
 when I heard the name. But I — there was 
 something — I thought I'd come on here, you 
 see." 
 
 " You see the consequences of sending 
 home no photographs," said Sylvia, laughing. 
 *' You've let us clamour for one all in vain, 
 and so your own cousin doesn't know you when 
 she sees you. And your own sister wouldn't 
 have known you any better," she continued, 
 suspending her needlework to look critically at 
 
136 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 him ; " though, of course, I was quite a big 
 girl — much older than Selma — when you went 
 away. Suppose we had refused to believe in 
 you, Roger ? Suppose we had none of us known 
 you?" 
 
 " I should have known him anywhere," 
 interposed his mother, softly, pausing an instant 
 in her knitting to lay her hand on his head. 
 
 " What a strange thing it was that you 
 should have taken that short cut through the 
 wood instead of keeping to the road ! " went on 
 his sister. Sylvia stood rather alone in the 
 Cornish family, for the brother who should have 
 belonged to her especially had died in his baby- 
 hood ; she had always hoped that Eoger, when 
 he should come home, would take the vacant 
 place ; and she was full of eagerness to make 
 friends with him. " 1 suppose you are so used 
 to finding tracks — isn't that the word ? — that 
 the absence of a road is nothing to you. It was 
 lucky for you, Selma, wasn't it ? " 
 
 The response was so low as to be hardly 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 137 
 
 audible. Selma was apparently interested at the 
 moment in something far away on the horizon. 
 But Sylvia hardly paused for an answer before 
 she continued, reflectively : 
 
 " When did Selma see you last, I wonder, 
 Koger ? After all, she can only have been a 
 tiny child when you went away. Do you 
 remember him that Christmas before he went, 
 Selma?'' 
 
 Selma was sitting in a big basket-chair which 
 stood, in consequence of the way in which the 
 shade was thrown, at a little distance from the 
 group which she faced ; she was leaning back in 
 it doing nothing, though both Helen and Sylvia 
 had needlework in their hands. Selma very 
 rarely did do anything when she was not 
 working hard at her own profession. There was 
 something rather constrained and shy about her 
 attitude ; she had hardly contributed a word to 
 the talk which had been going on so briskly, 
 and, as every one turned to her with sudden 
 curiosity as Sylvia spoke, she stretched up one 
 
138 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 arm and pulled a chestnut leaf from the tree 
 above her head, apparently that she might pull 
 it to pieces as she said, in a low, embarrassed 
 voice : 
 
 " No, Sylvia, I don't remember Kogei* at all." 
 She glanced up shyly as she spoke, and 
 found that Eoger had taken advantage of 
 Sylvia's question to turn eagerly towards her, 
 and that he was exactly facing her. It was the 
 first time their eyes had met that morning, 
 and as Selma dropped hers hastily, Sylvia, who 
 happened to be looking at her, suddenly upset 
 her work-basket with an irrepressible movement 
 of astonishment, and became temporarily speech- 
 less. It was Helen who lifted her head from 
 her work, and said : 
 
 " I wonder whether you ever did see him 1 
 Do you know, auntie, 1 believe, after all, she 
 never did. It was the year before Eoger went 
 away that mother and father went to Cannes, 
 when I came to you, and Selma went with 
 them, and before that " 
 
CEOSS CUERENTS. 139 
 
 " Before that, Eoger never spent his holidays 
 in London," went on her annt. ^'You're quite 
 right, Helen. What a curious thing ! Then 
 they really did meet for the first time yesterday. 
 I suppose you would have known Sehna from 
 her photographs, Eoger, and Helen too ? " 
 
 *' Helen, I think I should have known," he 
 said, instantly, looking up at lier frankly, "but 
 — Selma," he turned hesitatingly as he spoke, 
 and there w^as a nervous, involuntary movement 
 from the basket-chair, *' I — I didn't know her 
 till Elsie said — till I heard her name," he finished 
 hurriedly and incoherently. 
 
 An irrepressible chuckle from a cross-legged 
 boy — it was Jim, the sandiest and most 
 mischievous of the two sandy-haired ones — 
 interrupted the conversation at this stage of 
 the proceedings. 
 
 " What a lark ! " he said, turning suddenly 
 head over heels in his delight. " Oh, what a 
 lark ! Fancy Selma's saying you weren't real 
 when you were her own cousin ! She said 
 
140 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 she'd take you " But Jim was abruptly 
 
 interrupted ; Sylvia, Humphrey, and Selma rose 
 suddenly and simultaneously. 
 
 ** Boys, don't you want to go fishing ? " 
 " Boys, go and get some lunch " ; came from 
 the two former at one and the same moment, 
 and when the tumult which followed these 
 suggestions had subsided, and the boys had 
 departed to carry both into effect, the big 
 basket-chair under the chestnut- tree was empty. 
 Selma was seen very little and heard still 
 less for the rest of the day ; and, durmg the 
 week that followed, the usual Selma, bright, 
 impulsive, always, unconsciously to herself, the 
 centre figure wherever she might be, seemed to 
 have disappeared more completely each time 
 Selma's outward personality was seen. The 
 present Selma had nothing to say, had very pink 
 cheeks in public, and very white ones in private, 
 had large eyes which were alternately scared and 
 dreamy ; she was very anxious to be unob- 
 trusively and incessantly useful to Mrs. Cornish 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 141 
 
 or the girls, or to amuse little Elsie for hours 
 together in private haunts of their own. Only- 
 one person noticed these things. Helen was 
 absorbed in Humphrey, Mrs. Cornish was 
 absorbed in Koger — whom she found by no 
 means so even in his spirits as she could have 
 wished, and who seemed to her to be too much 
 given to long fits of abstraction. Only Sylvia 
 saw and understood, and she could hardly 
 believe the evidence of her senses. 
 
 She was standing alone in the drawing- 
 room one evening, when Eoger had been home 
 
 « 
 
 rather more than a week, staring blankly at the 
 door. 
 
 It had just closed behind Selma, who had 
 vanished from the room with suddenly flushed 
 cheeks, as a man's voice was heard from the 
 room on the other side of the hall ; and Sylvia's 
 amazement had not allowed her to move when 
 she was startled out of her petrifaction by the 
 abrupt reopening of the door, and the precipitate 
 entrance of Nettie, who shut it behind her with 
 
142 CROSS CUEREXTS. 
 
 a jerk, and nearly fell back against it, with 
 round, excited eyes. 
 
 *' Sylvia," she whispered, excitedly, " what 
 do you think ? " 
 
 *' I can't think," returned her sister, 
 limply. 
 
 " I came out of the breakfast-room just this 
 minute, and Roger came out of the dining-room 
 and he didn't see me. Selma was simply flying 
 upstairs, and she had dropped her handkerchief 
 in the hall ; and Roger saw it, and he saw her, 
 and he picked it up, and he — oh, Sylvia — he 
 kissed it like anything." 
 
 A curious sound, suggestive of a youthful 
 animal of some description in strong convulsions, 
 came suddenly from under the low drawing- 
 room window ; but neither girl noticed it. 
 Sylvia had dropped into a chair, and was gazing 
 at her sister as if the plump, good-natured Nettie 
 were a spectre. 
 
 *' Nettie!" she gasped at last, "it'll happen!" 
 " Oh, Sylvia— what ? " 
 
CKOSS CUEKENTS. 143 
 
 "Eoger and Selma. Yes, you may well 
 look like that, Nettie, but — she does ! " 
 
 Lucidity in Sylvia's statements had been 
 conspicuous so far entirely by its absence ; but 
 Nettie seemed to understand her. 
 
 '*Eoger and Selma!" she gasped, in a whisper, 
 which was almost awestruck, as her round brown 
 eyes grew rounder than ever. " Selma ! " 
 
 " Nettie, my head has been going like this," 
 said Sylvia, solemnly, making a wild agitation 
 with her hands, intended to depict excessive 
 confusion of mind. '^I saw him look at her the 
 very first morning, and she met his eyes unex- 
 pectedly, and she looked ! If it had been 
 
 any other girl, I should have said she meant to 
 flirt with him; but it was Selma — Selma, Nettie! 
 I never saw her look at any man before as though 
 he were a bit different to a girl." 
 
 " But she hasn't flirted with him," said 
 Nettie, incomprehendingly. '' She hardly ever 
 speaks to him." 
 
 " That's it," cried Sylvia, vigorously and 
 
144 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 inconsequently. "Oh, Nettie, bow stupid you 
 are ! Don't you see that Selma simply can't 
 flirt ? Nettie, she's fallen in love with him ! " 
 
 '' Sylvia ! " 
 
 How long they would have sat there staring 
 at one another, as though the world had 
 suddenly turned upside down before their 
 astonished eyes, it is impossible to say. The 
 convulsive sounds outside the window, which 
 had been apparently forcibly restrained during 
 their conversation by the sufferer, were to be 
 repressed no longer, and Nettie and Sylvia 
 started instantaneously to their feet as Jim's 
 freckled face, red and shiny with laughter, ap- 
 peared suddenly above the window-sill, while 
 the rest of his person danced with joy below. 
 
 " Selma's young man ! " he said. " Oh, what 
 a game ! I'll ask him if he knows where Selma's 
 handkerchief is. Oh, hurroo ! " 
 
 The Cornish boys had been very early 
 initiated into the inimitable field of mischief 
 provided by what they called "spoons." During 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 145 
 
 the engagement of their eldest sister — who had 
 married some years before, and had gone to 
 India with her husband — they had been used as 
 tools at very tender ages by her husband's 
 brother, a feather-brained medical student, wdth 
 an unlimited capacity for practical joking. His 
 promptings had fallen upon truly fruitful soil, 
 especially in the case of Jim, whose perceptions 
 as to the means by which it was possible to cover 
 an engaged couple with confusion had been 
 abnormally acute when he was an imp of only 
 five. He had rejoiced greatly over the ne"^s of 
 Humphrey's engagement, but Humphrey and 
 Helen had turned out, as he expressed it, '^ no 
 go," and he was consequently quite at liberty to 
 concentrate his undivided attention on the 
 possibility suggested by the conversation he had 
 just overheard. 
 
 Sylvia and Nettie expressed their apprecia- 
 tion of the position by a simultaneous dash 
 towards the window, and a clutch at the 
 hopping, dancing figure below. 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 ''Jim, you dreadfully wicked boy," cried 
 Sylvia, wrathfully, but low, lest other wicked 
 boys should appear upon the scene and complicate 
 her difficulties. " Don't you know that it's 
 simply disgustingly mean to listen to people ? " 
 
 " People shouldn't talk so loud when a person 
 is catchino' moths under the window, then. Ah, 
 I've caught a moth, and no mistake ; " and Jim 
 winked wickedly into his sisters' perturbed 
 countenances. 
 
 " Jim, if you do anything, Fll — I don't know 
 what I won't do ! " 
 
 " Do anything, Sylvia ? " was the answer, in 
 a tone of innocence which would have shamed 
 the proverbial new-born babe. '* Me ? Why, 
 whatever should I do ? " 
 
 " Oh, you imp," breathed Nettie, emulating 
 her sister in caution and exceeding her in 
 vigour ; *' there isn't any knowing what you 
 won't do ! You'll be everywhere you're not 
 wanted ! " 
 
 ''I shall be about, Nettie," returned the 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 147 
 
 innocent, much surprised. " A chap may be 
 about, I suppose. P'raps I shall see Roger some- 
 times when he doesn't see me. He's got such a 
 spooney — I mean mooney — way with him " — 
 with an irrepressible chuckle. '' I shall look 
 after Selma a bit, too, p'raps — quietly, you know. 
 She's rather down, isn't she ? " and with another 
 irrepressible chuckle he wriggled out of his 
 sisters' hands and disappeared in the dark. 
 
