It was characteristic of the man to be more afraid of a fainting fit than of a broken heart.

He went to her side and stood, not daring to touch her, for fear of arousing another of those fits of pa.s.sion in her which neither of them seemed to understand. At length she spoke in a singular monotonous tone which an experienced doctor would have recognised at once as the speech of a tongue unguided for the time being. She did not look up, but kept her eyes fixed on the carpet as if reading there.

"Some day," she said, "I will pay you back. Some day--some day. I do not know how, but I feel that you will be sorry you ever did this."

Twenty-five years afterwards these words came back to him in a flash.

They pa.s.sed through his brain--conglomerate--in a flash, in a hundredth part of the time required to speak them.

Even at the time of hearing them, spoken in that voice which did not seem to belong to Anna Hethbridge at all, he turned pale. For all the hatred that burnt within her like a fire smouldered in the deliberate tones of her voice. Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.

Michael went towards the bell.

"I am going to ring," he said, "for your maid."

"Twice," she muttered in the same vague way.

He obeyed her, ringing twice.

Presently the woman came.

"Your mistress," said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, "has been suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you."

Without looking round he pa.s.sed through the doorway and out into his own self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superst.i.tious Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human being, however helpless. Surely the h.e.l.l of the coward will be a twilight land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.

In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually learnt to shake off the past. The world is very large despite chance meetings. It is easy enough to find room for two even in the same county, with the exercise of a little care.

Twenty-five years elapsed before these two met again, and then they only had time to exchange a glance. By that time the result of their own actions had pa.s.sed beyond their control.

Seymour Michael walked across the Common, which was in those days still wild and almost beautiful; and on the whole he was pleased with the result of this interview. He knew that it was destined to come sooner or later--he had known that all along; and it might have been worse. It is characteristic of an untruthful nature to be impervious to the shame of mere detection. In Eastern countries the liar detected smiles in one's face. Detection is to an Oriental no punishment; something more tangible is required to pierce his mental epidermis.

Being quite incapable of a strong love this man was innocent of consuming hatred. He therefore vaguely wondered whether the day might come wherein he would once more lay siege to the affections of Anna Agar, a rich widow.

Had he seen the face of the woman whom he had just left as it lay at that moment, hardly less pale than the pillow between the fluted mahogany pillars of a huge four-post bed, he would not have understood its meaning. He would never have divined that the dull gleam shining between her half-closed eyelids was simple hatred of himself, that the restless, twitching lips were whispering curses upon his head, that the half-stunned brain was struggling back to circulation and thought for the sole purpose of devising hurt to him.

Seymour Michael, ignorant of all this, went peaceably back to his club, where he dressed, dined, and proceeded to pa.s.s the evening at a theatre.

That night, while he was displaying his diamond studs in the stalls of Drury Lane Theatre, was born into the world--long before his time--a child, Arthur Agar, destined to walk the smoothest paths of life, literally in silk attire; for he grew up to love such things.

But the ways of Nature are strange. She is very quiet; patient as death itself. She holds her hand for years--sometimes for a generation--but she strikes at last.

She is more cruel than man, or even than woman which is saying much, She is the best friend we have, and the worst foe, for she never forgives an outrage.

Nature raised her hand over this puny, whimpering child, Arthur Agar. She never forgot a mother's selfish pa.s.sion. She forgets nothing. When first he opened his little pink lids upon the world he looked round with a scared wonder in a pair of colourless blue-grey eyes; and that vague look of expectation never left his eyes in later life. It almost seemed as if the infant orbs could see ahead into the future--could discern the lowering hand of outraged Nature.

This hand was suspended over the ill-fated, poorly-endowed head for years, then Nature struck--hard.

CHAPTER V

AFTER NINETEEN YEARS

A sharp judgment shall be to them that be in high places.

"Yes, dear. I have great news for you to take back to your mother. Jem has got his commission--in a Goorkha regiment!"

The lady who spoke leant back in her chair, half turning her head, but not looking entirely round in the direction of the only other occupant of the room--a girl of nineteen.

"In a Goorkha regiment, Aunt Anna?" repeated the girl; "what is that? It sounds as if he would have to black his face and wear a turban. It suggests curry and gymkhanas (whatever they may be) and pyjamas and bananas and other pickles. A Goorkha regiment."

There was a faint drop in her tone--on the last three words, which to very keen ears might have signified reproach, but the hearer was not keen--merely cunning, which is quite a different matter.

"Yes, dear. They tell me that these Indian regiments are much the best for a young man who is likely to get on. There are so many more chances of promotions and--er--er--distinction."

The girl was standing by the open window, and she turned her head without otherwise moving, looking at the speaker with a pair of exceedingly discriminating eyes.

"Bosh, my dear aunt!" she whispered confidingly to the blind-cord.

"Yes," pursued the lady, with the eager credulity of her first mother, ever ready to believe the last speaker when belief is convenient--"Yes.

Sister Cecilia tells me that all the great men began in the Indian Service."

"Oh! I wonder where they finished. Royal Academy--finishing Academy.

Regimentals and a gold frame--leaning heroically on a mild-looking cannon with battles in the background."

"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Agar, who only half understood Dora Glynde at all times; "it is such a good thing for Jem. Such a splendid opportunity, you know!"

"Yes," echoed the girl, with a twist of her humorous lips. "Splendid!"

She had turned again, and was looking out of the window across a soft old lawn where two Wellingtonians towered side by side like sentries. Without glancing in the direction of her companion she knew the expression of Mrs. Agar's face, the direction of her gaze; the very thought in her shallow mind. She knew that Mrs. Agar was sitting with her arms on the little davenport, gazing rapturously at the photograph of an insipid young man with a silk-faced smoking jacket; with clean linen, clean countenance, clean hands, immaculate hair, and a general air of being too weak to be mean.

"Sister Cecilia," went on the elder lady, "seems to know all about it."

It is useless to attempt concealment of the fact that at this juncture Dora Glynde made a face--an honest schoolgirl behind-your-back Face--indicative of supreme scorn for some person or persons unspecified.

Hers was a countenance which lent itself admirably to the purpose, with lips full of humour, and capable, as such lips are, of expressing a great and wonderful tenderness. The face, _du reste_, was that of a healthy, fair-skinned English girl, liable to honest change from pale to pink, according to the dictates of an arbitrary climate. Her eyes were of a dark grey-blue, straightforward and steady, with a shadow of thought in them which made wise people respect her presence. She was not painfully beautiful, like the heroine of a novel--nor abnormally plain, like the ant.i.type who has found her way into fiction, and there (alone) brings all hearts to her feet.

"Is Jem glad?" she asked cheerfully. "Is he thirsting for gore and glory?"

"Oh, delighted! Arthur will be so pleased too. Dear boy, _he_ is so interested in soldiers, but of course he could not go into the army! He is too delicate--besides, the life is rough, and the risks are very great."

Mrs. Agar was speaking with her head slightly inclined to one side, and she never raised her adoring eyes from the photograph of the insipid young man. Had she done so she would have seen a look of patient, if comic, resignation come over the face of her youthful companion at the mention of her son's name.

"I will tell mother," said Dora Glynde, purposely ignoring Arthur Agar, whose name was always dragged sooner or later into every conversation.

"Fancy Jem in a helmet, or a turban, with his face blacked! All the same, if I were a man I should be a soldier. When does he go--to join his regiment?"

"Oh, almost at once."