"And what had she done?" pursued Jenny, full of interest.

"Ah, well, what was the truth about it--who can tell now? It was never important enough to get put on record. But the family tradition is that the Queen was jealous of her place in Leicester's affections." He smiled at Jenny. "I wish Amyas had found you a more acceptable prototype!"

"Oh, I don't know," said Jenny thoughtfully. "I like her looks. Do you believe that what they said was true?"

"I'm sorry to say that, again according to the family tradition, it was."

Our dog-cart had been ready for some minutes. Jenny said good-by, and both father and son escorted her to the door.

"I hope we shall see you at dinner as soon as my sister comes back,"

said Fillingford, as he helped her to mount into the cart. "We must have a little festivity for Amyas before he joins."

Jenny was all thanks and cordiality, and drove off smiling and waving her hand gayly.

"Isn't that really rather interesting about Eleanor Lacey? Mind you go and see the picture next time you're there! It's really very like."

I promised to see the picture, and asked her how she had got on with Fillingford.

"Oh, I like him well enough, but--" She paused and smiled reflectively.

"Down at the Simpsons' there was a certain young man--boy he really was--whom we called Rabbit. That was only because of the shape of his mouth, and has nothing to do with the story! I used sometimes to walk home with Rabbit--from evening church, or lawn-tennis parties, and so on, you know." (Were these the occasions on which she was rather late for supper--without incurring Chat's rebuke?) "We girls used to laugh at him because he always began by taking great pains to show you that he didn't mean to flirt--well, at all events, didn't mean to begin the flirtation. If you wanted to flirt, you must begin yourself--that was Rabbit's att.i.tude, and he made it perfectly plain in his behavior.

"Rabbit can't have been a very amusing youth to walk home with in the gloaming?" I ventured to suggest.

"He wasn't, but then there wasn't much choice down at the Simpsons', you know. Besides, it could be made rather funny with Rabbit. You see, he wouldn't begin because he had such a terror of being snubbed." She laughed in an amused reminiscence. "I think I shall call Lord Fillingford Rabbit," she ended.

"It'll be very disrespectful."

"Oh, you can't make all the nicknames for yourself!" She paused and added, apparently with a good deal of satisfaction--"Rabbit--and Volcano--yes!"

CHAPTER VII

THE FLICK OF A WHIP

Jenny spent a large part of the winter in Italy, Chat being with her, Cartmell and I left in charge at home. But early in the New Year she came back and then, her mourning being over, she launched out. Without forgetting her father's injunction against spending all her income, she organized the household on a more extensive scale; new carriages and more horses, a couple of motors, and a little electric launch for the lake were among the additions she made. The out-of-doors staff grew till Cartmell had to ask for an estate-steward to take the routine off his shoulders, while Mrs. Bennet and Loft blazed with pride at the swelling numbers of their subordinates in the house itself. Jenny's taste for splendor came out. She even loved a touch of the gorgeous; old Mr.

Driver's dark blue liveries a.s.sumed a decidedly brighter tint, and I heard her express regret that postilions and four horses were in these days thought ostentatious except for very great national or local potentates. "If I were a peeress, I would have them," she declared rather wistfully. If that were the condition and the only one, after all we might perhaps live to see the four horses and the postilions at Breysgate before we were many months older. By now, there was matter for much speculation about her future; the closer you were to her, the more doubtful any speculation seemed.

This was the time of her greatest glory--when she was fresh to her state and delighting in it, when all the neighborhood seemed to be at her feet, town and county vying in doing her honor--and in accepting her hospitality.

Entertainment followed entertainment; now it was the poor, now it was the rich, whom she fed and feted. The crown of her popularity came perhaps when she declared that she would have no London house and wanted no London season. Catsford and the county were good enough for her. The _Catsford Herald and Times_ printed an article on this subject which was almost lyrical in its antic.i.p.ation of a return of the good old days when the aristocracy found their own town enough. It was headed "Catsford a Metropolis--Why not?" And it was Jenny who was to imbue the borough with this enviable metropolitan character! This was _Redeunt Saturnia regna_ with a vengeance!

To all outward appearance she was behaving admirably--and her acquaintance with Fillingford had reached to as near intimacy as it was ever likely to get while it rested on a basis of mere neighborly friendship. Lady Sarah had been convinced or vanquished--it was impossible to say which. At any rate she had withdrawn her opposition to intercourse between the two houses and appeared to contemplate with resignation, if not with enthusiasm, a prospect of which people had now begun to talk--not always under their breath. Fillingford Manor and Breysgate were now united closely enough for folk to ask whether they were to be united more closely still. For my own part I must admit that, if Lord Fillingford were wooing, he showed few of the usual signs; but perhaps Jenny was! I remembered the story of Rabbit--without forgetting the subject of the other nickname!

Old Cartmell was a great advocate of the Fillingford alliance. House laid to house and field to field were anathema to the Prophet; for a family lawyer they have a wonderful attraction. An estate well-rounded off, s.p.a.cious, secure from encroachment and, with proper capital outlay, returning three per cent.--he admires it as the rest of us a Velasquez--well, some of us--or others, a thoroughbred. Careful man as he was, he declined to be dismayed at Jenny's growing expenditure. "The income's growing, too," he said. "It grows and must grow with the borough. Old Nick Driver had a very long head! She can't help becoming richer, whatever she does--in reason." He winked at me, adding, "After all, it isn't as if she had to buy Fillingford, is it?" I did not feel quite sure that it was not--and at a high price; but to say that would have been to travel into another sphere of discussion.