 There was nothing to be done, the much-per- 
 turbed Sylvia and Nettie argued, except to keep 
 a sharp look-out upon the boy, and frustrate 
 as far as possible any little plans he might 
 develope. To this argument each girl added a 
 private mental determination which each thought 
 it better not to confide to the other, and which 
 began to take effect on the family atmosphere 
 the very next day. Both Sylvia and Nettie ap- 
 parently woke up the next morning afflicted with 
 a curious form of restlessness, which was always 
 urging them to call to its relief any member 
 of the family who happened to be talking at 
 
 L 2 
 
148 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 the moment to Eoger or Selma, who were always 
 finding themselves left alone. Not alone to- 
 gether. It was another peculiarity of the family 
 atmosphere, which was rather complicated in 
 those days, that whenever there was the remotest 
 prospect of such a contingency, either Eoger or 
 Selma incontinently fled. An incessant game of 
 '' family post" seemed to be in progress. Selma, 
 when her companion had departed, remonstrating, 
 to answer Sylvia's urgent appeal, would invariably 
 rise precipitately as soon as she found herself 
 alone and attach herself to somebody else ; 
 whereupon, before many minutes had elapsed, 
 that somebody's presence would become abso- 
 lutely necessary to Nettie's peace of mind, and 
 the proceedings would begin all over again. 
 Eoger, left alone, would stare vacantly into space 
 for a few minutes, heave a heavy sigh, and 
 depart to take a solitary walk. 
 
 At last, one hot afternoon in August, the 
 whole party had taken refuge from the sun in 
 and about a picturesque old summer-house that 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 149 
 
 stood close to a large fish-pond, which gave that 
 part of the garden a quaint, old-world look. It 
 was some way from the house, at the extreme 
 end of what went by the name of the lower 
 garden, and the water, shaded by a large walnut- 
 tree which overhung it, looked cool and refresh- 
 ing on that broiling afternoon. 
 
 The younger Cornishes had gradually grown 
 tired of inaction, and had strayed away. Sylvia 
 and Nettie had risen one after the other in a 
 casual manner and departed, and shortly after- 
 wards Sylvia had suddenly remembered that she 
 wanted Humphrey to advise her as to a piece of art 
 needlework on which she was engaged, and had 
 fetched him into the house, and Nettie had 
 called for Helen on important business. Mrs. 
 Cornish, Selma, and Roger were left alone ; 
 Selma sitting inside the summer-house, on one of 
 the picturesque rustic benches with which it was 
 furnished, Mrs. Cornish just outside in a garden- 
 chair, with Roger beside her on the slightly 
 raised threshold. 
 
4 
 
 150 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Tliey were not a conversational trio. Selma 
 had a book in her hand, Mrs. Cornish was 
 turning the heel of the sock she was knitting, 
 and Koger was staring at vacancy in a manner 
 which was eminently self-conscious but not 
 entertaining. 
 
 " Twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four," mur- 
 mured Mrs. Cornish. " Oh, dear, that's the end 
 of my wool ; I must get some more. No, my 
 dear, don't trouble ; I don't know exactly where 
 it is," she added, to Selma, whose absorbing 
 interest in her book had not prevented her 
 jumping up, almost before Mrs. Cornish had 
 finished speaking, with a pressing offer to be 
 allowed to go for what she wanted. 
 
 " I can look for it, auntie," she protested. 
 
 "No, no, my dear. I will go myself. 
 Sylvia said she wanted to show me something 
 about her work. You stop here with Koger. 
 I shall be back directly." And Mrs. Cornish 
 moved briskly away. 
 
 Selma hesitated a moment as if in doubt 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 151 
 
 whether or no to insist on following her, and, 
 before she had decided, Mrs. Cornish had turned 
 the corner, and was out of sight, leaving Selma 
 standing in the middle of the summer-house 
 with Koger, who had risen, standing rather 
 awkwardly in the doorway, so that if she 
 decided to go she would have to ask him to 
 let her pass. Her colour came and went ; she 
 turned the book she held nervously in her 
 hands, and then she suddenly sat down again, 
 apparently choosing the least of two evils. 
 Eoger's state of mind did not seem to be much 
 more composed than her owd, and he leant his 
 broad shoulders against one of the supports of 
 the little place in an attitude which was far 
 from appearing as easy as he fondly hoped. 
 
 " I — I was afraid you meant to go in," 
 he said. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " 
 
 *' You — you do go in a good deal, don't 
 you ? I mean," he amended, hastily, '' you 
 generally go where I'm not." 
 
152 CROSS CURRENTS, 
 
 Selma vStarted to her feet. 
 
 *•' Oh, no ; not at all," she said, breathlessly. 
 " It isn't that at all ; but I must go in now, 
 Fve just remembered." 
 
 She stood before him waiting for him to 
 move — a startled figure, quiveringly anxious 
 to escape — and he was stepping back with a 
 heavy shade of disappointment on his honest 
 face, when he was suddenly startled by a 
 heavy splash and a frightened cry which Selma 
 echoed with a shriek of dismay as her eyes 
 suddenly dilated, and her face turned white 
 with fright. 
 
 "The pond!" she cried. "Oh, I always 
 knew they would. He's tumbled in. Oh, 
 come ! There are holes ! " and the next 
 moment she had rushed to the edge of the 
 fish-pond followed closely by Roger, who asked 
 rapidly : 
 
 "Can't they swim? Which is it?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," she cried, '' but he fell off the 
 tree ! Oh, you see he doesn't rise." 
 
CKOSS CUERENTS. 153 
 
 Almost before the words were uttered, Roger 
 had stripped off his coat and had plunged into 
 the pond, on the surface of which nothing was 
 to be seen but large, slowly widening rings of 
 water. He dived straight out of sight, and 
 as the water closed above him a little strangled 
 gasp parted Selma's white lips, and she stood 
 rooted to the ground, not attempting to run 
 for help or even to call out, staring with dark, 
 dilated eyes at the spot where he had dis- 
 appeared, until, a few seconds later, he rose 
 again some distance across the pond holding 
 a sandy, unconscious head above water ^ith 
 one hand as he kept himself afloat with the 
 other. 
 
 " He's stunned," he called, speaking in 
 short, laboured gasps, " and — heavy. Can you 
 — help — up — the bank ? " 
 
 The pond had been cleared out only a day 
 or two before, and the bank shelved steeply 
 down with no weeds or water-plants to serve 
 as a hold ; it rose nearly three feet above the 
 
154 CROSS CUERENTS. 
 
 water, and Eoger could neither throw the boy 
 up nor could he lift himself out of the water 
 with his heavy burden in his arms. 
 
 *' The tree ! " he called ae^ain to Selma. 
 " Hold on— to the tree." 
 
 A strong, low-growing branch of the walnut- 
 tree reached nearly to the water's edge, and 
 catching his meaning instantly, Selma knotted 
 her handkerchief round it to oive herself a 
 hold, and clinging to it with one hand let 
 herself half-way down the bank, stretching out 
 the other hand to Eoger. He caught it in a 
 strong, firm grip — the bank crumbled, broke 
 away, the branch creaked, the slender figure 
 swayed and strained, and then Eoger stood 
 beside her on the grass with an inanimate little 
 heap of dripping blue serge at their feet — the 
 unfortunate and too enquiring Jim, whose 
 investigations into the proceedings in the 
 summer-house from an observatory in the 
 walnut-tree had nearly landed him in a watery 
 
CEOSS CUERENTS. 155 
 
 *' You're not hurt ? " said Koger, breathlessly, 
 as Selma sank on her knees by the boy, almost 
 as white as he, and trembling from head to foot. 
 
 She lifted her face to him instantly, as if 
 the common sense of struggle and danger had 
 swept away all self-consciousness from both, 
 and said : 
 
 " No, oh, no ! You have not hurt yourself ? 
 Oh, we must take him in! My poor little Jim!" 
 
 She bent over the dripping little figure again 
 as she spoke, and Koger, coming hastily round 
 to the other side, gathered it very tenderly 
 into his arms. 
 
 '' Poor little chap ! '' he said. *' Did he fall 
 off the tree ? I wish he'd come to ! " 
 
 They carried him into the house, walking 
 quickly side by side, as they had not walked 
 since their first meeting in the wood, their 
 faces turned to one another in a common 
 anxiety and a common interest. 
 
 Nearly two hours passed; everything was 
 done that could be done, and the mischievous 
 
/l56 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 lace remained still and quiet, as it had never 
 been seen before except when Jim was asleep. 
 At last, however, when his mother was bending 
 over him, all her resources exhausted, and nothing 
 left her l)ut to wait for tlie arrival of the doctor, 
 the freckled features quivered, the deadly pallor 
 changed, and the eyes suddenly opened. 
 
 ''You can see first-rate from that branch," 
 said a little, thin ghost of a voice ; " but it's 
 awfully crocky." 
 
 Ten minutes later Selma ran downstairs 
 into the hall, where Nettie was trying to 
 comfort groups of frightened, awestruck boys. 
 
 "He's better!" she cried. ''He's all right. 
 Nettie, auntie wants you." 
 
 Nettie tore upstairs, the boys dashed out 
 into the garden with a wild whoop of relief, 
 and Selma was left alone. She stood still a 
 moment, the flush of excitement with which 
 she had told her good news fading gradually 
 from her face, and leaving it very white as 
 she leant back against the oak balusters for 
 
CEOSS CUERENTS. 157 
 
 support. Then she raised herself with a little 
 sigh of physical fatigue, and moved towards 
 a little door which led into the quiet, old- 
 fashioned rose-garden. At the same moment 
 the front-door opened, and Eoger came in. He 
 stopped short as he saw her. 
 
 *' Is there any change ? " he asked, quickly. 
 " Humphrey will be back directly." Humphrey 
 had gone for the doctor. 
 
 Selma stood quite still, looking towards 
 him just as she had turned on the opening of 
 the door. 
 
 " He is better," she said, softly. '* I do not 
 think he is hurt at all. You have saved him." 
 
 He took two rapid steps and stood beside 
 her, looking down into her face with eyes which 
 she did not meet, though she did not turn her 
 face from him. 
 
 *'Not I," he said, in a tone which was the 
 oddest mixture of diffidence and assertion; "I 
 could have done nothing without your help. 
 You saved us both." 
 
158 CKOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 She made a slight swift gesture of denial, 
 and there was a moment's pause. But neither 
 seemed embarrassed. The barrier broken down 
 in that moment when their hands had touched 
 in that desperate, straining clutch, was not to 
 be re-erected. At last he said, very diffidently, 
 but not awkwardly : 
 
 ''Are you sure you are not hurt? You 
 look tired." 
 
 *' Only tired," she said, lifting a pair of 
 unconsciously pathetic eyes to his face. "My 
 wrist is a little strained, that is all." 
 
 " Ah ! " he exclaimed, and then he pulled 
 himself up as she flushed faintly at his tone, 
 and turned involuntarily towards the garden 
 door. " Were you going into the garden ? '^ 
 he said. " May I — may I come too ? " 
 
 Selma did not raise her eyes, and the flush 
 on her tired face deepened as she answered, 
 very softly : 
 
 " If you like." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 September was over, and the first days of 
 October had followed in its wake. It had been 
 an autumn calculated to atone even for the 
 many sins of the spring which had preceded it — 
 hot, and bright, and settled, as the English 
 climate very seldom allows itself to be — and 
 such happy beings as knew no law with regard 
 to their movements, except the law of their own 
 inclinations, had been very slow in returning to 
 London. 
 
 In the beginning of October, London had 
 been, what is technically called, '^ empty," 
 though all the inferior districts had been 
 thronged from morning till night with the 
 insignificant working population of all ranks, 
 
160 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 whose holidays are not to be lengthened by any 
 autumn sunshine. Bat somewhat to the un- 
 christian satisfaction of this section of the public 
 — to some ill-reo:ulated constitutions it is dis- 
 tinctly trying to be obliged to work in London 
 through holiday country weather — the middle of 
 October brought with it a sudden change. The 
 wind went into the north-east ; the rain fell in a 
 quiet, persistent, unobtrusive fashion, until it 
 seemed to have become a confirmed habit with it 
 to do so ; and "society " fled back to its winter 
 quarters, shivering and grumbling. 
 
