"Laura! But you never thought, my dear--you never knew--that there was a cousin of Father Bowles' there--the man who keeps that little Catholic shop in Market Street. That's what comes, you see, of going to parties with people beneath you."

"Oh! a cousin of Father Bowles was there?" said Laura slowly. "Well, did he make a pretty tale?"

"Laura! you are the most provoking--You don't the least understand what people think. How could you go with him when everybody remonstrated?"

"n.o.body remonstrated," said the girl sharply.

"His sister begged you not to go."

"His sister did nothing of the kind. She was staying the night in the village, and there was literally nothing for me to do but come home with Hubert or to throw myself on some stranger."

"And such stories as one hears about this dreadful young man!" cried Augustina.

"I dare say. There are always stories."

"I couldn't even tell you what they are about!" said Augustina. "Your father would _certainly_ have forbidden it altogether."

There was a silence. Laura held her head as high as ever. She was, in fact, in a fever of contradiction and resentment, and the interference of people like Mrs. Denton and the Sisters was fast bringing about Mason's forgiveness. Naturally, she was likely to hear the worst of him in that house. What Helbeck, or what dependent on a Helbeck, would give him the benefit of any doubt?

Augustina knitted with all her might for a few minutes, and then looked up.

"Don't you think," she said, with a timid change of tone--"don't you think, dear, you might go to Cambridge for a few weeks? I am sure the Friedlands would take you in. You would come in for all the parties, and--and you needn't trouble about me. Sister Angela's niece could come and stay here for a few weeks. The Reverend Mother told me so."

Laura rose.

"Sister Angela suggested that? Thank you, I won't have my plans settled for me by Sister Angela. If you and Mr. Helbeck want to turn me out, why, of course I shall go."

Augustina held out her hands in terror at the girl's att.i.tude and voice.

"Laura, don't say such things! As if you weren't an angel to me! As if I could bear the thought of anybody else!"

A quiver ran through Laura's features. "Well, then, don't bear it," she said, kneeling down again beside her stepmother. "You look quite ill and excited, Augustina. I think we'll keep the Reverend Mother out in future.

Won't you lie down and let me cover you up?"

So it ended for the time--with physical weakness on Augustina's part, and caresses on Laura's.

But when she was alone, Miss Fountain sat down and tried to think things out.

"What are the Sisters meddling for? Do they find me in their way? I'm flattered! I wish I was. Well!--is drunkenness the worst thing in the world?" she asked herself deliberately. "Of course, if it goes beyond a certain point it is like madness--you must keep out of its way, for your own sake. But papa used to say there were many things a great deal worse.

So there are!--meanness, and shuffling with truth for the sake of your soul. As for the other tales, I don't believe them. But if I did, I am not going to marry him!"

She felt herself very wise. In truth, as Stephen Fountain had realised with some anxiety before his death, among Laura's many ignorances, none was so complete or so dangerous as her ignorance of all the ugly ground facts that are strewn round us, for the stumbling of mankind. She was as determined not to know them, as he was invincibly shy of telling them.

For the rest, her reflections represented, no doubt, many dicta that in the course of her young life she had heard from her father. To Stephen Fountain the whole Christian doctrine of sin was "the enemy"; and the mystical hatred of certain actions and habits, as such, was the fount of half the world's unreason.

The following day it was Father Bowles' turn. He came over in what seemed to be his softest and most catlike mood, rubbing his hands over his chest in a constant glee at his own jokes. He was amiability itself to Laura.

But he, too, had his twenty minutes alone with Augustina; and afterwards Mrs. Fountain ventured once more to speak to Laura of change and amus.e.m.e.nt. Miss Fountain smiled, and replied as before--that, in the first place she had no invitations, and in the next, she had no dresses.

But again, as before, if Mr. Helbeck should express a wish that her visit to Bannisdale should come to an end, that would be another matter.

Next morning Laura was taking a walk in the park when a letter was brought to her by old Wilson, the groom, cowman, and general factotum.

She took it to a sheltered nook by the riverside and read it. It was from Hubert Mason, in his best commercial hand, and it ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Fountain,--You would not allow me, I know, to call you Cousin Laura any more, so I don't attempt it. And of course I don't deserve it--nor that you should ever shake hands with me again. I can't get over thinking of what I've done. Mother and Polly will tell you that I have hardly slept at nights--for of course you won't believe me. How I can have been such a blackguard I don't understand. I must have taken too much. All I know is it didn't seem much, and but for the agitation of my mind, I don't believe anything would ever have gone wrong. But I couldn't bear to see you dancing with that man and despising me. And there it is--I can never get over it, and you will never forgive me. I feel I can't stay here any more, and mother has consented at last to let me have some money on the farm. If I could just see you before I go, to say good-bye, and ask your pardon, there would be a better chance for me. I can't come to Mr. Helbeck's house, of course, and I don't suppose you would come here. I shall be coming home from Kirby Whardale fair to-morrow night, and shall be crossing the little bridge in the park--upper end--some time between eight and nine. But I know you won't be there. I can't expect it, and I feel it pretty badly, I can tell you.

