"Whoever 'he' is, or isn't, which is nearer the truth, I should be sorry to sc.r.a.pe together such a tenth-rate brigade as you seem to delight in gathering round you. And now having shown how intensely and objectionably silly you can make yourself, Constance, how would it be to start off on your walk and leave me in peace?"

"Well, that is a nice way to talk to your sister, I must say, Alma,"

said Mrs Wyatt, entering the room in time to hear the latter half of the above remark.

"Pooh, mother. What odds!" cried Constance, maliciously. "Alma's only mad because I chaffed her about her mysterious 'mash.'"

"My dear Connie, don't use those vulgar words," expostulated the mother, but in a very different tone to that employed when speaking to her elder daughter. The younger went on--

"It's a fact, mother. Alma has made a mysterious 'mash' while she was away. She's as close as death about it, but I've drawn her at last.

Don't you see now why she can't tear herself loose from her beloved Swiss views? All enchanted land, don't you know."

Mrs Wyatt sniffed, and up went her virtuous nose into the air, sure prelude to the coming storm.

"Ah well, my dear," she said, in her most aggrieved and acidulated tone.

"Ah well, we can't all have uncles and aunts to think that nothing's good enough for us, to take us frisking round the world. And I'm afraid such changes are not for everybody's good. Apt to make them return home more dissatisfied, more discontented than ever." And emitting another sniff, Mrs Wyatt paused and awaited the reply which she expected and ardently hoped for.

But it did not come. More and more repellent to Alma did these almost daily wrangles become. The girl's fine nature scorned and loathed them, recognising their tendency to degrade and lower the self-respect of all parties concerned; indeed, there were times when it was as much as she could do to keep herself from extending that scorn and loathing to their originator.

Thus disappointed, Mrs Wyatt nagged on, saying a few of the most stinging things she could think of--stinging because unjust and untrue-- to move her daughter to a reply; but still it didn't come. At last, pushing back her chair, with a sigh Alma said--

"Where do you want to go to, Constance? I suppose I may as well go with you as"--stay here to be reviled, she was nearly saying, but put it--"as not."

"All right, come along then," was the reply. And this compliance having the effect of damming up the stream of the maternal eloquence, the two girls sallied forth.

At any other time, moved by the sheer and wanton contrariety of her disposition, Constance would have declined to profit by this concession--would have delighted to stand by and deftly add fuel to the fire. To-day, however, she had a reason for acting otherwise. And as they gained the tow-path of the river that reason took definite shape-- the shape of a youth.

He who stood there waiting for them was a medium-sized youth of about twenty, a good-looking boy, on the whole, with dark hair and eyes of a Jewish type, but remarkable for nothing in particular, unless it was a full, free, and perfectly unaffected conceit--on which latter account Alma was inclined to dislike him; but among Constance's galaxy of adorers he held, just then, a foremost place. He rejoiced in the name of Ernest Myers.

That he was there by appointment was obvious. He was clad in flannels, and in one hand held the bow rope of a light boat which he had drawn up to the side. With a half smile, Alma understood now her sister's disgust when she had refused to come out. She, Alma, was wanted to make a third. Well, she didn't mind that. If it amused Constance to carry on a harmless flirtation with young Myers--for it was not likely she could think seriously of a bank clerk with an extremely limited salary-- why should she baulk her? Besides, what were they but a couple of children, after all. So she was gracious to the young man, and allowed Constance to monopolise his conversation and attentions to her heart's content, earning a subsequent encomium from her sister to the effect that when she chose she could be the very ideal of a perfect "gooseberry."

They paddled up-stream in the evening sunshine. Alma, by common consent, was voted to the tiller ropes, but as it was neither Sat.u.r.day nor Sunday, and the personality of 'Arry was comparatively absent, her skill and attention were by no means overtaxed. There was nothing in the clearness of one of the four and a half fine days, which go to make up an English summer, to suggest it--and she had often handled the tiller ropes since--nothing in the green glow of the emerald meadows, or the droop of the pollard willows, to recall the furious, misty, leaden surface of a storm-lashed lake. Yet the recollection did come back to her that evening, and with unaccountable vividness, of the day when, tossing before the howling wrath of the tempest, they had given themselves up for lost. Even the varying demeanour of the different members of their boat's crew, when thus brought face to face with death--from the cynical indifference of Fordham, to the abject, craven terror displayed by the chaplain, Scott--rose up clearly before her mind's eye, and looking back upon it all, and upon the days that followed, she was conscious of a strangely blank feeling as of a want unsupplied.

"Hallo!--By Jove! Look out! Excuse me, Miss Wyatt. But you as nearly as possible took us right bang into that boat."

It was young Myers who spoke. Upon Alma the warning was needed. In the middle of his words she had pulled her right rope only just in time.

But as the boat, which they had so narrowly grazed, shot by she obtained a distinct view of its occupants. And they were two, the one a fine-looking, well-built specimen of young English manhood, who was sculling, the other a dark, handsome girl seated in the stern-sheets.