 It was about half-past ten o'clock in the 
 morning, and the outlook from the Tyrrells' 
 dining-room window was calculated to depress 
 any one in whose scheme of daily life anything 
 so elementary and barbaric as the weather had a 
 place. The pavements were wet, the houses 
 opposite were wet, sundry wet umbrellas passed 
 witb a resentful and depressed splash and patter, 
 the rain came down with dreary monotony. 
 But neither Miss Tyrrell nor her brother, as 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 161 
 
 they faced one another at the breakfast-table, 
 were at all aflfected by such trifling external 
 circumstances. Tyrrell had remarked on enter- 
 ing the room that it was an abominable day, 
 and had applied himself to a cursory study of 
 the newspaper, and a more or less interested 
 exchange of comments with his sister. Miss 
 Tyrrell had observed that the room was cold ; 
 had rung for a servant to bring some logs of 
 wood, and had contemplated her elaborate Early 
 English hearth with a perfect satisfaction in its 
 artistic merits, and a vague con3ideration of the 
 weather as being especially designed that* such 
 an eminently desirable factor in the arrangement 
 of a room might have reason for existence. 
 
 They had returned to London only the day 
 before — Miss Tyrrell in the afternoon, Tyrrell, 
 from the Continent, late at night — and they had 
 a good deal to say to one another over their 
 breakfast, chiefly with reference to matters con- 
 nected with their joint establishment and their 
 joint society life during the ensuing winter. 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Of the past summer months they hardly spoke 
 at all ; they had gone their own ways, and 
 neither cared sufficiently for the other to be 
 interested or even curious on any matter which 
 concerned only one. They would probably 
 have made no allusion whatever to their recent 
 individual proceedings — certainly it would 
 have occurred to neitlier to question the other 
 — but for the fact that Miss Tyrrell, on her 
 arrival the day before, had expected to find 
 her brother well established for the winter, 
 instead of not yet arrived. John Tyrrell had 
 delayed his return to town for at least ten days 
 after the date he had originally fixed, a very 
 unusual circumstance with him. 
 
 " You have not even had your letters sent on 
 lately, I see," observed Miss Tyrrell as she rose, 
 breakfast being over, and stood for a moment by 
 the fire preparatory to retiring to her writing- 
 table, where she usually spent the first hour of 
 the morning, '* There is an appalling accumula- 
 tion waiting for you in your room. You won't 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 163 
 
 produce the new piece as soon as you intended, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 " Possibly not," returned her brother, in a 
 tone that was very hard, and did not invite 
 further comment on his intentions. But Miss 
 Tyrrell was reading the paper, and she did not 
 notice the tone. 
 
 " Whom have you been with lately ? " she 
 asked, absently. 
 
 Tyrrell did not apparently resent the ques- 
 tion ; on the contrary, he answered as though 
 he was rather glad to be asked it. 
 
 '^ I've been alone," he said. *' I got rather 
 bored, and went off to rough it a bit in Greece 
 by myself." 
 
 He came up to the fireplace as he spoke, and 
 his sister raised her eyes carelessly from her 
 newspaper. 
 
 " I don't think it has agreed with you," she 
 said. " You are too thin, John. You've been 
 rather foolish not to come back looking younger. 
 Shall I send about those curtains ?" 
 
 u 2 
 
164 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 '* As you like," returned her brother, without 
 interest. " Well, I suppose I must go and read 
 letters before I go down to the theatre." 
 
 He gathered up the letters brought him by 
 that morning's post, and went down the passage 
 into the little room where Selma had taken 
 refuge after her first appearance as a reciter, 
 seating himself at the writing-table with hardly 
 a glance round the room, though he had not 
 been in it for nearly four months. His holiday, 
 extended as it had been, had apparently done 
 him no good. He was, as Miss Tyrrell had said, 
 very thin ; his eyes were rather hollow, and 
 very hard ; and there was something about his 
 uninterested manner as he arranged his table 
 and sorted the letters to be read, which suggested, 
 as his manner during his discussion as to future 
 arrangements with bis sister during breakfast 
 had suggested in a less degree, that the life to 
 which he had returned was a matter of business 
 and necessity only, that the capacity for interest 
 was wanting in him, and tbat everything was 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 165 
 
 flat. He was dull and apathetic, like a man 
 who is suffering from reaction. 
 
 He opened his letters one after another, read 
 them rapidly, and laid them aside with not the 
 faintest change of posture or expression, until he 
 came to the first of two addressed in the same 
 large, characteristic handwriting. It was very- 
 long, and he glanced through it rapidly, throw- 
 ing it down when he had read it with a cynical 
 curl of his lips, the nortnal expression of which 
 had altered indefinably for the worse in the 
 course of the last three months — as, indeed, 
 had that of his whole face. 
 
 " Little fool ! " he said to himself, with a 
 whole world of contempt in his eyes. "Little 
 fool ! " 
 
 He took up the letter again^and re-read a 
 bit here and there, with a smile which grew 
 more cynical and contemptuous moment by 
 moment. Then, just as he turned to the 
 concludinof words for the second time, the door 
 opened and Miss Tyrrell appeared. 
 
166 CKOSS CUERENTS. 
 
 " I am sorry to disturb you, John," she 
 said ; " but I want to know exactly what you 
 wish about that new glass." 
 
 " Oh, as plain as possible," he answered, 
 " with the monogram only. What do you think 
 I have here, Sybilla ? " 
 
 " Something interesting ? " 
 " That's as you take it ! A letter from 
 Selma Malet to say that she is very sorry, 
 but she's going to be married, and to ask if I 
 will please get her contract cancelled ! " 
 ** John ! Not really ! " 
 
 " Really ! There is a great deal about her 
 new fancy, and about my forgiving her ; but 
 that's the gist of it. So much for women's 
 careers I Little fool ! You can read it." 
 
 Miss Tyrrell took the letter with an in- 
 articulate murmur in which amazement, horror, 
 and uncertainty as to what was expected of 
 her — to which her brother's tone had given 
 her no clue — were blended in equal parts. She 
 had not read more than half when she lifted 
 
CKOSS CUREENTS. 167 
 
 her head with an exclamation of pure astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 " The idea of Selma s writing like this," she 
 said. "It is simply the wildest infatuation I 
 ever heard of." 
 
 " She will sacrifice her chance in life to it 
 all the same." 
 
 "Bat can you do nothing to prevent it, 
 John ? The man is a mere nobody, from what 
 she says ! Think of the splendid position she 
 might have had I Think of all you have done 
 to introduce her alieadyl" 
 
 Tyrrell smiled half cynically, .half grimly. 
 ** I've done a good deal more for her than 
 that," he said. " By Jove, I've taken pains 
 with that little idiot." 
 
 His sister hardly heard him ; she was 
 finishing the letter. 
 
 " Don't let her throw it all away, John," 
 she said. " The silly girl might marry any 
 one she likes in another year. Hold her to 
 her contract at least, and let her see how 
 
168 CROSS CUREENTS. 
 
 domesticity with this colonial cousin strikes 
 her after her first season ! " 
 
 Tyrrell leant carelessly back in his chair, 
 and looked with absolutely uninterested eyes 
 idly before him. 
 
 '' My dear Sybilla, why should I ? " he said. 
 " I don't care a jot whether she marries or not. 
 Why should I trouble myself? There will be 
 not the faintest trouble about cancelling her 
 engagement ; and there will be one fashionable 
 actress the less, that's all." 
 
 **John, she would have been an artist!" 
 
 Tyrrell looked at his sister with a con- 
 temptuous curl of his lip. 
 
 "Yes," he said, after an instant's con- 
 templation, '*so she would — I had forgotten 
 that!" 
 
 " I thought you were so much interested 
 in her. I thought " 
 
 Tyrrell moved as though the subject wearied 
 him. 
 
 ** A winning fight is always interesting," he 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 169 
 
 said, " and it is worth while to help on the 
 winner. If she does not choose to fight, it is 
 entirely her own affair, and she ceases to be 
 interesting." 
 
 There was a short pause, and Miss Tyrrell 
 took refuge in the letter; she handed it back 
 to him after a moment or two with her own 
 hard little smile. 
 
 " It is dated August the thirtieth," she 
 observed, " and she begs you to let her have a 
 line of forgiveness by return of post. You 
 have been rather hard on her ! Ah, I see there 
 is another letter from her. What is that about, 
 I wonder ! " 
 
 Tyrrell took it up and opened it leisurely. 
 It was dated a fortnight after the other, and 
 it was a very short and pathetic appeal from 
 Selma for a word of kindness from her oldest 
 friend. 
 
 " Poor little fool ! " was Tyrrell's comment, 
 and "poor silly child," echoed Miss Tyrrell as 
 she read it over his shoulder. 
 
170 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 " You'll write to lier, of course," she added. 
 *' Give her my love — I cau't congratulate her." 
 
 " I shan't write this morning," answered 
 Tyrrell as he folded the letter, and put it with 
 those which were not to be answered imme- 
 diately ; '*if nothing else turns up I may go and 
 see her this afternoon, as the letters have been 
 lying here so long. She's staying with his 
 people, I see." And he settled back again to his 
 correspondence as Miss Tyrrell, with a parting 
 lamentation over Selma's backsliding, departed 
 to do her shopping. 
 
 Nothing else did '' turn up " in the course of 
 the day, and at about half-past four o'clock in 
 the afternoon, Tyrrell, having finished his busi- 
 ness at the theatre — arranged for the reading of 
 the new piece which had been waiting his return 
 to town, and set on foot negotiations for a sub- 
 stitute for Selma, amongst other things — and 
 having looked in at his club, was standing in 
 the doorway of that institution smoking a 
 cigarette, with a general air about him of having 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 171 
 
 BO interest in anything, and of being utterly 
 disinclined to make the effort necessary for the 
 recovery of his old footing with himself or with 
 his life. 
 
 *' I must do something, I suppose," he 
 argued with himself. *' Why can't I rouse up ? 
 I'll go and look up little Selma — that won't be 
 any trouble, and it is a form of occupation." 
 
 Accordingly, half an hour later, the Cornishes' 
 brisk little parlourmaid, with her eyes rather 
 round, and her cheeks rather pink with awe, 
 opened the drawing-room door, and announced : 
 
 ''Mr. Tyrrell!" 
 
 There was very little light in the room, so 
 late on that dreary October afternoon, but the 
 dancing, uncertain light of the fire, and Tyrrell 
 had not even distinguished who was or was not 
 in the room before the maid's announcement was 
 echoed in a glad, incoherent, impulsive cry, and 
 Selma was standing before him with outstretched 
 hands, and flushed, tremulous face. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad," she cried; "I thought 
 
172 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 — I thought Oh, I thought Fd been too 
 
 unorrateful to be forgiven I " 
 
 " I have been out of town," he said. " I 
 have had no letters forwarded to me, and I 
 found both yours waiting for me this morning." 
 
 He spoke, for the first time that day, as if he 
 were interested in what he said, quickly and 
 gently. The ring of that fresh, sweet voice had 
 roused him in spite of himself. 
 
 Selma uttered a little cry of relief and hap- 
 piness as she looked up in his face in the dim 
 light, letting her hands remain in his, as she 
 said again ; 
 
 "Oh, I am so glad ! I have been so 
 miserable, because you didn't write. Then you 
 ^re not angry with me ? " 
 
 " My dear child, why should 1 be angry ? " 
 There was an undercurrent of cynicism in his 
 tone, but he could not say, *' Why should I 
 care ? " with those soft hands clinging to 
 his. " You know your own mind, of course, 
 and it is for you to decide. Donne is angry," 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 173 
 
 he added, with a smile. "But here is your 
 release." 
 
 He drew a paper from his breast-pocket as he 
 spoke, and as he gave it her the parlourmaid, 
 rendered additionally zealous by her desire to 
 look as much as possible upon the popular actor 
 in *' a common room " — as she expressed it 
 downstairs — brought in the lamps. Selma only 
 smiled her thanks to him ; but as she did so, 
 the light fell full upon her for the first time, and 
 Tyrrell absolutely started. Standing there, half 
 turned to go to her chair ; with her face raised 
 to his, half gratitude, half confusion ; with her 
 lips parted in a smile ; and the new light in her 
 eyes, which shone there always now that love 
 was the background of her every thought ; she 
 was indescribably lovely. For the first time in 
 her life Tyrrell saw her beauty, not as an im- 
 portant factor among her chances of success, but 
 as the beauty of womanhood. The delicate 
 features, with their soft colouring ; the perfect 
 lips, with their undeveloped suggestion of 
 
174 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 power ; the dark eyes ; the slender, graceful 
 figure ; struck him suddenly as though he saw 
 them now for the first time, and he took the 
 chair she indicated to him, with a little graceful 
 gesture, in silence, hardly hearing the trivial 
 words she spoke about the shortness of the 
 October days. 
 
