"Oh!" said Camilla; she was at once rea.s.sured "I am _so_ sorry. I hope you are not very anxious? But you must tell me about it a little later." And gathering her clinging black draperies in her hand she smiled up at him and then fluttered through the doorway and vanished.

Whilst the other women were talking together, Mrs. Brenton found herself alone with Camilla.

"I want to say something to you," she said in a low voice.

"Is it anything nice?" asked Camilla, with a faint smile.

Mrs. Brenton touched the black chiffon that bordered Camilla's beautiful shoulders with a caressing hand.

"I don't want you to play for such heavy points to-night, darling," she said; "it is all very well if the money comes back to you, but I am afraid you have been losing rather heavily since you came down here, haven't you? Sometimes I feel tempted," Mrs. Brenton went on, "to impose a _maximum_ sum for points here, but I suppose I should get myself well hated if I did! People would say it is a free country, and they ought to do what they like with their own."

"That is why you are scolding me," said Camilla, with her pretty smile.

Mrs. Brenton shook her head.

"You are not other people to me, and I do hate to see you risking too much, Camilla."

Camilla turned and just lightly kissed Mrs. Brenton's hand.

"Oh, we must risk something sometimes!" she said impatiently; then she added, "Don't worry about me, dear old thing, I really haven't lost very much, and I dare say I shall get it all back to-night. I feel in luck. Look"--she held out her wrist--"isn't this a sweet thing? Sammy has just given it to me to wear as a charm. He brought it from some weird place in America, and declares it is a magic stone, and that I shall have everything I want now that I wear it. I must go and show it to Ena Bayliss," Camilla said, with a wicked smile. "She will be _so_ jealous! She rather affects Sammy, you know...."

When the men came there was no opportunity for a little chat between Mrs. Lancing and Haverford, for the card-players seated themselves immediately at the tables.

Mrs. Brenton, who was not a bridge fanatic, beckoned to Rupert Haverford to come and sit with her in her pet corner.

She teased him heartily for a little while about his breakdown that afternoon.

"You will never get _me_ in that magnificent car of yours again," she said. "Why don't you have horses? You look just the sort of man who would have good animals, and know how to treat them well."

"I have a few horses," Haverford answered; "you must come and see them one day, if you will, Mrs. Brenton. I don't quite know why I took to motoring, except that I have a leaning towards engineering, and the mechanism of the cars interests me, and then I like rushing about. I have not yet got used to my idle life," he said, a little restlessly.

"Old habits are very strong with me; I wake every morning of my life at five o'clock, Mrs. Brenton, and I can't lie in bed a moment afterwards.

You see, for nearly seventeen years I was accustomed to be out and at work by six o'clock every day."

Mrs. Brenton had taken up some knitting, and her fingers were moving briskly, though her eyes were fixed on her companion.

"I should so like to know all about those days," she said; "I dare say lots of people would not believe you if you were to say it, Mr.

Haverford," she added half lightly, "but I came to a conclusion about you a long time ago, and that conclusion is, that you are the sort of man who is only happy when he is working--working seriously, I mean, from morning to night. But you are not always idle now, are you?"

Haverford laughed.

"I don't think I do an hour's work in a week," he said. "Very often the old call is so strong that I turn my back on all my greatness, and I steal away to the north, to the dirty, smoky, dull old town where I lived so long. But"--he laughed again, this time half sadly--"there is nothing for me to do; another man fills my old post and fills it well.

However, I am planning a different future; I have certain pet schemes of my own which I have not yet put into working order. When I have started them they will help at least to pa.s.s some of my time more profitably than I pa.s.s it now."

"What sort of schemes?" asked Mrs. Brenton. He did not answer her at once; he was looking at the card-players, at Camilla's dainty figure.

The lines of her throat and shoulders were exquisite, framed in the black of her gown. She was laughing; he loved to hear her laugh, it was such young laughter.

"Oh!" he said, rousing himself, "they are just some fancies that have come to me; I will tell you about them, Mrs. Brenton, when I have them more planned out--I am going to travel," he added a little abruptly.

"Ever since I was a boy I have longed to see the other side of the world! I don't quite know why I have not gone long ago." He was smoking at Mrs. Brenton's wish, and he broke off some of the cigar ash into a silver tray.

"I got my first love of wandering when I was a very little lad," he said in his rather abrupt way. "My father brought me up on travel books and books of adventure. He had so longed to know other countries and other people, but this was denied him----If he had lived----!" He broke off sharply. Agnes Brenton looked at him; he was frowning, and he was staring into the fire; he seemed to have drifted far, far away in his thoughts from the light and warmth and cosy charm of his actual surroundings.

Suddenly he turned and looked at her; his eyes were very bright.

