"Come in! Come in!" cried a voice from the other side of the open door of the drawing-room. Nellie's voice! The manners and state of a family that has industrially risen combine the spectacular grandeur of the caste to which it has climbed with the ease and freedom of the caste which it has quitted.

"Such a surprise!" said the voice. Nellie appeared, rosy.

Denry threw his new motoring cap hastily on to the hall-stand. No! He did not hope that Nellie would see it. He hoped that she would not see it. Now that the moment was really come to declare himself the owner of a motor-car he grew timid and nervous. He would have liked to hide his hat. But then Denry was quite different from our common humanity. He was capable even of feeling awkward in a new suit of clothes. A singular person.

"h.e.l.lo!" she greeted him.

"h.e.l.lo!" he greeted her.

Then hands touched.

"Father has n't come yet," she added. He fancied she was not quite at ease.

"Well," he said, "what's this surprise?"

She motioned him into the drawing-room.

The surprise was a wonderful woman, brilliant in black-not black silk, but a softer, delicate stuff. She reclined in an easy-chair with surpa.s.sing grace and self-possession. A black Egyptian shawl, spangled with silver, was slipping off her shoulders. Her hair was dressed-that is to say, it was _dressed_; it was obviously and thrillingly a work of elaborate art. He could see her two feet, and one of her ankles. The boots, the open-work stocking-such boots, such an open-work stocking, had never been seen in Bursley, not even at a ball! She was in mourning, and wore scarcely any jewelry, but there was a gleaming tint of gold here and there among the black which resulted in a marvellous effect of richness. The least experienced would have said, and said rightly: "This must be a woman of wealth and fashion." It was the detail that finished the demonstration. The detail was incredible.

There might have been ten million st.i.tches in the dress. Ten sempstresses might have worked on the dress for ten years. An examination of it under a microscope could but have deepened one's amazement at it.

She was something new in the Five Towns, something quite new.

Denry was not equal to the situation. He seldom was equal to a small situation. And although he had latterly acquired a considerable amount of social _savoir_, he was constantly mislaying it, so that he could not put his hand on it at the moment when he most required it, as now.

"Well, Denry!" said the wondrous creature in black, softly.

And he collected himself as though for a plunge and said:

"Well, Ruth!"

This was the woman whom he had once loved, kissed, and engaged himself to marry. He was relieved that she had begun with Christian names, because he could not recall her surname. He could not even remember whether he had ever heard it. All he knew was that, after leaving Bursley to join her father in Birmingham, she had married somebody with a double name, somebody well off, somebody older than herself; somebody apparently of high social standing; and that this somebody had died.

She made no fuss. There was no implication in her demeanour that she expected to be wept over as a lone widow, or that because she and he had on a time been betrothed therefore they could never speak naturally to each other again. She just talked as if nothing had ever happened to her, and as if about twenty-four hours had elapsed since she had last seen him. He felt that she must have picked up this most useful diplomatic calmness in her contacts with her late husband's cla.s.s. It was a valuable lesson to him: "Always behave as if nothing had happened-no matter what has happened."

To himself he was saying:

"I 'm glad I came up in my motor."

He seemed to need something in self-defence against the sudden attack of all this wealth and all this superior social tact, and the motor-car served excellently.

"I 've been hearing a great deal about you lately," said she with a soft smile, un.o.btrusively rearranging a fold of her skirt.

"Well," he replied, "I 'm sorry I can't say the same of you."

Slightly perilous, perhaps, but still he thought it rather neat.

"Oh!" she said. "You see I 've been so much out of England. We were just talking about holidays. I was saying to Mrs. Cotterill they certainly ought to go to Switzerland this year for a change."

"Yes, Mrs. Cap.r.o.n-Smith was just saying--" Mrs. Cotterill put in.

(So that was her name.)

"It would be something too lovely!" said Nellie in ecstasy.

Switzerland! Astonishing how with a single word she had marked the gulf between Bursley people and herself. The Cotterills had never been out of England. Not merely that, but the Cotterills had never dreamt of going out of England. Denry had once been to Dieppe, and had come back as though from Timbuctoo with a traveller's renown. And she talked of Switzerland easily.

"I suppose it is very jolly," he said.

"Yes," she said, "it's splendid in summer. But, of course, _the_ time is winter, for the sports. Naturally when you are n't free to take a bit of a holiday in winter you must be content with summer, and very splendid it is. I 'm sure you 'd enjoy it frightfully, Nell."

"I'm sure I should-frightfully!" Nellie agreed. "I shall speak to father. I shall make him--"

"Now, Nellie-" her mother warned her.

"Yes I shall mother," Nellie insisted.

"There _is_ your father!" observed Mrs. Cotterill, after listening.

Footsteps crossed the hall, and died away into the dining-room.

"I wonder why on earth father does n't come in here. He must have heard us talking," said Nellie, like a tyrant crossed in some trifle.

A bell rang, and the servant came into the drawing-room and remarked: "If you please, mum," at Mrs. Cotterill, and Mrs. Cotterill disappeared, closing the door after her.

"What are they up to, between them?" Nellie demanded, and she too departed, with wrinkled brow, leaving Denry and Ruth together. It could be perceived on Nellie's brow that her father was going "to catch it."

"I have n't seen Mr. Cotterill yet," said Mrs. Cap.r.o.n-Smith.

"When did you come?" Denry asked.

"Only this afternoon."

She continued to talk.

As he looked at her, listening and responding intelligently now and then, he saw that Mrs. Cap.r.o.n-Smith was in truth the woman that Ruth had so cleverly imitated ten years before. The imitation had deceived him then; he had accepted it for genuine. It would not have deceived him now-he knew that. Oh, yes! This was the real article that could hold its own anywhere, Switzerland! And not simply Switzerland, but a refinement on Switzerland! Switzerland in winter! He divined that in her secret opinion Switzerland in summer was not worth doing-in the way of correctness. But in winter--

II

Nellie had announced a surprise for Denry as he entered the house, but Nellie's surprise for Denry, startling and successful though it proved, was as naught to the surprise which Mr. Cotterill had in hand for Nellie, her mother, Denry, the town of Bursley, and various persons up and down the country.

Mrs. Cotterill came hysterically in upon the duologue between Denry and Ruth in the drawing-room. From the activity of her hands, which, instead of being decently folded one over the other, were waving round her head in the strangest way, it was clear that Mrs. Cotterill was indeed under the stress of a very unusual emotion.

"It's those creditors-at last! I knew it would be! It's all those creditors! They won't let him alone, and now they 've _done_ it."

So Mrs. Cotterill! She dropped into a chair. She had no longer any sense of shame, of what was due to her dignity. She seemed to have forgotten that certain matters are not proper to be discussed in drawing-rooms. She had left the room Mrs. Councillor Cotterill; she returned to it n.o.body in particular, the personification of defeat. The change had operated in five minutes.