 " It is a wonderful developer," he was think- 
 ing, analytically. " Selma in love with a man 
 is infinitely more beautiful than Selma in love 
 with an ideal of Art ! " 
 
 Then he roused himself to answer her ; and 
 thougb Selma did not notice it — her perceptions 
 being otherwise occupied — though he himself was 
 quite unconscious of it, that moment's silent reali- 
 sation had brought a subtle change to his manner 
 towards her. It would never be the same again. 
 It was no longer the manner of a master to his 
 pupil, but of a man to a beautiful woman. 
 
 "I hope it has not given you much trouble," 
 she said, lifting her eyes to his face, when they 
 were alone again. 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 175 
 
 There was a little satirical twist about his 
 mouth as he answered her. It struck him as 
 being so like a woman to utter those futile, 
 conventional words when she was recklessly 
 throwing away her whole career, and when no 
 trouble or inconvenience she might have occa- 
 sioned to him, or to any one else, would have 
 weighed one scruple with her. 
 
 " Not at all," he said. " It is a little late, 
 but that is not your fault. And you have 
 really given it all up ? " 
 
 ** Eeally," she answered, with an indescribable 
 intonation, half ashamed, half glorying. 
 
 " And you are very happy ? " 
 
 '* I — I feel as if I had been asleep all my 
 life, and had only just awoke." 
 
 A little pause followed the low-toned, im- 
 pulsive words. 
 
 Selma s head was a little bent ; there was 
 a soft flush on her cheeks ; her eyes were soft 
 and dreamy ; and Tyrrell, studying the girlish, 
 innocent face, was in no hurry to disturb the 
 
176 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 picture she made. It was Selma herself who 
 broke the silence. She seemed to put away 
 her thoughts with a consciousness that it 
 behoved her to make conversation, and, lifting 
 her eyes to his face, she said : 
 
 " You are later than you expected in coming 
 back to town, are you not ? Have you been 
 abroad? What have you been doing with 
 yourself, Mr. Tyrrell ? " 
 
 The clear young eyes were looking straight 
 into his as she asked the question, and Tyrrell 
 rose. He walked to the fireplace as he answered 
 her, and leaning one elbow on the mantelpiece, 
 he took up a little ornament. He was looking 
 at it, and not at her, as he spoke : 
 
 ** I've been in Greece," he said, rather shortly, 
 " Tell me about your own summer." 
 
 She shook her head, and laughed, softly. 
 
 " There's nothing more to tell," she said. 
 
 She broke off suddenly. 
 
 Voices and footsteps were heard in the hall. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 177 
 
 and Selma started to her feet with crimson 
 -cheeks, and shy, expectant eyes. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried, ''it's he's coming! I 
 
 -did so want you to see him." 
 
 Tyrrell turned towards the door with a quick 
 movement of curiosity, which vaguely surprised 
 him. It opened, and Mrs. Cornish and her 
 eldest daughter came in, followed by a young 
 man he had never seen before. He shook hands 
 with the two former, whose greetings were 
 respectively rather stiff and very shy, and then 
 he turned to Selma, who was standing close 
 to him, with one hand slipped into the young 
 man's arm, her face lovelier than ever in its 
 blushing, happy confusion. 
 
 "Koger," she said, ''this is Mr. Tyrrell, my 
 very oldest friend. Mr. Tyrrell, this is — 
 Roger ! " 
 
 Tyrrell held out his hand with a ready, 
 courteous grace of gesture which expressed his 
 .sentiment of the moment as little as did his 
 words. 
 
 VOL. I. V 
 
178 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 " I am deliglited to meet you," was what 
 he said. What he thought, as he took in the 
 manly, unintellectual face with contemptuous 
 certainty of estimate, was : " A stupid, good 
 fellow. How like a woman ! " 
 
 " I have heard a good deal of you," returned 
 Koger, as he shook hands heartily. *' Selma," 
 he turned to her as he said her name with a 
 mixture of adoration and protection very pretty 
 to see, " Selma has been so anxious to hear from 
 you. May I ask if it's all right ? " 
 
 "Of course you may," answered Tyrrell, with 
 a smile which turned Selma's hot cheeks hotter 
 still. Roger glanced at her with a proud ac- 
 ceptance of the right in her which Tyrrell's voice 
 so gracefully allotted to him, and as she met 
 his eyes with a shy, happy, momentary glance, 
 Tyrrell saw her face. There was a hardly per- 
 ceptible pause, and then he went on, speaking 
 rather mechanically : 
 
 *'Yes, everythiug is settled as Miss Malet 
 wished it." 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 179 
 
 " Miss Malet ! " exclaimed Selma, lifting her 
 eyes from the carpet. "Mr. Tyrrell, what are 
 you thinking of? " 
 
 He laughed a little constrainedly. 
 
 '* I was not thinking at all," he said. " But 
 perhaps the instinct was right. Perhaps it had 
 better be Miss Malet." 
 
 " Mr. Tyrreil, what nonsense ! " protested 
 Selma. " I never heard such nonsense. Be- 
 cause I'm engaged ? Koger, of course he must 
 say Selma, mustn't he? I'm not different." 
 
 Tyrrell waived the question with a smile^and 
 turned to Mrs. Cornish considerably annoyed 
 with himself. What had possessed him to make 
 such an ass of himself, he wondered ? What 
 did it matter to him how the girl looked at the 
 fellow ? 
 
 " I hope you had a pleasant time in Somer- 
 setshire," he said. " Thanks, no sugar," as she 
 offered him a cup of tea, and he took a chair 
 near her. 
 
 All the Cornishes were more or less in awe 
 
 N 2 
 
180 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 of Selma's distinguished friend, and Mrs. Cornish 
 disliked and distrusted him as an authority in 
 Selma's life against which no word of hers was 
 of the faintest avail. He talked on smoothly 
 and easily, and Sylvia shyly did her best to 
 respond ; but Mrs. Cornish was not in the habit of 
 disguising her sentiments towards any one, and 
 the conversation did not flourish. Neither Selma 
 nor Roger, however, appeared to think it in need 
 of any assistance from them, and, after a little 
 while, Tyrrell rose to go. He said good-bye to 
 Mrs. Cornish and Sylvia, then he turned to 
 Selma. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said. 
 
 " Good-bye —who ? " she answered, putting 
 Iter hand behind lier instead of giving it to him, 
 and looking at him with eyes which were half 
 pleading and half mischief. " Good-bye, Selma!" 
 
 He looked at her for a moment, and then 
 repeated, in a voice which was rather strange : 
 
 '' Good-bye, Selma." 
 
 She gave him her hand instantly, with a 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 181 
 
 little, satisfied laugh, and Roger opened the 
 door for him, and followed him into the hall 
 on his mother's " See Mr. Tyrrell out, Roger.'' 
 
 " I feel as if I owed you an apology," 
 observed Roger, in his frank, straightforward 
 way, as Tyrrell took up his hat. '' I shall 
 always have a guilty consciousness of having 
 defrauded the public — of having stolen her." 
 
 Tyrrell responded to his cheery laugh with 
 a perfectly courteous smile, while his eyes 
 wandered to the young man's watch-chain, and 
 seemed to harden slightly. 
 
 " You have stolen her whole heart, at any 
 rate," he said. '' I congratulate you. Thanks, 
 1 will find myself a hansom, it is not raining 
 now. Good-bye." 
 
 They shook hands, and the next moment 
 Tyrrell let his features set contemptuously as he 
 walked away down the road, thinking to himself: 
 *' An empty-headed colonial fellow like that ! 
 And she throws up everything for him ! " 
 
 Roger, meanwhile having held the door open 
 
182 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 barely as long as civility demanded, shut it with 
 speed and satisfaction, and returned post-haste 
 to the drawing-room. Mrs. Cornish had left the 
 room, and Selma was standing by the tea-table 
 talking to Sylvia, and not knowing in the least 
 what she was talking about, as her cousin told 
 her, because she was listenino: for Roijer to come 
 back. The look she turned to him as she broke 
 off in the middle of a sentence on his entrance, 
 was sufficient to excuse the (gesture with which 
 he took her in his arms and kissed her, quite 
 regardless of the presence of his sister. 
 
 "I nearly did it ten minutes ago," he declared, 
 as she freed herself, laughing and blushing, only 
 to nestle up against him quite undisguisedly, as 
 she said : 
 
 "You behaved quite badly enough as it is. 
 Why didn't you talk to my oldest friend ? " 
 
 She leant her head back against his arm 
 looking up at his face as she asked the question, 
 and Sylvia contemplated the inevitable result 
 with the sensation with which all the Cornish 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 183 
 
 girls still contemplated such proceedings on 
 Selma's part, until Koger's face was pushed away 
 with caressing insistent hands, and Selma lifted 
 her head from his shoulder. She met Sylvia's 
 wondering eyes and coloured crimson. 
 
 *' Roger, dear, don't," she said, softly. 
 ^' Sylvia's surprised ! " 
 
 Sylvia could contain herself no longer. 
 
 *'I am, Selma," she said, laughing, *' I am ! 
 I can't believe my eyes sometimes. How often 
 have I heard you laugh at the very idea of falling 
 in love with any man ? Is it really the same 
 Selma?" 
 
 Selma did not move away. She drew 
 Eoger's arm more closely round her, and lifted 
 his other hand to her cheek. 
 
 " No, Sylvia," she said, '' this is a new Selma 
 —Roger's Selma ! " 
 
 " And I think you might go and see after 
 mother now, Sylvia," added Roger. " It's getting 
 late 1 " and, with another wondering laugh, Svlvia 
 vanished. 
 
184 CEOSS CUERENTS. 
 
 The conversation after her departure was 
 neither coherent nor particularly interesting for 
 a few moments except to the parties immediately 
 concerned. It was succeeded by a long silence 
 as Selma let her head rest against his shoulder, 
 while he held her hand pressed against his lips. 
 She moved at last, and gently drawing her hand 
 away began to touch his hair with soft, caressing 
 movements. 
 
 *' How do you like my oldest friend ? " she 
 said, dreamily. 
 
 " He seems a good sort of fellow ! I saw^ 
 him look at this, Selma." 
 
 This w^as the little gold heart which Selma 
 had lost in the wood. The mystery which had 
 surrounded Roger's non-appearance on the sands 
 at Blue Rocks had been solved, when it turned 
 out that he had spent an hour in the wood 
 searching for it. He had returned it to its 
 owner when they were engaged, telling her that 
 he had meant to keep it in remembrance of 
 a dream ; and she had told him, with a lovely 
 
CKOSS CUERENTS. IBS' 
 
 smile, to keep it in remembrance of a reality 
 — their first meeting. She touched it now 
 tenderly and lingeringly. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Tyrrell ! " she said ; " I hope he 
 wasn't hurt." 
 
 He captured the hand, and carried it to his 
 lips again. 
 
 "Sweetheart," he said, "now that it is all 
 over, and you've given it all up, I wonder if you 
 will ever be sorry." 
 
 His voice was very wistful, almost beseech- 
 ing. She gave him all that a lover could %sk ; 
 he might hold her in his aims ; her love for 
 him, sudden and rapid as had been its growth, 
 was as undisguised as it was innocent and 
 girlish ; but always in his simple, honest soul 
 there was a consciousness that she was in some 
 way beyond him, that there were powers in 
 her which he could only reverence or ignore, 
 realms in her mind where he could never reign. 
 Strong and capable as he was in all the other 
 relations of life, in his worship of her he was 
 
186 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 uncertain as a cbild. He never doubted her 
 love, lie never doubted her faith, but he doubted 
 himself. 
 
