They were all looking at her, and sheer desperation came to her help.

"Why shouldn't I have friends?... What is all this about?" Alex asked wildly. "It's my own life. I don't want to be undutiful, but why can't I live my own life? Everything I ever do is wrong, and I know you and father are disappointed in me, but I don't know how to be different--I wish I did." She was crying bitterly now. "You wanted me to marry Noel, and I would have if I could, but I knew that it would all have been wrong, and we should have made each other miserable. Only when I did break it off, it all seemed wrong and heartless, and I don't know _what_ to do--" She felt herself becoming incoherent, and the tension of the atmosphere grew almost unbearable.

Sir Francis Clare spoke, true to the traditions of his day, viewing with something very much like horror the breaking down of those defences of a conventional reserve that should lay bare the undisciplined emotions of the soul.

"You have said enough, Alex. There are certain things that we do not put into words.... You are unhappy, my child, you have said so yourself, and it has been sufficiently obvious for some time."

"But what is it that you want, Alex? What would make you happy?" her mother broke in, piteously enough.

In the face of their perplexity, Alex lost the last feeble clue to her own complexity. She did not know what she wanted--to make them happy, to be happy herself, to be adored and admired and radiantly successful, never to know loneliness, or misunderstanding again--such thoughts surged chaotically through her mind as she stood there sobbing, and could find no words except the childish foolish formula, "I don't know."

She saw Barbara's eager, protesting gaze flash upon her, and heard her half-stifled exclamation of wondering contempt. Sir Francis turned to his younger daughter, almost as though seeking elucidation from her obvious certainties--her crude a.s.surance with life.

"Oh!" said little Barbara, her hands clenched, "they ask you what you want, what would make you happy--they are practically offering you anything you want in the world--you could choose anything, and you stand there and cry and say you don't know! Oh, Alex--you--_you idiot_!"

"Hush!" said Sir Francis, shocked, and Lady Isabel put out her white hand with its glittering weight of rings and laid it gently on Barbara's shoulder, and she too said, "Hush, darling! why are you so vehement?

You're happy, aren't you, Barbara?"

"Of course," said Barbara, wriggling. "Only if you and father asked me what _I_ would like, and I had only to say what I wanted, I could think of such millions of things--for us to have a house in the country, and to give a real, proper big ball next year, and for you to let me go to restaurant dinners sometimes, and not only those dull parties and--heaps of things like that. It's such an _opportunity_, and Alex is wasting it all! The only thing she wants is to sit and talk and talk and talk with some dull old nun at that convent!"

Long afterwards Alex was to remember and ponder over again and again that denunciation of Barbara's. It was all fact--was it all true? Was that what she was fighting for--that the goal of her vehement, inchoate rebellion? Had she sought in Mother Gertrude's society the relief of self-expression only, or was her infatuation for the nun the channel through which she hoped to find those abstract possessions of the spirit which might const.i.tute the happiness she craved?

Nothing of all the questionings that were to come later invaded her mind, as she stood sobbing and self-convicted at the crises of her relations with her childhood's home.

"Don't cry so, Alex darlin'." Lady Isabel sank back into her armchair.

"Don't cry like that--it's so bad for you and I can't bear it. We only want to know how we can make you happier than you are. It's so dreadful, Alex--you've got everything, I should have thought--a home, and parents who love you--it isn't every girl that has a father like yours, some of them care nothing for their daughters--and you're young and pretty and with good health--you might have such a perfect time, even if you _have_ made a mistake, poor little thing, there'll be other people, Alex--you'll know better another time ... only I can't bear it if you lose all your looks by frettin' and refusin' to go anywhere, and every one asks me where my eldest daughter is and why she doesn't make more friends, and enjoy things--" Lady Isabel's voice trailed away. She looked unutterably tired. They had none of them heard so emotional a ring in her voice ever before.

Sir Francis looked down at his wife in silence, and his gaze was as tender as his voice was stern when he finally spoke.

"This cannot go on. You have done everything to please Alex--to try and make her happy, and it has all been of no use. Let her take her own way!

We have failed."

"No!" almost shrieked Alex.

"What do you mean? We have your own word for it and your sister's that you are not happy at home, and infinitely prefer the society of some woman of whom we know nothing, in surroundings which I should have thought would have proved highly uncongenial to one of my daughters, brought up among well-bred people. But apparently I am mistaken.

"It is the modern way, I am told. A young girl uses her father's house to shelter and feed her, and seeks her own friends and her own interests the while, with no reference to her parents' wishes.

"But not in this case, Alex. I have your mother and your sisters to consider. Your folly is embittering the home life that might be so happy and pleasant for all of us. Look at your mother!"

Lady Isabel was in tears.

"What shall I do?" said Alex wildly. "Let me go right away and not spoil things any more."

"You have said it," replied Sir Francis gravely, and inclined his head.

"Francis, what are you tellin' her? How can she go away from us? It's her home, until she marries."

Lady Isabel's voice was full of distressed perplexity.

"My dear love, don't don't agitate yourself. This is her home, as you say, and is always open to her. But until she has learnt to be happy there, let her seek these new friends, whom she so infinitely prefers.

Let her go to this nun."

Alex, at his words, felt a rush of longing for the tenderness, the grave understanding of Mother Gertrude, the atmosphere of the quiet convent parlour where she had never heard reproach or accusation.

"Oh, yes, let me go there," she sobbed childishly. "I'll try and be good there. I'll come back good, indeed I will."

Barbara's little, cool voice cut across her sobs:

"How can you go there? Will they let you stay? What will every one think?"

"So many girls take up slumming and good works now-a-days," said Lady Isabel wearily. "Every one knows she's been upset and unhappy for a long while. It may be the best plan. My poor darling, when you're tired of it, you can come back, and we'll try again."

There was no reproach at all in her voice now, only exhaustion, and a sort of relief at having reached a conclusion.

"You hear what your mother says. If her angelic love and patience do not touch you, Alex, you must indeed be heartless. Make your arrangements, and remember, my poor child, that as long as her arms remain open to you, I will receive you home again with love and patience and without one word of reproach."

He opened the door for Lady Isabel and followed slowly from the room, his iron-grey head shaking a little.

Alex flung herself down, and Barbara laid her hand half timidly on her sister's, in one of her rare caresses.

"Don't cry, Alex. Are you really going? It's much the best idea, of course, and by the time you come back they may have something else to think about."

She giggled a little, self-consciously, and waited, as though to be questioned.

"I might be engaged to be married, or something like that, and then you'd come back to be my bridesmaid, and no one would think of anything unhappy."

Alex made no answer. Her tears had exhausted her and she felt weak and tired.

"How are you going to settle it all?" pursued Barbara tirelessly.

"Hadn't you better write to them and see if they'll have you? Supposing Mother Gertrude said you couldn't go there?"

A pang of terror shot through Alex at the thought.

"Oh, no, no! She won't say she couldn't have me."

She went blindly to the carved writing-table with its heavy gilt and cut-gla.s.s appointments, and drew a sheet of paper towards her.

Barbara stood watching her curiously. Feeling as though the power of consecutive thought had almost left her, Alex scrawled a few words and addressed them to the Superior.

"We can send it round by hand," said Barbara coolly. "Then you'll know tonight."

Alex looked utterly bewildered.

"It's quite early--Holland can go in a cab."

Barbara rang the bell importantly and gave her instructions in a small, hard voice.

"It's no use just waiting about for days and days," she said to Alex.