"You can imagine how it has come about?"

He regarded a great bunch of cl.u.s.tering red roses--the winged marauder hovering noisily over. "I think I can guess. The bees have carried the hue of the roses to them."

"Hue!" cried the girl, with light scorn. "What a prosaic way to express it! Say the soul, the heart's blood. Some of the primroses have yielded only a little; others have been transformed."

"You think, then, some flowers may be much influenced by others?"

"They can't help it," she answered confidently.

"Just as some people," he said in a low tone, "can't help taking into their lives some beautiful hue born of mere casual contact with some one, some time."

"What a poetical sentiment!" she laughed. "Really, it deserves a reward." As he spoke, she plucked a few flowers and held them out in her palm to him; he regarded her merry eyes, the bright tints.

Erect, with well-a.s.sured poise, she looked at him; he took one of the flowers, gazed at it, a tiny thing in his own great palm, a tiny, red thing, like a jewel in hue--that reminded him of--what? As through a mist he saw a spark--where?

"Only one?" she said in the same tone. "You are modest. And you don't even condescend to put it in your coat?"

He did so; in his gaze was a sudden new expression, something so compelling, so different, it held her, almost against her will. He seemed to see her and yet not fully to be aware of her presence; she drew back slightly. The girl's crimson lips parted as with a suspicion of faint wonder; the blue eyes, just a little soberer, were, also, in the least degree, perplexed. The man's breast suddenly stirred; a breath--or was it the merest suggestion of a sigh?--escaped the firm lips. He looked out of the window at the garden, conventional, the arrangement of lines one expected.

When his look returned to her it was the same he had worn when he had first stepped forward to speak with her that afternoon.

"Thank you for the lesson in botany, Miss Wray!" he said easily. "I shall not forget it."

The other primroses fell from her fingers; with a response equally careless if somewhat reserved, she turned and reentered the library.

Lord Ronsdale regarded both quickly; then started, as he caught sight of the flower in John Steele's coat. A frown crossed his face and he looked away to conceal the singularly cold and vindictive gleam that sprang to his eyes.

CHAPTER IV

TIDES VARYING

One evening about a fortnight later Lord Ronsdale, in a dissatisfied frame of mind, strolled along Piccadilly. His face wore a dark look, the expression of one ill-pleased with fortune's late att.i.tude toward him.

Plans that he had long cherished seemed to be in some jeopardy; he had begun to flatter himself that the flowery way to all he desired lay before him and that he had but to tread it, when another, as the soothsayers put it, had crossed his path.

A plain man, a man without t.i.tle! Lord Ronsdale told himself Miss Jocelyn Wray was no better than an arrant coquette, but the next moment questioned this conclusion. Had she not really been a little taken by the fellow? Certainly she seemed not averse to his company; when she willed, and she willed often, she summoned him to her aide. Nor did he now appear reluctant to come at her bidding; self-a.s.sertive though he had shown himself to be he obeyed, _sans_ demur, the wave of my lady's little hand. Was it a certain largeness and reserve about him that had awakened her curiosity? From her high social position had she wished merely to test her own power and amuse herself after a light fashion, surely youth's and beauty's privilege?

But whatever the girl's motive, her conduct in the matter reacted on my lord; the fellow was in the way, very much so. How could he himself pay court to her when she frivolously, if only for the moment, preferred this commoner's company? That very afternoon my lord, entering the music-room of the great mansion, had found her at the piano playing for him, her slim fingers moving over the keys to the tune of one of Chopin's nocturnes. He had surprised a steady, eloquent look in the fellow's eye turned on her when she was unconscious of his gaze, a glance the ardency of which there was no mistaking. It had altered at my lord's rather quiet and abrupt appearance, crystallized into an impersonal icy light, colder even than the n.o.bleman's own stony stare.

He had, perforce, to endure the other's presence and conversation, an undercurrent to the light talk of the girl who seemed, Lord Ronsdale thought, a little maliciously aware of the constraint between the two men, and not at all put out by it.

What made the situation even more anomalous to Ronsdale and the less patiently to be borne, was that Sir Charles understood and sympathized with his desires and position in the matter. And why not? Ronsdale's father and Sir Charles had been old and close friends; there were reasons that pointed to the match as a suitable one, and Sir Charles, by his general manner and att.i.tude, had long shown he would put no obstacle in the way of the n.o.bleman's suit for the hand of his fair niece. As for Lady Wray, Lord Ronsdale knew that he had in that practical and worldly person a stanch ally of his wishes; these had not become less ardent since he had witnessed the unqualified success of the beautiful colonial girl in London; noted how men, ill.u.s.trious in various walks of life, grave diplomats, stately amba.s.sadors, were swayed by her light charm and impulsive frankness of youth. And to have her who could have all London at her feet, including his distinguished self, show a predilection, however short-lived and capricious, for--

"Confound the cad! Where did he come from? Who are his family--if he has one!"