 Almost before he had uttered the last word, 
 she drew his head down with a swift, impulsive 
 movement, until her lips touched his cheek with 
 soft, passionate kisses. 
 
 " Don't you understand ? " she said. " Oh, 
 Eoger, don't you understand?" 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 More than a month lay between the afternoon 
 when Tyrrell made the acquaintance of Selma's 
 future husband, and the August evening, about 
 a week after Jim's accident, when she had flung 
 herself into Helen's arms, and, sobbing out an 
 incoherent rhapsody of love and joy, had told 
 her that she had promised to be Eoger Cornish's 
 wife. And that the spectacle of Selma in love 
 was still an astounding one to her cousins was 
 certainly no fault of Selma's. 
 
 During the week that passed between Jim's 
 accident and the engagement, nobody could 
 have failed to see what was coming; the only 
 conjecture left to the excited conclaves who 
 incessantly discussed the situation below their 
 
188 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 breaths, in all sorts of odd corners, was when 
 it would " happen." The whole party had 
 looked on — the majority suffering acutely from 
 the necessity of repressing in public their almost 
 irrepressible amusement and astonishment — at 
 the sight of Selma as simply and hopelessly 
 in love as a girl could be : restless or dreamy 
 when he was absent ; silent when he was 
 present ; blushing when he spoke to her ; 
 following him furtively with large, shy eyes ; 
 starting and trembling at the sound of his 
 voice or his step ; and generally conducting 
 herself in the most orthodox and conventional 
 manner. And the question finally asked and 
 answered — how girlishly and sweetly no one but 
 Koger ever knew^ — her love was as unreserved 
 as her perfect happiness, and as demonstrative. 
 Jim had given it as his deliberate conviction that 
 they were the " spooniest spoons going." Sylvia, 
 Helen, and Nettie confided to one another that 
 Selma never spoke or thought of any one but 
 Eoofer. Her sister w^as less astonished than the 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 189 
 
 other girls. Partly because she was herself 
 engaged ; and partly because, as she said, she 
 had learnt never to be surprised at Selma ; Helen 
 took it altogether as a matter of course, and 
 responded placidly to Mrs. Cornish, when that 
 lady spent long mornings, in the absence of the 
 engaged couple, in monologues of satisfaction. 
 In her aunt's eyes Selma had at last become 
 a satisfactory and understandable girl, and all 
 her past incomprehensibleness was forgiven and 
 forgotten. 
 
 It was curious, but perhaps inevitable, that 
 all the surprise of the Cornish family was con- 
 centrated on the fact that Selma should have 
 fallen in love. They had never understood her 
 artistic aspirations ; her old scheme of life had 
 been vague and unreal to them every one — with 
 the exception of Humphrey, and Humphrey 
 looked on with quiet, thoughtful eyes, and 
 expressed no opinion — and they hardly realised 
 what it meant that these had died suddenly and 
 completely out of her heart. Every thought, 
 
190 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 every iDstinct she had known since thought or 
 instinct had first stirred in her, was dominated 
 and nullified by a new emotion. She had looked 
 upon the stage as the means by which she 
 was to devote herself to her ideal ; now she 
 thought of the stage no more. She had looked 
 upon John Tyrrell as the arbiter of her life ; 
 she only hoped vaguely now that he would 
 not think her ungrateful. She had in her the 
 fire of genius ; it was quenched in a spring 
 tide of love. Her life was centred in one idea, 
 and that idea was Koger. 
 
 Helen and Selma had come back to London 
 to the Cornishes' house, not to their own. Mrs. 
 Cornish had taken it for granted that it should 
 be so, and neither girl had made any objection. 
 Eoger was trying to make arrangements which 
 would enable him to settle in London ; it was 
 likely that he and Selma would be married 
 immediately, and, until their plans were settled, 
 it was useless to make any arrangements for 
 the future. 
 
CKOSS CUERENTS. 191 
 
 It was fortunate that the interest which 
 surrounded Selma as an engaged young lady- 
 did not wear off, and it was also fortunate that 
 Humphrey and Helen were a most unexacting 
 couple, since, as Jim expressed it, '' Koger had 
 nothing to do in London but spoon Selma ; 
 and Selma was always ready to be spooned." 
 Jim himself had confided to Nettie, on going 
 back to school, that he was "jolly glad to get 
 out of the house " ; but his sisters, fortunately, 
 continued to be thrilled with excitement over 
 the precaution necessary on entering any room 
 where the lovers were suspected to be, over 
 Selma's absent-mindedness and Roger's inatten- 
 tion, and their mutual oblivion of everything 
 in the world but one another; and when, a 
 few days after Tyrrell's call, Roger was obliged 
 to go to Liverpool on business, all the resources 
 of every member of the family were taxed to 
 the utmost for Selma's consolation. 
 
 The week of his absence was almost gone ; 
 it was Friday morning, and on Saturday he 
 
192 CEOSS CUREENTS. 
 
 was expected home, and Selma was moving 
 about the morning-room, restless and excited, 
 radiant with expectation. Sylvia was painting 
 at a table near the window. Mrs. Cornish and 
 Helen were working. 
 
 ''My dear, don't you think the time would 
 seem shorter if you did a little work ? " suggested 
 Mrs. Cornish, laughing, as Selma turned with 
 a heavy sigh from a passing inspection of the 
 clock. 
 
 *'Do you think it would, auntie?" replied 
 Selma, coming across the room, and kneeling 
 aimlessly down in front of Mrs. Cornish, and 
 smiling up at her with a frank impatience in 
 her eyes which made her look like a little child. 
 " There's all the morning, and all the afternoon, 
 and all the evening, and " 
 
 " I think I'd better take you to the Marriotts' 
 to-night instead of Helen ! " 
 
 Mrs. Cornish's voice was lauorhino; • but 
 Helen took up her "words eagerly, and said : 
 
 " Oh, auntie, what a good idea ; I don't 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 193 
 
 care about it a bit, and Selma would like it, 
 wouldn't you, Selma ? " 
 
 Selma let herself drop into a sitting position 
 on the floor and considered the question. 
 
 " Is it a big party ? " she asked. 
 
 " These parties are always big," put in 
 Sylvia, lifting her head and contemplating her 
 work critically. *' He is the richest man on the 
 Bench, father says, and they've a lovely house, 
 and know lots of people. Mother, take Helen 
 and Selma, and let me stop at home. Helen, 
 come and look at this." 
 
 Helen put down her work, and rose, as she said : 
 
 " Sylvia, really and truly, I'd rather stop 
 at home. It will be a nice quiet evening, you 
 know. Oh, that's lovely." 
 
 The meditative figure on the floor, whose 
 eyes had wandered back to the clock, turned at 
 the exclamation. 
 
 " Show me," it observed, having ap^^arently 
 passed from a restless to an indolent stage of 
 impatience. 
 
 VOL I. o 
 
194 CKOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Sylvia handed her the paiuting as she leant 
 back on one hand, stretching out the other to 
 receive it, and said : 
 
 '' Will Humphrey be at home ? " 
 
 *' Yes," answered Helen, following the paint- 
 inn^, and standino^ over Selma as she looked 
 down at it. 
 
 Selma sighed heavily, and leant her head 
 caressingly back against her sister, looking up 
 at her with envious eyes. 
 
 " Oh, you happy Helen," she said. " Of 
 course, you don't want to go to any party." 
 
 " And that being the case," responded Helen, 
 brightly, " leave me at home, auntie, and take 
 Sylvia and Selma." 
 
 *' Would you like it, Selma ? " asked Mrs. 
 Cornish. 
 
 Selma put her head dubiously on one side, 
 and contemplated the painting. 
 
 " Sweet, Sylvia ! " she said, giving it to 
 Helen to return to her cousin, as she went 
 on, with unconcealed melancholy : " I'm afraid 
 
CEOSS CUREENTS. 195 
 
 I shouldn't much, auntie. I should be wishing 
 it were over all the time." 
 
 Helen and Sylvia laughed simultaueously. 
 
 ''Oh, cheer up, Selma ! " exclaimed the 
 latter, gaily. " The longest lane, you know ! 
 You'd much better come, hadn't she, mother? 
 It will help the evening through, at any rate." 
 
 Selma showed no desire to have the evening 
 helped through, and for some time she refused 
 to have anything to say to the idea. At last, 
 however, the persuasions of Sylvia and Helen 
 reduced her to saying that she would have 
 gone if she had had a dress ; and this excuse 
 being scouted by both the other girls as utterly 
 futile, she finally declared that she didn't care 
 in the least how she dragged through the time, 
 and it was settled for her by her sympathising 
 advisers that she should do it in the vortex of 
 dissipation. 
 
 All Selma's movements at this time sent 
 a thrill of excitement through the Cornish 
 household, and she had been out very little 
 
 o 2 
 
196 CEOSS CURRENTS. 
 
 with her aunt and cousins. The Marriotts' 
 party became quite an event in the eyes of 
 the whole family as soon as it was known 
 that she was going to it. Her dress was 
 looked out, discussed, and touched up by Helen^ 
 with assistance from Sylvia and Nettie, tentative 
 at first, since Selma in evening dress had been 
 an awe-inspiring vision to them not so very 
 long ago, but waxing enthusiastic at her careless, 
 but to them most encouraging gratitude. And 
 when the time came for her to dress, Selma^ 
 with one of her sudden changes of mood, 
 seemed to have forgotten all her reluctance 
 to go out, forgotten that she was merely 
 dragging on a miserable existence until Koger 
 should come back. She was in wild spirits,, 
 dancing about the room in various stages of 
 undress, each of which seemed to make her 
 more youthful and irresistible than the last,, 
 first with Helen, then with Sylvia, who was 
 vainly trying to accomplish her own dressing 
 with all speed, that sLe might assist in the 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 197 
 
 adorning of her cousin, then with the much- 
 excited Nettie, who was acting as lady's-maid to 
 her own intense satisfaction. 
 
 " Selma, one would think you'd never been 
 to a party before," cried the latter, as Helen 
 captured the graceful dancing figure, and seated 
 her by main force in a chair, preparatory to 
 doing her hair for her. 
 
 " I never have, Nettie," returned Selma, 
 gaily ; " not since I was your age — not properly. 
 I hated parties last spring ; oh, you don't know 
 how I hated them, and that's why I shall enjoy 
 myself so to-night." 
 
 A chorus of " Selma, what do you mean ? " 
 greeted this declaration ; and Helen added, 
 peremptorily, " My dear, you really must keep 
 still," to which admonition Selma replied with 
 a kiss, but which was without further practical 
 result. 
 
 " It'll be so different, don't you see," she 
 said. '* I shall have nothing to do but enjoy 
 myself, and I shall revel in it. Oh, thanks, 
 
198 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 Nettie ! " as she took her dress from the girl's 
 arm. 
 
 There was a few moments* breathless silence 
 on the part of the three ladies'-maids, while 
 Selma kept up a running fire of comments, 
 jokes, and thanks, and then the last touch was 
 given, and Nettie broke out with : 
 
 '^ Oh, Selma, I never saw anything so lovely. 
 Oh, isn't she beautiful ! " 
 
 The dress was of soft, faint yellow silk, very^ 
 simply made, with the long draperies which 
 suited Selma's slender gracefulness so well, and 
 the delicate yellow setting from which it rose 
 seemed to give an added loveliness to the dark 
 head. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes spark- 
 ling, and her lips were curved into a smile. Even 
 Helen, to whom she was always perfection, 
 thought that she had never seen her look 
 sweeter, and she said, tenderly : 
 
 "What a pity Eoger isn't going!" 
 
 The instant she had spoken the words, which 
 had risen instinctively to her lips, she regretted 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 199 
 
 them. The light died out of the beautiful, 
 sensitive face suddenly and completely, the very 
 colour faded, and Selma's lips trembled as she 
 turned away from the glass without another 
 glance. 
 
 "It doesn't matter how I look," sbe said, 
 disconsolately. ''I wonder why I'm going?" 
 