"My father was a hero," he said--there was something in his voice that made Mrs. Brenton bite her lip nervously--"he was a doctor--a man who worked all day and sometimes all night in that crowded, tragically poor factory town where I spent so many years of my life. I worshipped my father, Mrs. Brenton; he was an enthusiast, a dreamer, a saint. He died in harness, sacrificed to the poverty and misery of the people, who were his first thought. There was a fearful outbreak of fever and diphtheria, and he did superhuman work." Haverford shrugged his shoulders; he was trying to speak evenly. "Every man's endurance has a limit, and my father paid the natural, the inevitable penalty. That was a great many years ago, but he lives with me almost as clearly as though he were really in existence now! I have only one reproach against his memory"--the young man got up restlessly. His cigar had gone out, he found a box of matches, and lit it again. "He sent me away to avoid the infection," he said In a low voice, "and he died before I could get to him! That was hard! He could never have realized how hard that was to me, or surely he would not have done it."

Mrs. Brenton's eyes were wet. It was not alone his story, the strained tones of his voice that moved her; the man himself appealed to her sharply, and for the first time. She marvelled as she listened, as she looked at him now, how she could have so misunderstood him. It had become the fashion with most people to call Rupert Haverford hard names, to find him mean, selfish, and ungenerous; Mrs. Brenton had never gone so far as that. She had, in truth, judged him leniently, recognizing in his blunt fashion of speaking, in his straightforward manner, and rather deliberate methods, only the natural influence of his former circ.u.mstances; indeed, it had always seemed to her remarkable that any man who had toiled as Haverford had done, whose life had been set for so long in one narrow groove, should have taken his new place so quietly, and have moved with such unconscious dignity in the new world which revolved about him to-day. He was distinctly out of the fashion, it was true, in many ways, but he was never uncouth, and though there was at times a North Country burr in his voice, he spoke with refinement. In physique he was refined too, and no one could find fault with the way he dressed.

Mrs. Brenton had not gushed over him, but she had always liked him.

Nevertheless, there had been moments when he had chilled her; moments in which the possibility of mingling Camilla Lancing's future with his (a scheme which she cherished warmly) had seemed almost preposterous; when he had made her both impatient and angry, and she had almost longed to shake him out of his grave, stolid ways and practical outlook.

To-night all this was changed; he was a new man to her to-night; she felt drawn to him very closely. She tried to say something in answer to his last speech, but even as the words trembled on her lips Haverford spoke on in his usual quiet way.

"When I do start on my travels I think I shall bequeath the care of my motors to you, Mrs. Brenton. Though you hate them, I know you are too tender-hearted to ill-treat them."

She laughed, falling in with his change of mood.

"I will take care of them if you will promise to come back. You must come back," she said, "and marry, and go into Parliament, and generally settle down."

"Yes, I suppose I shall marry some day," Haverford answered. He had pa.s.sed away entirely from that touch of emotion; indeed, his eyes twinkled. "Marriage is about the one occupation that my change of fortune has suggested to me from the very commencement. But I am not in a hurry," he added. "Do you know why I like you, Mrs. Brenton?" he said all at once.

She shook her head.

"I am only too glad that you do like me," she answered, with a smile.

"I don't seek to know the cause."

"Well, you appeal to me for many reasons," said Rupert Haverford, "but particularly because you are about the only woman I know who has not insisted on finding me a wife. It is such an absurd idea if one stops to think about it," he said lightly; "one chooses one's own servants, one does not go running about to one's friends to ask them if a particular man is likely to be a good coachman or butler or gardener; but in the matter of a wife everybody seems to consider that he or she has a right to choose for another person."

Mrs. Brenton smiled, but only faintly.

"I believe I am just as bad at match-making as most people," she said; "you must not endow me with unknown qualities."

They drifted into silence after this.

It was pleasant to Rupert Haverford to sit and watch Mrs. Brenton's comely hands busying themselves with the knitting.

She wore a few good rings, but for the rest her gown was old-fashioned, not to say shabby, and she had no other jewellery except an insignificant brooch or two.

He was quite in earnest when he said that she was the one person out of all his new acquaintances whom he liked the best.

There was something so thorough about her. He could quite believe the stories of her prowess as a sportswoman and a hard rider to hounds; and yet she was very womanly.

It gave him an extraordinary sense of pleasure to-night to realize that she was Camilla Lancing's friend, and that she had a tender and even an anxious interest in the woman about whom he was struggling with himself; the woman who at once tempted and repelled him.

He smoked his cigar through, and then after a little desultory conversation he rose and said "Good night."

"Pray tell Mrs. Lancing that my motor is at her disposal if she cares to use it to-morrow," he said, "I don't think she need fear another breakdown."

"You won't use it yourself?" Mrs. Brenton asked.