Thus ruminating he had drawn near his club, a square, imposing edifice, when a voice out of the darkness caused him abruptly to pause:

"If it isn't 'is lordship!"

The tones expressed surprise, satisfaction; the n.o.bleman looked down; gave a slight start; then his face became once more cold, apathetic.

"Who are you? What do you want?" he said roughly.

The countenance of the fellow who had ventured to accost the n.o.bleman fell; a vindictive light shone from his eyes.

"It's like a drama at old Drury," he observed, with a slight sneer.

"Only your lordship should have said: 'Who the devil are you?'"

Lord Ronsdale looked before him to where, in the distance, near a street lamp, the figure of a policeman might be dimly discerned; then, with obvious intention, he started toward the officer; but the man stepped in front of him. "No, you don't," he said.

The impa.s.sive, steel-like glance of Ronsdale played on the man; a white, shapely hand began to reach out. "One moment, and I'll give you in charge as--"

The fellow saw that Ronsdale meant it; he had but an instant to decide; a certain air of cheap, jaunty a.s.surance he had begun to a.s.sume vanished. "All right," he said quickly, but with a ring of suppressed venom in his voice. "I'll be off. Your lordship has it all your own way since the _Lord Nelson_ went down." There was a note of bitterness in his tones. "Besides, Dandy Joe's not exactly a favorite at headquarters just now, after the drubbing John Steele gave him."

"John Steele!" Lord Ronsdale looked abruptly round.

The fellow regarded him and ventured to go on: "I was witness for the police and Mr. Gillett, and he--Steele," with a curse, "had me on the stand. He knows every rook and welsher and every swell magsman, and all their haunts and habits. And he knows me--blame--" he made use of another expression more forcible--"if he don't know me as well as if he'd once been a pal. And now," in an injured tone, "Mr. Gillett calls me hard names for bringing discredit, as he terms it, on the force."

"What's this to me?"

The fellow stopped short in what he was saying; his small eyes glistened and he took a step forward. "Your lordship remembers the 'Frisco Pet?

Your lordship remembers him?" he repeated, thrusting an alert face closer.

"I believe there was a prize-fighter of that name," was the calm reply.

"I say!" The fellow let his jaw fall slightly; he gazed at the n.o.bleman with mingled shrewdness and admiration. "Your lordship remembers him _only_," with an accent, "as a patron of sport. Tossed a quid on him"--with a look of full meaning--"as your lordship would a bone to a dog. Perhaps," gaining in audacity, "your lordship would be so generous as to throw one or two now at one he once favored with his bounty."

"I--favored you? You lie!" The answer was concise; it cut like a lash; it robbed the man once more of all his hardihood. He slunk back.

"Very good," he muttered.

Lord Ronsdale turned and with a sharp swish of his cane walked on. The other, his eyes resentfully bright, looked after the tall, aristocratic, slowly departing figure.

As the n.o.bleman ascended the steps of his club he seemed again to be thinking deeply; within, his preoccupation did not altogether desert him. In a corner, with the big pages of the _Times_ before him, he read with scant interest the doings of the day; even a perennial telegram concerning a threatened invasion of England did not awaken momentary interest. He pa.s.sed it over as casually as he did the markets, or a grudging, conservative item from the police courts, all that the blue pencil had left of the hopeful efforts of some poor penny-a-liner. From the daily fulminator he had turned to the weekly medium of fun and fooling, when, from behind another paper, the face of a gray-haired, good-natured appearing person, quite different off the bench, chanced to look out at him.

"Eh? That you, Ronsdale?" he said, reaching for a steaming gla.s.s of hot beverage at his elbow. "What do you think of it, this talk of an invasion by the Monseers?"

"Don't think anything of it."

"Answered in the true spirit of a Briton!" laughed the other. "I fancy, too, it'll be a long time before John Bull ceases to stamp around, master of his own sh.o.r.es, or Britannia no longer rules the deep. But how is your friend, Sir Charles Wray? I had the pleasure of meeting him the other morning in the court room."

"Same as usual, I imagine, Judge Beeson."

"And his fair niece, she takes kindly to the town and its gaieties?"

"Very kindly," dryly.