 She went downstairs sadly and silently, and 
 nothing they could say, none of the admiring 
 comments she received, could win a smile from 
 her. She was depressed in proportion to her 
 previous high spirits, and she moved and spoke 
 when it was necessary, as though her thotights 
 were far away — as indeed they were — until she 
 was aroused to the consciousness that she was 
 standing in a brilliantly lighted room, in a 
 brilliantly dressed crowd, by a man's voice at 
 her elbow. 
 
 "How do you do. Mis. Curnish?" it 
 said. "What have I done that you cut me 
 — Selma?" 
 
 She turned with a little cry of pleasure. 
 
200 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 ''Oh, Mr. Tyrrell," she said, "I never thought 
 of seeing you ! How very nice ! " 
 
 His eyes rested for a moment on her face 
 in its sudden glow of pleased surprise, and he 
 said, rather mechanically : 
 
 ^'I did not know you knew the Marriotts." 
 
 " Uncle Dick," began Selma ; and then she 
 broke off with a little laugh, which was more 
 than half vexation. " Old Lady West is bearing 
 down on me," she said, rapidly. *'I shall have 
 to talk to her. Oh, do manage to have a little 
 talk to me by-and-by." 
 
 His smile of comprehension and assent had 
 something rather strange about it, and he turned 
 quickly, as Selma shook hands with an old lady 
 evidently bent on congratulation, and, finding 
 acquaintances almost at his elbow, was soon 
 drawn on further into the crowd. Quite half 
 the people in the room were known to him ; 
 every one who knew him w^as anxious to speak 
 to him, and every one who spoke to him that 
 night thought that John Tyrrell had come back 
 
CEOSS CURRENTS. 201 
 
 after his holiday more delightful than ever. He 
 had been talking, smiling, listening, for nearly 
 half an hour when Selma found him, it seemed 
 to her by the merest chance, close beside her, 
 as she stood talking to a mutual friend close 
 to the entrance to the conservatory. A few 
 minutes afterwards, the mutual friend, having 
 drawn Tyrrell into the conveisation, drifted 
 away, and Selma said, quickly : 
 
 " This is delightful ! Let us go to the 
 conservatory and talk." 
 
 It was still comparatively early in the 
 evening, and the conservatory was nearly empty; 
 it was softly lighted with Japanese lamps, and 
 among the tall palms and wonderful ferns were 
 quaintly made seats, with richly coloured cushions. 
 It was a charming picture as they entered, and 
 Selma's graceful figure made it more charmingstill. 
 
 " Why are you not dancing ? " Tyrrell asked, 
 as the distant sounds of dance music reached 
 them as he stood for a moment beside the seat 
 she had taken. 
 
202 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 She lifted her eyes to him, and the colour 
 rushed to her cheeks. 
 
 '' Roger isn't here," she said, softly. 
 
 *'Isee." 
 
 Tyrrell had seated himself before he spoke, 
 and there was another instant's pause before 
 he went on, as he leant back in his seat and 
 crossed his legs. 
 
 *' And why isn't he here ? " 
 
 " He is away," said Selma, turning a melan- 
 choly face towards him ; ''he has been away 
 a week. Ah, you don't know how dreadful it 
 has been ! But he is coming back to-morrow." 
 
 ** And when is it to be ? " 
 
 "When Oh!" Selma's colour deepened, 
 
 and her eyes dropped suddenly. She did not 
 see the look on the face of the man beside 
 her as he watched her, sitting quite motionless, 
 in his easy, graceful attitude. '* It depends on 
 so many things," she said, after a moment, 
 shyly and confidentially. "You see, Roger 
 doesn't want to take me to New Zealand ; 
 
CROSS CUERENTS. 205 
 
 he says I shouldn't like it ; and there may 
 be a good deal of trouble before he can settle 
 down in London. But there's just a tiny 
 chance that he might be able to arrange some- 
 thing in England at once — something very 
 small, you know ; and then — then " 
 
 The sweet young voice died away, and 
 there was a moment's silence as she sat, a 
 lovely picture of confusion, bending a little 
 forward, playing with her fan as it lay on her 
 knee. 
 
 " I see," he said again, mechanically, without 
 moving his eyes. 
 
 Selma suddenly clasped her hands softly 
 together, and went on, eagerly : 
 
 " You see, it would be a very little house, 
 of course, and we should be rather poor ; but 
 we shouldn't mind that, either of us, a bit. 
 That's what I tell him." 
 
 She was looking straight before her with 
 earnest, childish eyes, and as she finished, she 
 suddenly turned them upon him. Tyrrell 
 
^04 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 moved slightly, but very suddenly, and his 
 voice, as he spoke, had a new tone in it — 
 the tone of a man who is feeling his way — 
 though he spoke lightly, almost banteringly : 
 
 " There will be no more of this kind of 
 thing," he said, with a slight gesture towards 
 the brilliant crowd that passed and repassed 
 before the entrance to the conservatories. ** Ah, 
 there is Lady Dunstan. She asked Sybilla to 
 bring you to her ' at home ' next week ; but 
 that was in the capacity of young lion, not 
 domestic mouse, of course." He paused, and 
 bowed to the lady in question, and then went 
 on : " This is almost your last appearance, I 
 suppose, even in a private capacity ? " 
 
 "Yes," she assented, brightly, "i suppose so." 
 " It seems hardly worth while to have made 
 such a sensation for * one night only,' " he 
 observed, with a smile — the smile of open 
 admiration and congratulation of an old friend, 
 stretching out his hand for her fan as he spoke, 
 and unfurling it carelessly. 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 205- 
 
 Selma looked at him wonderingly. 
 
 *' I don't understand," she said. 
 
 Tyrrell furled the fan with a swift turn of his 
 wrist — he was one of the best fencers in London 
 — and laughed as he said : 
 
 " If any other girl said such a thing as that 
 to me, I should say that she was fishing for 
 compliments, Miss Malet." Then, as she drew 
 back a little, half wondering, half hurt, he added, 
 quickly and gently : *' Don't you understand 
 that everybody is talking about you, Selma ? 
 Half the people in the room have been asking 
 who you are, and Fve seen half the people in the 
 room introduced to you." 
 
 " Have you ? " exclaimed Selma. " Yes, lots 
 of people have been talking to me ; but I 
 didn't know you saw me. I thought you had 
 lost sight of me altogether, and I was so afraid 
 we shouldn't meet again." 
 
 Tyrrell passed over her words with a slight 
 smile. 
 
 ** Haven't you enjoyed it ?" he asked, lightly. 
 
206 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 " Are you not the least bit sorry to give it up, 
 to thiuk that you will never set a whole room 
 full of smart people staring and talking again ? '^ 
 
 Selma laughed. 
 
 "Not the least little bit," she said. "Not 
 the very least little bit." 
 
 There was a pause. Two or three couples 
 strolled in from the dancing-room, and Tyrrell 
 furled and unfurled the fan in his hands, gazing 
 at it absently as he did so. Then the dance 
 music began again. It was a dreamy, alluring 
 w^altz, and Selma^s feet began to move restlessly. 
 He looked at her, and she laughed. 
 
 " It's such fascinating music," she said. " It 
 makes one long to dance." 
 
 He waited a moment, watching the girlish 
 figure as it swayed slightly in time to the music, 
 then he echoed her laugh, and said : 
 
 ** There is only one way of taking up such a 
 cue as that. My speech obviously is, * Miss 
 Malet, may I have the pleasure ? ' " 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Tyrrell, I am not dancing 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 207 
 
 to-niorlit. That is the end of the scene, isn t 
 
 it?" 
 
 She leant back in her chair with another 
 light laugh, and held oat her hand for her fan. 
 But he retained it. 
 
 ''I mean it," he said. "Would it be 
 treason in you to dance this with such an old 
 friend?" 
 
 Selma turned to him as though he had 
 proposed that they should fly to the moon 
 together. 
 
 "Dance with you, Mr. Tyrrell!" she ex- 
 claimed. " Why, you never dance ! " 
 
 " That's no reason why I never should," he 
 answered. " Come." 
 
 He rose as he spoke, and she followed his 
 example, obeying him as she had obeyed him all 
 her life. 
 
 " I've never danced with you in my life,'* 
 she said. " It seems so funny." 
 
 He made her no answer, and she slipped her 
 hand into his arm as he offered it her, and 
 
208 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 walked away with him. The dancing-room was 
 very full, and as they stood a moment waiting 
 to start, he said, as he looked down on her : 
 
 '*What a successful frock! Why have I 
 never seen it before ? " 
 
 Selma smiled. 
 
 " You have," she said, *' often ! " 
 
 He put his arm round her, and they glided 
 off into the stream as he replied : 
 
 " I don't remember it." 
 
 There were only a few turns left before 
 the waltz came to an end, and Tyrrell talked 
 lightly all the time about the party, the people, 
 and anything that they suggested to him. 
 Selma, after the first delight in her partner's 
 perfect movement, gave herself up to washing 
 that he was Roger. But when it was over and 
 he released her, the tone and manner of his 
 ** Thank you ! " startled himself as it could not 
 fail to have startled her if her thouofhts had not 
 been many miles away. John Tyrrell was not 
 an accomplished actor and a man of the world 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 209 
 
 for nothing, however, and as he took her back 
 into the conservatory, and they walked up and 
 down there while she fanned herself slowly, his 
 voice and expression alike became again the voice 
 and expression with which she was familiar. 
 
 "That was delicious," she said, recalling her- 
 self with an effort from her thoug^hts of Koorer. 
 '' What perfect dance music ! " 
 
 "It is," he asserted. ''Let me fan you!" 
 He took the fan from her in spite of her laughing 
 protest, and began to move it slowly up and 
 down ; and then fixing his eyes on her face as 
 his occupation gave him an excuse for doing, 
 he said, carelessly, but with keen attention 
 in his eyes : " Have you heard much music 
 since you came back to town? Have you 
 heard Moritz ? " 
 
 Moritz was a young pianist who had made 
 his first appearance in the London art world 
 during the last season, and Selma had met him 
 several times, and taken a sympathetic, girlish 
 interest in her fellow debutant 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
210 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 " No," she answered, eagerly. *' What is he 
 doing this season ? " 
 
 " He is working splendidly," returned Tyrrell. 
 " He seems to me to make a step forward in 
 power and technique every time I hear him." 
 He paused as Selma uttered a quick, enthusiastic 
 exclamation of sympathy, and then went on, 
 still with the same intent watch on her face : 
 " Do you remember how angry he used to get 
 with himself over those Volkslieder ? I heard 
 him play them the other night to absolute per- 
 fection, and I told him so afterwards. He shook 
 back that mane of his, his eyes lighted up — you 
 know — and he said : ' Ah, I have done it ! It 
 is my own. I stand now upon his difficulties ! " 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Selmn, "how lovely for 
 him ! How he must have worked ! Do tell him 
 I congratulate him." 
 
 The excited face and shining eyes were 
 turned full towards him, and he studied them as 
 he would have studied an open book, as he said, 
 deliberately and slowly, in a lower tone than he 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 211 
 
 had used yet, as tliough the subject were painful 
 to him : 
 
 " He asked after you, and what you were 
 doing. I told him that you had given up 
 work, and he couldn't believe it. Ah," he added, 
 with quick change of manner, ^' here is Miss 
 Cornish looking for you, I'm afraid." 
 
 He did not look at Selma, but there was an 
 instant's pause before she took her fan as he 
 offered it to her, and he knew that her face had 
 changed suddenly and completely. She hardly 
 spoke as they rejoined Mrs. Cornish, and her 
 face was still dreamy and thoughtful when 
 Tyrrell shut the carriage door on them and 
 turned away. 
 
 He went straight home, though it was so 
 early, and had smoked two cigarettes before 
 Miss Tyrrell, who had also been out, came 
 in w^ith an exclamation of surprise at seeing 
 him. 
 
 " I told you it would be dull," she said, care- 
 lessly, as she unwound an artistically-arranged 
 
 p 2 
 
212 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 wrap from her artistically arranged head. " Who 
 was there ? " 
 
 " Nobody," returned her brother. " Selma 
 was the sensation. '* 
 
 " Selma Malet ! I should not have thouofht 
 of her being there. And how does the silly child 
 like the idea of giving it up ? " 
 
 Tyrrell smiled cyuically. 
 
