"Oh, at the old farm?"

"Yes. He wants another reduction."

"He'll want to be paid for staying there next."

"Well, poor man, he's had to take lodgers this summer--a thing he's never done before. Charlie, did you know that?"

"Yes," said Charlie, interrupting an animated conversation which he had started with Mrs. Marland.

"Do you know who they are?" pursued his mother, wandering from Mr.

Prime's rent to the more interesting subject of his lodgers.

"Ladies from London," answered Charlie.

"Rather vague," commented Mr. Vansittart. "Young ladies or old ladies, Charlie?"

"Why does he want to know?" asked Mrs. Marland; but chaff had about as much effect on Mr. Vansittart as it would have on an ironclad. He seemed not to hear, and awaited an answer with a bland smile. In truth, he thought Mrs. Marland a silly woman.

"Young, I believe," answered Charlie, in a careless tone.

"It's curious I've not seen them about," said Lady Merceron. "I pa.s.s the farm almost every day. Who are they, Charlie?"

"One's a Miss Wallace. She's engaged to Willie Prime."

"To Willie? Fancy!"

"H'm! I think," remarked Mr. Vansittart, "that, from the point of view of a reduction of rent, these lodgers are a delusion. Of course she stays with Prime if she's going to many his son."

"Fancy Willie!" reiterated Lady Merceron. "Surely he can't afford to marry? He's in a bank, you know, Vansittart, and he only gets a hundred and twenty pounds a year."

"One blessing of the country is that everybody knows his neighbor's income," observed Mr. Vansittart.

"Perhaps the lady has money," suggested Mrs. Marland. "But, Mr.

Merceron, who's the other lady?"

"A friend of Miss Wallace's, I believe. I don't know her name."

"Oh, they're merely friends of Prime's?" Mr. Vansittart concluded. "If that's all he bases his claim for a reduction on---"

"Hang it! He might as well have it," interrupted Charlie. "He talks to me about it for half an hour every time we meet."

"But, my dear Charlie, you have more time than money to waste--at least, so it seems."

His uncle's sarcasm never affected Charlie's temper.

"I'll turn him on to you, uncle," he replied, "and you can see how you like it."

"I'll go and call on him tomorrow. You'd better come too, Charlie."

"And then you can see the ladies from London," added Mrs. Marland.

"Perhaps the one who isn't young Mr. Prime's will be interesting."

"Or," said Charlie, "as mostly happens in this woeful world, the one who is."

"I think the less we see of that sort of person at all, the better,"

observed Lady Merceron, with gentle decision. "They can hardly be quite what we're accustomed to."

"That sort of person!"

Charlie went to bed with the phrase ringing in his horror-struck ears.

If to be the most beautiful, the most charming, and the most refined, the daintiest, the wittiest and prettiest, the kindest and the sweetest, the merriest and most provoking creature in the whole world--if to be all this were yet not to weigh against being 'that sort of person'--if it were not, indeed, to outweigh, banish, and obliterate everything else why, the world was not fit to live in, and he no true Merceron! For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves.

CHAPTER III

ALL NONSENSE

On the evening of the next day, while the sun was still on the Pool, and its waters, forgetful of darker moods and bygone tragedies, smiled under the tickling of darting golden gleams, a girl sat on the broad lowest step of the temple. She had rolled the sleeves of her white gown above her elbow, up well-nigh to her shoulder, and, the afternoon being sultry, from time to time dipped her arms in the water and, taking them out again, amused herself by watching the bright drops race down to her rosy fingertips. The sport was good, apparently, for she laughed and flung back her head so that the stray locks of hair might not spoil her sight of it. On either side of this lowest step there was a margin of smooth level gra.s.s, and, being unable as she sat to bathe both arms at once, presently she moved on to the gra.s.s and lay down, sinking her elbows in the pond and leaning her face over the edge of it. The posture had another advantage she had not thought of, and she laughed again when she saw her own eyes twinkling at her from the depths. As she lay there a longing came upon her.

"If I could be sure he wouldn't come I'd dip my feet," she murmured.

As, however, he had come every evening for a fortnight past the fancy was not to be indulged, and she consoled herself by a deeper dive yet of her arms and by drooping her head till her nose and the extreme fringe of her eyelashes were wetted, and the stray locks floated on either side.

Presently, as she still looked, she saw another shadow on the water, and exchanged with her image a confidential glance.

"You again?" she asked.

The other shadow nodded.

"Why didn't you come in the canoe?"

"Because people see it."

It struck her that her att.i.tude was unconventional, and by a lithe complicated movement, whereof Charlie noticed only the elegance and not the details, she swept round and, sitting, looked up at him.

"I know who she was," she observed.

"She very nearly knew who you were. You oughtn't to have come to the window."

"She thought I was the ghost."

"You shouldn't reckon on people being foolish."

"Shouldn't I? Yet I reckoned on your coming--or there'd have been some more of me in the water."

"I wish I were an irregular man," said Charlie.