I did hope I might have become something better through knowing you.

Whatever you may think of me I am always

"Your respectful and humble cousin,

"HUBERT MASON."

"Well--upon my word!" said Laura. She threw the letter on to the gra.s.s beside her, and sat, with her hands round her knees, staring at the river, in a sparkle of anger and amazement.

What audacity!--to expect her to steal out at night--in the dusk, anyway--to meet him--_him_! She fed her wrath on the imagination of all the details that would belong to such an escapade. It would be after supper, of course, in the fast lengthening twilight. Helbeck and his sister would be in the drawing-room--for Mr. Helbeck was expected home on the following day--and she might perfectly well leave them, as she often did, to talk their little Catholic gossip by themselves, and then slip out by the chapel pa.s.sage and door, through the old garden, to the gate in the wall above the river bank, and so to the road that led along the Greet through the upper end of the park. Nothing, of course, could be easier--nothing.

Merely to think of it, for a girl of Laura's temperament, was already bit by bit to incline to it. She began to turn it over, to taste the adventure of it--to talk very fast to Fricka, under her breath, with little gusts of laughter. And no doubt there was something mollifying in the boy's humble expressions. As for his sleepless nights--how salutary!

how very salutary! Only the nail must be driven in deeper--must be turned in the wound.

It would need a vast amount of severity, perhaps, to undo the effects of her mere obedience to his call--supposing she made up her mind to obey it. Well! she would be quite equal to severity. She would speak very plain things to him--very plain things indeed. It was her first serious adventure with any of these big, foolish, troublesome creatures of the male s.e.x, and she rose to it much as Helbeck might have risen to the playing of a salmon in the Greet. Yes! he should say good-bye to her, let priests and nuns talk what scandal they pleased. Yes! he should go on his way forgiven and admonished--if he wished it--for kindred's sake.

Her cheek burned, her heart beat fast. He and she were of one blood--both of them ill-regarded by aristocrats and holy Romans. As for him, he was going to ruin at home; and there was in him this strange, artistic gift to be thought for and rescued. He had all the faults of the young cub.

Was he to be wholly disowned for that? Was she to cast him off for ever at the mere bidding of the Helbecks and their friends?

He would never, of course, be allowed to enter the Bannisdale drawing-room, and she had no intention at present of going to Browhead Farm. Well, then, under the skies and the clouds! A gracious pardon, an appropriate lecture--and a short farewell.

All that day and the next Laura gave herself to her whim. She was perfectly conscious, meanwhile, that it was a reckless and a wilful thing that she was planning. She liked it none the less for that. In fact, the scheme was the final crystallisation of all that bitterness of mood that had poisoned and tormented her ever since her first coming to Bannisdale.

And it gave her for the moment the morbid pleasure that all angry people get from letting loose the angry word or act.

Meanwhile she became more and more conscious of a certain network of blame and discussion that seemed to be closing about her and her actions.

It showed itself by a number of small signs. When she went into Whinthorpe to shop for Augustina she fancied that the a.s.sistants in the shop, and even the portly draper himself, looked at her with a sly curiosity. The girl's sore pride grew more unmanageable hour by hour. If there was some ill-natured gossip about her, going the round in the town and the neighbourhood, had she--till now--given the least shadow of excuse for it? Not the least shade of a shadow!

Mr. Helbeck, his sister, and Laura were in the drawing-room after supper.

Laura had been observing Mrs. Fountain closely.

"She is longing to have her talk with him," thought the girl; "and she shall have it--as much as she likes."

The shutters were not yet closed, and the room, with its crackling logs, was filled with a gentle mingled light. The sun, indeed, was gone, but the west still glowed, and the tall larches in the front enclosure stood black against a golden dome of sky. Laura rose and left the room. As she opened the door she caught Augustina's quick look of relief and the drop of the knitting-needles.

Fricka was safely prisoned upstairs. Laura slipped on a hat and a dark cloak that were hanging in the hall, and ran down the pa.s.sage leading to the chapel. The heavy seventeenth-century door at the end of it took her some trouble to open without noise, but it was done at last, and she was in the old garden.