 " She has no ideas of any kind, at present," 
 he said. ** She is in love." 
 
 '' And will it last ? " 
 
 Her brother flicked the ashes from the top 
 of his cigarette, and his face was more cynical 
 than ever. 
 
 '' Who knows ? " he said. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 At about three o'clock the next afternoon the 
 Cornish household, which had spent the morning 
 in a state of sympathetic excitement and ex- 
 pectancy, subsided into satisfied quietude. Roger 
 had arrived in time for lunch, looking radiant 
 and triumphant, but he had said nothing as 
 to the result of his absence ; his family under- 
 stood that Selma was to hear all about it first, 
 and withdrew to compare notes on Selma's 
 expression of bliss during lunch, to tell one 
 another how glad they were that Roger had 
 come back, and to speculate as to the news 
 he had brought. 
 
 The lovers, left to themselves after a parting 
 of a whole week, concerned themselves at first 
 
214 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 neither with the future nor with the past; and 
 when the present ceased to be all-sufficient for 
 them, lengthy experiences had to be exchanged 
 as to the desolation of the last six days, and 
 much consolation to be given and received 
 before anything so comparatively matter-of-fact 
 as future prospects could be thought of. At 
 last Selma leant against him as they sat to- 
 gether on the sofa with a little sigh of absolute 
 contentment; and, as he looked down into 
 her sweet face, he moved her a little, suddenly 
 and diffidently, that the light might fall more 
 directly upon her, and said, anxiously : 
 
 " Sweetheart, why do you look so tired ? " 
 
 She opened her eyes and smiled up at 
 him. 
 
 **Do I look tired?" she said, dreamily. 
 *' It must be dissipation, I'm afraid. I did 
 not sleep wxU ; I had dreams " 
 
 She broke off suddenly, her face changed, 
 and she moved so that he did not see it for 
 a moment. Then she turned to him sud- 
 
CROSS CUERENTS. 215 
 
 ■denly, and nestled very close to him, as she 
 said : 
 
 "You haven't told me yet anything about 
 what you've been doing." 
 
 " I've beeu thinking about you." 
 
 " xlll day and every day ? " 
 
 " All day and every day." 
 
 *'That must have been very bad for 
 business." 
 
 She laughed a low, delighted, musical laugh, 
 and Roger echoed it, as he said : 
 
 **!No, it was first-rate for business. Things 
 have turned out far better than I expected." 
 
 He spoke with the triumphant and important 
 tone of a man who has something to tell, and 
 Selma moved interestedly, and sat up, leaving 
 both her hands in his, and waiting eagerly for 
 his next words. 
 
 " I won't go into a lot of business details," 
 he said. " It would bother you, wouldn't it ? 
 But I've arranged an exchange — a very good 
 •exchange. I give up my berth in Nelson, and 
 
216 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 sign a contract with a firm here, which means 
 a first-class position in a few years' time, and 
 something to offer my darling now." 
 
 His voice was full of happiness, and Selma's 
 flushed face was radiant, as she cried : 
 
 " Oh, Roger, really and truly ? You are 
 not giving up anything to stay in England ? 
 You are quite satisfied ? " 
 
 *' I should be hard to please if I were not," 
 he answered, with a ringing laugh. "You know 
 I would not risk the future — I would sooner 
 wait for you, my darling — but this is far better 
 than anything I could have hoped for in Nelson. 
 You have brought me good luck." 
 
 He lifted her hands to his lips as he spoke, 
 but she bent towards him impulsively, and 
 pressed her cheek against his. 
 
 " I would like to," she murmured, girlishly. 
 *' Oh, Eoger, you know I would like to." 
 
 There w^as a little silence, and then Roger 
 moved, and put his hand into his pocket. 
 
 " I wanted to bring you something," he 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 217 
 
 said, difEdently ; ''only I could not find any- 
 thing really good enough for you. I — do you 
 like it ? " 
 
 He had been opening a little packet as he 
 spoke, his strong, man's fingers absolutely 
 shaking with nervousness, and with the last 
 words he produced a little pearl bracelet, dainty 
 and slender as the little wrist at which he 
 glanced as he put it into her hand. 
 
 " Oh, Roger," she cried, as she took it and 
 the hand that gave it her together. "Oh, how 
 sweet of you ! Like it ? It's beautiful ! " 
 
 " Is it what you like ? " he asked, anxiously. 
 *' 1 saw it in a window, and I thought it was 
 pretty. But nothing ever seems to me pretty 
 enough for you, Selma. Everything that comes 
 near you ought to be like you." 
 
 " Dearest ! " she answered, softly and im- 
 pulsively, looking up from the little bracelet 
 into the simple, adoring eyes that met hers, 
 *' you think too much of me in every way. 
 There is nothing you should love me for, Eoger^ 
 
218 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 except that I love you. And I should love 
 anything you gave me — you know that," she 
 went on, when he released her, wliich was not 
 soon. "Even if it wasn't the sweetest thing 
 I ever saw, as this is. Put it on for me." 
 
 He hesitated a moment, and then he said : 
 
 *' Look at the inside, Selma." 
 
 "The inside? Oh! Why, there's some- 
 thing written, Koger — a date. November the 
 second. That's to-day ? " 
 
 She had risen as she spoke, that she might 
 hold the bracelet in a better light, and she 
 turned to him as she finished, with soft, en- 
 quiring eyes. He rose, too, and stood very close 
 to her, not touching her, however, as he said : 
 
 "Yes, it's to-day. Can't you guess how I 
 want to think of to-day ? " 
 
 She thought a moment, with her eyes 
 fixed on the mysterious date, and then she 
 whispered, happily : 
 
 " It's the day when you came back to me." 
 
 " No, it's not that. I don't mean that. I 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 219 
 
 want it to be more. Selma," he drew a step 
 nearer, and gathered both her hands into his 
 own, '' tell me to-day when it may be." 
 
 There was a little ioarticulate sound of 
 confusion, the wondering eyes changed sud- 
 denly, and Selma had drawn back a step, her 
 face bent very low. 
 
 " Oh, Roger ! " she murmured. 
 
 " My darling, why should we wait ? That 
 you should care for a fellow like me is what 
 I never can explain ; but — you do. And I — 
 Selma, I want my wife." 
 
 *'Your wife!" She lifted her head with 
 a sudden start, and looked at him for an 
 instant, her very throat crimson with the swift 
 rush of colour the word had produced, her 
 eyes half startled, half pleased, as if with a new 
 and wonderful idea. '' Your wife ! " she re- 
 peated, in a voice in which pride, excitement, 
 happiness, and shyness were inextricably blended. 
 '' Your wife ! Oh, Roger ! " 
 
 He drew her into his arms with an assurance 
 
220 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 of touch which he had never used to her before, 
 and she yielded to him with a vague thrill, 
 of which her youthful excitement was hardly 
 conscious. 
 
 " Does it sound strange to you, darling ? " 
 he said. *' I have said it to myself, over and 
 over again, till I've hardly been able to believe 
 in my luck. My wife ! " 
 
 She hid her face for a moment on his 
 shoulder, and then she lifted it again, glowing 
 with happy, proud confusion. 
 
 ''It takes one's breath away," she whispered. 
 
 She looked more like a sensitive, enthusiastic 
 child than a woman, as she let her arms rest 
 so gently on his shoulders, and her eyes only 
 got brighter and happier as he said again : 
 
 " Why should we wait, dearest ? Tell me 
 when ? In a month ? " 
 
 ** Roger ! " she exclaimed, clasping her hands 
 as they met behind his head, with a little 
 emphatic gesture of protestation. " In a month ! 
 It's most utterly impossible ! " 
 
CEOSS CUERENTS. 221 
 
 " Six weeks, then ! Two months ! To-day 
 is the second of November. The second of 
 January, darling ! " 
 
 " Oh, Roger ! " with a world of hesitation 
 and indecision in her voice. And then she 
 added quickly, with a laugh in her eyes : 
 
 " It's a Sunday ! " 
 
 " It's not ! It's a Tuesday ! Say it shall be 
 then.'' 
 
 He held her very close, and, as she met 
 the honest blue eyes, she laid her face down 
 with a gesture of childish devotion on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 **Yes," she whispered. 
 
 " My darling ! " A moment later he drew 
 one of her hands down, and slipped the bracelet 
 on the little wrist, and as he did so she lifted 
 a very rosy face, and watched his fingers. 
 
 " I shall wear it always and always," she 
 said, softly. "And I shall love it almost like 
 my ring. Oh, Roger ! " with a sudden change 
 of voice, as the clock on the mantelpiece struck 
 
222 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 five. " Listen ! I thought it was very dark. 
 They will be bringing tea. I must go ! I must 
 go and tell Helen ! " 
 
 He held her fast for an instant more. 
 
 " I may tell my mother ? " he said. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; you may do as you like. Only 
 let me go! I must tell Helen !" She returned 
 his kisses with innocent, undisguised fervour, 
 and then she was gone. 
 
 She fled upstairs, with bent head, and the 
 step of a very fugitive, to the room she shared 
 with Helen, opened the door with noiseless haste 
 as though a moment's pause was intolerable to 
 her, and the thought of drawing attention to 
 her unprotected self by any sound was not to be 
 borne, shut it behind her almost in the same 
 instant, and threw herself into her sister's arms 
 before Helen was well aware that she was 
 near. 
 
 '' Oh, Nell," she cried. *' Oh, Nell, Nell ! " 
 
 Helen was well used to such demonstrations 
 on Selma's part. Eeserve, where she was sure 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 223 
 
 of love and sympathy, had never been one of 
 the latter's characteristics ; and through all her 
 life her easily excited, emotional temperament 
 had been accustomed to find an outlet in Helen's 
 arms — arms which were always ready to hold 
 her, however little Helen fathomed her emotion 
 at the moment. In the bright, practical con- 
 solation or sympathy with which Helen met 
 all her sister's despairs or enthusiasms Selma 
 felt only the love, and was always soothed by 
 it, never missing the comprehension which her 
 sister could not give her. 
 
 She hid her face upon Helen's shouldef now 
 as she had hidden it many times before, and 
 Helen pressed a warm, cheery kiss upon the 
 dark hair as she said : 
 
 " Well, have you made up for all the week, 
 dear ? " 
 
 " I've got something to tell you, Nell ! " 
 
 " Something special ! " 
 
 " Something very special. He — I — we — 
 Nell, the second of January ! " 
 
224 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 "Oh, Selma!'* 
 
 The soft round cheek was pressed against 
 the dark head, and for a moment the sisters 
 €lung close together, and were very still. Then 
 Helen lifted her head, winked her blue eyes 
 rather suspiciously once or twice, and sat 
 down, drawing Selma down on the floor at 
 her side. 
 
 ''It's quite settled ?" she said, brightly. " I 
 am so glad, dear, so very, very glad. How 
 busy we shall all have to be ! " 
 
 Selma raised her head excitedly, squeezing 
 her sister's hands in both her own as she rested 
 them on Helen's knee. " It seems a very little 
 time, doesn't it?" she said, in a delighted, awe- 
 struck voice. *' He was in such a dreadful 
 hurry 1 " 
 
 '' In too much hurry, Selma ? " 
 
 The flushed face went down upon the 
 clasped hands precipitately, and Selma said, 
 half laughing, half crying : " I don't know, 
 Nell. Oh, Nellie ! " And she lifted herself up 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 225 
 
 suddenly, and flung her arms round her 
 sister's neck with a little excited cry : *' I 
 can't believe it's true! It seems too good to 
 be true!" 
 
 Helen laughed ; but, in spite of herself, 
 her laugh ended in a little sigh, and Selma 
 suddenly unclasped her hands, and let them 
 fall again on her knee as she knelt back on 
 the floor. 
 
 " Oh, what a selfish girl I am ! " she cried, 
 remorsefully, under her breath. " Oh, Nell, 
 darling, shall we wait until you and Humphrey 
 can be married too? Oh, you must be dreadfully 
 unhappy ! " 
 
 Helen drew her close, and laid her cheek 
 so that Selma should not see her face. 
 