The boats had pa.s.sed each other, as it were, in a flash. But in that brief moment the faces of both its occupants were vividly stamped upon Alma's vision. And that of the man was that of none other than Philip Orlebar.

She had seen him, but he had not recognised her. He was bending forward talking to his companion in that airy, half-caressing, half-confidential tone that Alma knew so well. She had seen him clearly and distinctly, but he had failed to recognise her, and for this the droop of her sunshade might account.

The droop of a sunshade! On such frail pivots do the fortunes of mankind turn! But for the droop of that sunshade the end of this story might, we trow, have to be written very differently.

"Why, Miss Wyatt! You do look startled!" exclaimed young Myers. "We are well out of it now, though, and a miss is as good as a mile when all's said and done. But it was a near thing."

He might well remark on her aspect. The suddenness of the interruption, the unexpectedness of the recognition, had startled every trace of colour from her face. Looking back, cautiously at first, and still under cover of the parasol, she gazed after the receding boat, now a long way astern. Yes, it was him. But who was his companion? Well he had not been slow to console himself, she thought bitterly.

"How very stupid of me," she replied. "It was, as you say, a near thing. I must not neglect my responsible duties again though."

But while the two younger members of the trio were in high spirits and laughed and chatted, and bantered each other for the rest of the time they were out, Alma was silent and _distraite_. And an hour or so later when they landed at the tow-path in the dusk and bade good-bye to their escort and chief oarsman it seemed to Alma that that day had somehow drawn down a curtain across her life. For this brief glimpse of her former lover had stirred her heart with a dull and aching sense of void.

She recognised now that she had been fonder of Philip Orlebar than she had chosen to admit, had, in fact, loved him. Well, it was too late now for regrets. She it was who in her scorn and bitter anger had sent him away from her, and now he had already begun to console himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

"...FOR HIS HOUSE AN IRREDEEMABLE WOE."

"Well, Francis, and what do you think of that idle, good-for-nothing boy of yours now? He seems in no great hurry to come and see his father--in rather less of a hurry than his father was to go and see him."

Thus Lady Orlebar one evening as she sat at dinner with her husband some few weeks after we last saw them together. There was just sufficient point in the ill-conditioned and therefore characteristic sneer to give it effect. Nearly a month had gone by since Philip's return from the Continent, but somehow he had not found time to pay his father a visit.

He was still in Wales, still staying with Mrs Daventer, where he had been ever since his return aforesaid.

"He seems tolerably happy where he is," went on Lady Orlebar, maliciously, having failed to provoke a reply. "Of course there is a girl in the case, and that with one of Philip's temperament can lead to but one result. So make up your mind to hear by any post that you are endowed with a daughter-in-law of the least desirable kind."

Still Sir Francis made no reply. He was, in fact, very sore, very hurt, by Philip's want of consideration, and his wife's gibing sneers were probing the wound. This she failed not to see, and, seeing, enjoyed thoroughly, after the manner of her kind.

"Failing the daughter-in-law I prophesy the outcome will be an action for breach of promise," she went on, characteristically eager to provoke a battle of words in order to enjoy the triumph of crushingly defeating the enemy. "Philip is just the sort who is sent into the world to const.i.tute an easy prey for rogues and adventuresses. The boy is simply a born fool."

Dinner was over, and the servants had withdrawn. The dessert was on the table--had been for some time--and Sir Francis was wistfully wondering how long it would be before his wife thought fit to follow the example of the servants. Just then a footman entered bearing some letters on a salver. The evening post had arrived.

Welcoming any diversion, Sir Francis proceeded to open his. But at sight of the contents of one of them, his face changed, and an exclamation escaped him. His wife looked quickly up, then without a moment's hesitation she stretched forth her hand and seized the letter, which in his first bewilderment he had let fall upon the table. A harsh, sneering laugh escaped her as she ran her eye down the contents, and then proceeded to read them aloud:--

"Capias Chambers, Golden Fleece Lane, E.C.

"_September 2_ 3, 188-.

"Glover _versus_ Orlebar.

"Dear Sir,--Instructed by our client, Miss Edith Glover, we have written to your son, Mr Philip Orlebar, claiming from him the sum of 10,000 (ten thousand) pounds damages by reason of non-fulfilment of his promise to marry our aforesaid client.

"Up till now we have received no reply; but we think it may be in the interest of the young gentleman himself that you should be made aware of this claim against him.

"Trusting that by adopting this course further steps may be rendered unnecessary--

"We are, dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,

"Swindell and Shears.

"To Sir Francis Orlebar, Bart.,

"Claxby Court, Rushtonborough."

"Ha-ha! Didn't I say so?" she cried. "And scarcely are the words out of my mouth than here it is--an action for breach of promise! Well, and what are you going to do now, Francis?"

"Nothing. Take no notice of it whatever. The thing is a mere attempt at a swindle--a clumsy, impudent swindle. I sha'n't give it another moment's thought."