"I like it immensely. I can express myself there as I could in no other sphere of life. People used to advise me to take to recitations: how glad I am that I stood out for what I liked best."

"What one likes best is not always the safest path."

"You might as well say it is not always the easiest path! Mine is a very hard life, so far as work is concerned, you know. I toil early and late.

But how can you be so awfully trite, Mr. Trent? I did not expect it of you."

"A good deal of life is rather trite," said Oliver. "I know only one thing that can preserve it from commonplaceness and dullness and dreariness."

"And that is----"

"Love."

A little silence fell on both of them. Oliver's voice had sunk almost to a whisper: Ethel's cheeks had grown suddenly very hot.

"Love makes everything easy and beautiful. Does not your poet say so--the man whose play you have acted in to-night? Ethel, why don't you try the experiment?--the experiment of loving?"

"I do try it," she said, laughing, and trying to regain her lost lightness of tone. "I love Maurice and Mrs. Durant and hosts of people."

"Add one more to the list," said Oliver. "Love _me_."

"You?" she said, doubtingly. "I am not sure whether you are a person to be loved."

"Oh, yes, I am. Seriously, Ethel, may I speak to your brother? May I hope that you can love me a little, and that you will some day be my wife?"

"Oh, that is _very_ serious!" she said, mockingly. And she withdrew her fingers from his arm. "I did not bargain for so much solemnity when I set out with you from the theatre to-night."

"But I set out, Ethel, with the intention of asking you to be my wife.

Come, my darling, won't you give me an answer? Don't send me away disconsolate! Let me teach you what love means--love and happiness!"

His voice sank once more to its lowest murmur. Ethel listened, hesitated, smiled. Her little fingers found their way back to his arm again, and were instantly caught and pressed, and even kissed, when they came to a dark and shady place. And before he parted with her at the door of her brother's house, he had put his arms round her and kissed her on the lips.

Was it all pretence--all for the sake of those twenty thousand pounds of hers? Oliver swore to himself that it was not. She was such a pretty little thing--such a dear, loving little girl, in spite of her fun and merriment and spirit--one could not help feeling fond of her. Not that he was going to acknowledge himself capable of such a weakness when he next talked to Rosalind.

He was strolling idly along the east side of Russell Square as these thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind. He had completely forgotten the stroller whom he had seen leaning against the railings of the Square gardens; but he was unpleasantly reminded of that gentleman's existence when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a voice said in his ear--

"I've been waiting here six hours, Oliver, and I must have a word or two with you."

CHAPTER IX.

THE ELDER BROTHER.

Oliver turned round sharply, with an air of visible impatience. He knew the voice well enough, and the moon-light left him no doubt as to the lineaments of a face with which he was quite familiar. Francis Trent was not unlike either Rosalind or Oliver; but of the two he resembled his sister rather than his younger brother. True, he did not possess her beauty, but he had her sleepy eyes, her type of feature, her colorless skin, and jetty hair. The colorlessness had degenerated, however, into an unhealthy pallor, and the stubbly beard which covered his cheeks and chin did not improve his appearance. Besides he was terribly out at elbows; his coat was green with age, his boots were broken, and his cuffs frayed and soiled. His hat was unnaturally shiny, and dented in two or three places. Altogether he looked as unlike a brother of the immaculate Oliver and the exquisitely-dressed Rosalind as could possibly have been found for either in the world of London.

Oliver surveyed him with polite disgust, and waved him back a little.

"You have been drinking coa.r.s.e brandy, Francis," he said, coolly; "and you have been smoking bad tobacco. I wish you would consult my susceptibilities on those points when you come to interview me. You would really find it pleasanter in the end."

"Where am I to find the money to consult your susceptibilities with?"

asked the man, with a burst of what seemed like very genuine feeling.

"Will you provide me with it? If you don't, what remains for me but to drink British brandy and smoke strong s.h.a.g? I must drink something--I must smoke something. Will you pay the piper if I go to more expense?"

"Not if you talk so loudly as to attract the attention of every pa.s.sing policeman," said Oliver, dryly. "If you want to talk to me, as you say you do, keep quiet please."

Francis Trent growled something like an imprecation on his brother below his breath, and then went on in a lowered tone.

"It's easy for you to talk. You are not saddled by a wife and a lot of debts. _You_ haven't to keep out of the way for fear you should be wanted by the police--although you have not been very particular about keeping your hands clean after all. But you've been the lucky dog and I the unlucky one, and this is the result."

"If you are going to be abusive, my good friend," said Oliver, calmly, "I shall turn round and go home again. If you will keep a civil tongue in your head I don't mind listening to you for five minutes. What have you got to say?"

The man was evidently in a state of only half-repressed irritation. His brows twitched, he gnawed savagely at his beard, he looked at Oliver with furtive hate from under his heavy dark brows. But the younger man's cool tones seemed to possess the power of keeping him in check. He made a visible effort to calm himself as he replied,

"You needn't be so down on me, Oliver. You must allow for a fellow's feeling a little out of sorts when he's kept waiting about here for hours. I am convinced that Rosalind saw me this afternoon; I'm certain that you saw me to-night. If I had not caught you now I would have gone to the front door and hammered at it till one of you came out."

"And you think that you would have advanced your cause thereby?"

"Why, hang it all, Oliver, one would think that I was not your own flesh and blood! Have you no natural affection left?"

"Not much. Natural affection is a mistake. You need not count on that with me."

"You always were a cold-blooded, half-hearted sort of a fellow. Not one to help a friend, or even a brother," said Francis, sullenly.

"Suppose you come to the point," remarked Oliver. "It is getting on to eleven o'clock. I really can't stand here all night."

"It is nothing to you that I have stood here for hours already."

"No, it is not." There was a touch of sharpness in his tone. "I am in no mood for sentiment. Say what you have to say and get done with it, or I shall leave you."

"Well," said Francis, after a pause, in which he was perhaps estimating his own powers of persuasion against his brother's powers of resistance, and coming to the conclusion that it was not worth his while to contend with him any longer, "I have come to say this. I am hard up--devilish hard up. But that's not all. It is not enough to offer me a five-pound note or a ten-pound note and tell me to spend it as I please. I want something definite. You seem to have plenty of money: I have none. I want an allowance, or else a sum of money down, sufficient to take Mary and myself to the Colonies. I don't think that is much to ask."

"Don't you?"

The icy tone which Oliver a.s.sumed exasperated his brother.

"No, be hanged if I think it is!" he said vehemently, though still in lowered tones. "I want two hundred a year--it's little enough: or two or three thousand on the nail. Give me that, and I'll not trouble you or Rosy any more."

"And where do you suppose that I'm to get two or three thousand pounds, or two hundred a year?"

"I don't care where you get it, so long as you hand it over to me."

"Very sorry I can't oblige you," said Oliver, nonchalantly "but as your proposition is a perfect impossibility, I don't see my way to saying anything else."

"You think I don't mean it, do you?" growled his brother. "I tell you that I will have it. And if I don't have it I'll not hold my tongue any longer. I'll ruin you."

"Don't talk in that melodramatic way," said Oliver, quietly. But his lip twitched a little as if something had touched him unpleasantly. "You know very well that you have no more power of ruining me than you have of flying to yonder moon. You can't substantiate any of your stories.