 " No, dear," she said, softly and quickly, 
 " I didn't mean to sigh. I'm quite content to 
 wait as long as we must wait. It's only now 
 and then ! " 
 
 '*Will it be long?" said the fresh, pitying 
 young voice. 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 "Yes, dear." 
 
 Selma made a little inarticulate moan over 
 her as if such a state of things were too terrible 
 to contemplate. 
 
 "It does seem so unfcxir!" she cried at 
 last. ''Everything is perfect with Roger 
 and me, we haven't to wait or anything, 
 and we've only known one another tw^o 
 months — just think, Helen, two months 
 ago I hardly knew there was Roger in the 
 world. And you and Humphrey have cared 
 so long ! Oh, it makes me feel quite 
 wicked." 
 
 But Helen was her own hopeful matter-of- 
 fact self again, and she kissed away the two 
 bright tears which stood in Selma's grieving 
 eyes. 
 
 "Goose!" she said, brightly, "you haven't 
 anything at all to do wath it. Come, we 
 must go downstairs to tea. Does auntie 
 know ? " 
 
 "I said he might tell her," answered Selma, 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 227 
 
 sorely divided between the thrilling interest of 
 her own affairs, and loving pity for her sister ; 
 but the former became for the moment all- 
 absorbiog as Helen, having smoothed the ruffled 
 hair in a practical, business-like way, drew her 
 towards the door. 
 
 " Oh, Helen, must I go down so soon ? " she 
 said. ''Oh, suppose they all know!" 
 
 It was quite impossible to doubt that they 
 all did know as Selma and Helen went into the 
 drawing-room together — Selma, with very flushed 
 face and downcast eyes, trying to appear un- 
 conscious of the universal exclamation which 
 greeted her, ''Here she is!" 
 
 They were all there ; Mrs. Cornish, pouring 
 out tea, Sylvia, Nettie, sundry other cousins — 
 even little Elsie. And, in addition to this 
 strong muster of Cornishes, there was a little 
 figure in a sealskin hat and coat, which sprang 
 up as the sisters came in and cast itself pre- 
 cipitately upon Selma, crying, in a little, quick 
 eager voice : 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 "You dearest thing, how glad I am to see 
 you!" 
 
 " Mervyn ! " exclaimed Selma and Helen 
 simultaneously ; and Helen added, as Selma 
 was rendered temporarily incapable of speech 
 by a rapid series of speechless, eloquent 
 kisses : 
 
 ''I didn't know you'd come back. How 
 nice ! 
 
 Mervyn Ferris was the only daughter of 
 an old friend of Mr. Cornish. She had been 
 motherless from her babyhood, and when she 
 was a wild, erratic little schoolgirl, Mrs. Cornish 
 had been always very good to her, and she 
 had spent nearly as much time in the Cornishes' 
 house as in that of her own father. She had 
 been sent abroad to school when she was about 
 fifteen, and had come home two years later to 
 be her own mistress, and the mistress of her 
 father's house, just at the time when Helen and 
 Selma were established in the little Hampstead 
 house. She had come back two years older in 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 229 
 
 years than when she went away ; but she had 
 altered hardly perceptibly, and she had taken 
 up all her old ways with the Cornish girls as 
 though two days instead of two years had 
 passed, running in and out of the house at 
 all hours of the day, always full of excited 
 interest in all their doings, always demanding 
 and obtaining sympathy for her own enthusiasm, 
 teased by the boys, laughed at by the girls, and 
 loved and petted in a careless, protecting fashion 
 by the whole household. Being so much with 
 their cousins, she had of course seen a great 
 deal of Helen and Selma, and her first admira- 
 tion of the latter had speedily developed into 
 enthusiastic devotion. Her adoration from the 
 first had been perfectly frank and unconcealed, 
 and had no trace about it of the awe with 
 which Selma was regarded by her cousins. 
 And Selma, taken by surprise, had let herself 
 be w^orshipped, half laughing and half touched ; 
 had been sweet and gracious to her devotee — as 
 she was to every one with whom she came in 
 
230 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 contact — and had gradually grown very fond of 
 the little thing. 
 
 She returned her kisses now, laughing 
 a little, and blushing very much, for the 
 pressure of Mervyn's small hands conveyed 
 a great deal that could not be said in 
 public, and then the latter drew back, and 
 said, as a sort of explanatory apology to 
 every one, with a shy glance in particular 
 at Koger : 
 
 *' It's so exciting for me, you see — not to 
 know anything at all about it, and then to 
 come in like this and find you all talking about 
 the wedding-day. Oh, Selma, I am to be a 
 bridesmaid, am I not ? How you can all have 
 been so very horrid as not to write to me, I 
 can't think ! " 
 
 "We didn't know where you were," said 
 Sylvia. 
 
 *' That's nothing to do with it, Sylvie. I 
 mean you might have written somewhere, and 
 I should have got it." 
 
CROSS CUREENTS. 231 
 
 She had been travelling abroad all the 
 summer and autumn with her father, and 
 during the last two months their movements 
 had been so uncertain, that the Cornishes 
 really had not known where to write to 
 her ; though, no doubt — as Mervyn's last in- 
 coherent speech was intended to imply — 
 they might have found out if they had not 
 very much preferred the idea of telling her 
 l)y word of mouth, and enjoying her excite- 
 ment — always a standing joke with the whole 
 household. 
 
 She had a quick, impulsive little way of 
 speaking, the natural expression of an enthu- 
 siastic, quickly beating little heart ; and her 
 little thin, brown, childish face seemed at the 
 moment to be all eager brown eyes. She 
 was unusually small, with tiny hands and 
 feet, and her figure looked more like that 
 of a child than of a girl of eighteen ; her 
 hair, too — rough, curly brown hair — seemed 
 to accommodate itself with difficulty to the 
 
232 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 " done-up " stage, and was always tumbling 
 about, to be unceremoniously seized and tucked 
 away again. 
 
 " It's always all ends when anything hap- 
 pens," she exclaimed now, when Helen took 
 hold of her, and tucked sundry stray curl- 
 ing bits under her hat, as Selma turned to 
 Mrs. Cornish, who was waiting for her with 
 a beaming smile. 
 
 " So it's all quite settled," she said. " My 
 dear child, I'm delighted. I don't like long 
 engagements," with a pitying look, which 
 Helen fortunately did not see; ''and I'm 
 thankful to think that there is no need for 
 you, at any rate, to wait. Come and sit 
 down here, dear child. The children are wild 
 with excitement; and if you don't let them 
 talk about bridesmaids' dresses, I don't know 
 what they'll do." 
 
 And Mrs. Cornish, who seemed scarcely less 
 excited than "the children" — which sreneric 
 term embraced Sylvia and Elsie alike — them- 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 233 
 
 selves, drew Selma down on to the sofa beside 
 her, as Eoger oflfered her the cup of tea which he 
 had annexed, in her behalf, directly she appeared. 
 She raised a flushed face and a shy pair of eyes 
 to him in thanks ; and then she stooped, and 
 held out her hand to Elsie. His little sister 
 had rewarded Eoger's exertions in the wood with 
 devoted attachment, and she was clinging to him 
 now with one hand, while she embraced a large 
 doll — just brought to her by Mervyn Ferris — 
 with the other. 
 
 *' Come and kiss me, Elsie," said Selma, 
 rather incoherently. 
 
 Elsie dropped Roger's hand, and trotted 
 obediently up. But she did not give the 
 required kiss. She stood gravely in front 
 of her cousin with serious, uplifted face, and 
 said : 
 
 " Please, Selma, may Elsie be Woger's brides- 
 maid ? " 
 
 There was a shriek of laughter at this 
 confusion of ideas; and as "Woofer" lifted his 
 
234 CROSS (njRRENTS. 
 
 bridesmaid onto his shoulder, Selma felt tliat she 
 had hardly effected the diversion she intended. 
 And after the laugh every one began to talk at 
 once, and 8elma had nothing to do but sit 
 blushino' and smih'ng^, and turnins^ her shiningr 
 eyes from one to the other until, upon a per- 
 fect babel of voices, Mervyn Ferris leading, 
 and the Cornish orirls actinof chorus, the door 
 opened and closed quietly, and Helen — the 
 only one who had heard it — turned quickly, 
 with a happy smile, as Humphrey came up 
 to where she was sitting;. 
 
 " Has anything happened ? " he observed, 
 quietly, dropping the remark into the first pause 
 of the chatter. 
 
 Nobody, except Helen, had noticed his 
 entrance, and every one turned to him with an 
 exclamation of surprise. 
 
 " How uncanny ! " said Mervyn Ferris, as she 
 shook hands with him. " Yes, something very 
 thrilling has happened. Selma is going to be 
 married ! " 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 235 
 
 *' So I have heard," he remarked, with a 
 slight, amused smile at her excited face. 
 
 " Yes ; but directly, this minute — I mean on 
 the second of January." 
 
 ** Is that so ? " He turned to his brother 
 witli a quick glance of enquiry, which altered, as 
 Roger made a delighted gesture of acquiescence, 
 to one of iu finite congratulation ; and then he 
 turned again to Helen with a look which no one 
 else saw, and which she answered with a smile 
 which said, as plainly as any words could have 
 done, '' Patience ! " 
 
 " Oh, dear, I don't want to go a bit," said 
 Mervyn Ferris, pathetically ; " but I really must, 
 you know. Good-bye, Mrs. Cornish, isn't it ex- 
 citing? Good-bye, dearest darling," to Selma 
 with an enthusiastic hug, and then she came to 
 Roger and stopped short. *' Good-bye," she 
 said, shyly, giving him her hand ; and then, with 
 a little burst of confidence, '* Oh, you don't know 
 how much I congratulate you." 
 
 He accepted the congratulation in all sim- 
 
236 CROSS CURRENTS. 
 
 plicity, and went to open the hall door for her 
 as .she went out of the room escorted by all the 
 younger Cornishes, leaving Mrs. Cornish, Helen,. 
 Selma, and Humphrey. Mrs. Cornish had 
 something she wished to talk over with Helen, 
 and they went away together — very little con- 
 sideration was shown to Helen and Humphrey 
 now that it was an established fact that their 
 engagement might last for years — Roger was 
 caught in the hall by Sylvia, who was very 
 fond of him, and had given him up to Selma 
 heartily, but with a struggle, and Selma and 
 Humphrey were left alone. 
 
 He stood for a minute or two looking into 
 the fire rather sadly, and then he roused himself 
 and said : 
 
 ** I am very glad to hear that it is settled, 
 Selma ! " 
 
 " It is very sweet of you ! " answered Selma, 
 impulsively. " I feel as if you must quite hate 
 us. 
 
 He smiled as though the words were not 
 
CROSS CURRENTS. 237 
 
 worth a more serious answer, and said, with a 
 different tone and manner as though to change 
 the current of her thoughts : " I've been to hear 
 Moritz this afternoon. He is giving two concerts 
 this month, you know." 
 
 " Moritz ! " Selma hardly uttered the word, 
 and he did not notice that she had changed 
 colour suddenly, though he had been looking at 
 her with that expression of speculation with 
 which he always contemplated the new Selma. 
 He was the only member of his family to whom 
 she had become, instead of ceasing to be, 
 incomprehen sible. 
 
 ''You should go and hear him, Selma !" he 
 went on, speaking with an enthusiasm he very 
 seldom showed, except to Selma and Helen. 
 " He is an artist ! If he perseveres " 
 
 He was interrupted by a little, sharp sigh, 
 as Selma laid her hand suddenly on his arm. 
 
 "Don't, Humphrey!" she said, quickly. And 
 then she stopped herself and laughed, rather 
 uncertainly. '' It's very nasty of me, I'm afraid," 
 
238 CROSS CURRENT.S. 
 
 she said ; " but I don't like to hear about people 
 who persevere ! " 
 
 And before he had well taken in her meanino- 
 
 she was gone. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHARLES DICKBNS ANT) EVANS, CRYSTU. PALACE PBESS.