"Well, I'm very glad her affairs are so flourishing. But I wish the new liveries weren't so nearly sky-blue. I hope she won't want to put you and me in them!"

Cartmell paid no heed to the liveries. He took a puff at his cigar and said, "Now--if only she'll keep straight!" That would have seemed an odd thing to say--to anyone not near her.

Yet trouble came--most awkwardly and at a most awkward moment. Octon himself was the cause of it, and I--unluckily for myself--the only independent witness of the central incident.

He had--like Jenny--been away most of the winter, but I had no reason to suppose that they had met or even been in communication; in fact, I believe that he was in London most of the time, finishing his new book and superintending the elaborate ill.u.s.trations with which it was adorned. He did, however, reappear at Hatcham Ford close on the heels of Jenny's return to Breysgate, and the two resumed their old--and somewhat curious--relations. If ever it were true of two people that they could live neither with nor without one another, it seemed true of that couple. He was always seeking her, and she ever ready and eager to welcome him; yet at every other meeting at least they had a tiff--Jenny being, I must say, seldom the aggressor, at least in the presence of third persons: perhaps her offenses, such as they were, were given in private. But there was one difference which I perceived quickly, but which Octon seemed slower to notice: I hoped that he might never notice it at all, or, if he did, accept it peaceably. Jenny preferred, if it were possible, to receive him when the household party alone was present; when the era of entertaining set in, he was bidden on the off-nights. No doubt this practice admitted of being put--and perhaps was put by Jenny--in a flattering way. But it was impossible to be safe with him--there was no telling how his temper would take him. So long as he believed that Jenny herself best liked to see him intimately, all would go well; but if once he struck on the truth--that she was yielding deference to the wishes of his enemies, her neighbors--there might very probably be an explosion. "Volcano" would get active if he thought that "Rabbit" and company--Jenny had concealed neither nickname from him--were being consulted. Or he might get just a wayward whim; if his temper were out, he would make trouble for its own sake--or to see with how much he could make her put up; each was always trying the limits of his or her power over the other.

The actual occasion of his outburst was, as usual, trivial, and perhaps--far as that was from being invariably the case--afforded him some shadow of excuse. Neither did Chat help matters. He had sent up from Hatcham Ford a bunch of splendid yellow roses, and, when he came to dinner the same evening, he naturally expected to see them on the table.

"Where are my roses?" he asked abruptly, when we were half-way through dinner.

"I love them--they're beautiful--but they didn't suit my frock to-night," said Jenny, smiling. She would have managed the matter all right if she had been let alone, but Chat must needs put her oar in.

"They'll look splendid on the table to-morrow night," she remarked--as though she were saying something soothing and tactful.

"Oh, you've got a dinner-party to-morrow?" he asked--still calm, but growing dangerous.

"n.o.body you'd care about," Jenny a.s.sured him; she had given Chat a look which immediately produced symptoms of flutters.

"Who's coming?"

"Oh, only Lord Fillingford and Lady Sarah, the Wares, the Rector, the Aspenicks, and one or two more."

"H'm. My roses are good enough for that lot, but I'm not, eh?"

Jenny's hand was forced; Chat had undermined her position. Not even for the sake of policy did she love to do an unhandsome thing--still less to be found out in doing one. To use the roses and slight the donor would not be handsome. She knew Aspenick's objection to meeting Octon, but probably she thought that she could keep Aspenick in order.

"I had no idea you'd care about it. I thought you liked coming quietly better. I like it so much better when I can have you to myself."

No use now! His p.r.i.c.kles were out; he would not be cajoled.

"So I may as a rule--but it's rather marked when you never ask me to meet anyone."

"I shall be delighted to see you at dinner to-morrow," said Jenny. "Will you come?"

"Yes, I will come--I hope I know how to behave myself, don't I?"

"Oh, yes, you know well enough," she answered, delicately emphasizing the difference between knowledge and practice. "All right, I shall expect you."

"I know the meaning of it. That little Aspenick minx and her fool of a husband are trying to get me boycotted--that's it."

Jenny, as her wont was, tried to smooth him down, but with little success. He went off early, still very sulky, and growling about the Aspenicks. For what it is worth, there was no doubt that they were now busy leaders in the cabal against him, and he knew it.

"It won't be very pleasant, but we must carry it off with brave faces,"

said Jenny, referring to the next day's dinner. She looked vexed, though, at this crossing of her arrangements.

Probably the dinner would have pa.s.sed off tolerably, if not comfortably--for Aspenick was a gentleman, and even Octon might feel that he ought to be on his good behavior--when his temper recovered. But unluckily his temper had not recovered by eleven o'clock the following morning, and it was then that the lamentable thing happened.

I had finished my after-breakfast work with Jenny and had left the house, to go down the hill to the Old Priory. The road through the park crosses the path I had to follow, at about seventy yards from the house.

Approaching this road, I saw Lady Aspenick's tandem coming along on my right. She was, as I have said before, an accomplished whip, and tandem-driving was a favorite pastime of hers. To-day she appeared to be trying a new leader; at any rate the animal was very skittish, now rearing, now getting out of line, now sidling along--doing anything, in fact, but his plain duty. She was driving slowly and carefully, while the two grooms were half-standing, half-kneeling behind, looking over her shoulders and evidently ready to jump down and run to the leader's head at any moment. I stood watching their progress; it was pretty to see her drive. Then I became aware of Octon's ma.s.sive figure coming from the opposite direction; he was walking full in the middle of the road, which at this point is not very broad--just wide enough for two carriages to pa.s.s one another between the banks, which rise sharply on either side to the height of nearly three feet.