Not that he minded! No, he did not mind. Although he had no intention whatever of disputing the possession of Mrs. Prockter with her stepson, he did not object to all the implication in Helen's remarkable tone. On the contrary, he was rather pleased. Why should not he sit with a lady in the dark? Was he not as capable as any man of sitting with a lady in the dark? He was even willing that Helen should credit him, or pretend to credit him, with having prearranged the dark.

Ah! People might say what they chose! But what a dog he might have been had he cared to be a dog! Here he was, without the slightest preliminary practice, successfully sitting with a lady in the dark, at the first attempt! And what lady? Not the first-comer! Not Mrs. b.u.t.t! Not the Mayoress! But the acknowledged Queen of Bursley, the undisputed leader of all that was most distinguished in Bursley society! And no difficulty about it either! And she had squeezed his hand. She had continued to squeeze it. She, in her rich raiment, with her fine ways, and her correct accent, had squeezed the hand of Jimmy Ollerenshaw, with his hard old clothes and his Turkish cap, his simple barbarisms, his lack of style, and his uncompromising dialect! Why? Because he was rich? No.

Because he was a man, because he was the best man in Bursley, when you came down to essentials.

So his thoughts ran.

His interest in Helen's heart had become quite a secondary interest, but she recalled him to a sense of his responsibilities as great-stepuncle of a capricious creature like her.

"What are you and Mrs. Prockter talking about?" she questioned him in a whisper, holding the candle towards his face and scrutinising it, as seemed to him, inimically.

"Well," he said, "if you must know, about you and that there Andrew Dean."

She made a brusque movement. And then she beckoned him to follow her along the corridor, out of possible earshot of Mrs. Prockter.

"Do you mean to say, uncle," she demanded, putting the candle down on a small table that stood under a large oil-painting of Joshua and the Sun in the corridor, "that you've been discussing my affairs with Mrs.

Prockter?"

He saw instantly that he had not been the sage he imagined himself to be. But he was not going to be bullied by Helen, or any other woman younger than Mrs. Prockter. So he stiffly brazened it out.

"Ay!" he said.

"I never heard of such a thing!" she exploded, but still whispering.

"You said as I must help ye, and I'm helping ye," said he.

"But I didn't mean that you were to go chattering about me all over Bursley, uncle," she protested, adopting now the pained, haughty, and over-polite att.i.tude.

"I don't know as I've been chattering all over Bursley," he reb.u.t.ted her. "I don't know as I'm much of a chatterer. I might name them as could give me a start and a beating when it comes to talking the nose off a bra.s.s monkey. Mrs. Prockter came in to inquire about what had happened here this afternoon, as well she might, seeing as Emanuel went home with a couple o' gallons o' my water in his pockets. So I told her all about it. Her's a very friendly woman. And her's promised to do what her can for ye."

"How?"

"Why, to get Andrew Dean for ye, seeing as ye're so fixed on him, wi' as little gossip as maybe."

"Oh! So Mrs. Prockter has kindly consented to get Andrew Dean for me!

And how does she mean to do it?"

James had no alternative; he was obliged to relate how Mrs. Prockter meant to do it.

"Now, uncle," said Helen, "just listen to me. If Mrs. Prockter says a single word about me to any one, I will never speak either to her or you again. Mind! A single word! A nice thing that she should go up to Swetnam's, and hint that Andrew and Emanuel have been fighting because of me! What about my reputation? And do you suppose that I want the leavings of Lilian Swetnam? Me! The idea is preposterous!"

"You wanted 'em badly enough this afternoon," said he.

"No, I didn't," she contradicted him pa.s.sionately. "You are quite mistaken. You misunderstood me, though I'm surprised that you should have done. Perhaps I was a little excited this afternoon. Certainly you were thinking about other things. I expect you were expecting Mrs.

Prockter this evening. It would have been nicer of you to have told me she was coming."

"Now, please let it be clearly understood," she swept on. "You must go down and tell Mrs. Prockter at once that you were entirely in error, and that she is on no account to breathe a word about me to any one.

Whatever you were both thinking of I cannot imagine! But I can a.s.sure you I'm extremely annoyed. Mrs. Prockter putting her finger in the pie!... Let her take care that I don't put my finger into _her_ pie! I always knew she was a gossiping old thing, but, really--"

"Mr. Ollerenshaw!" A prettily plaintive voice rose from the black depths below.

"There! she's getting impatient for you!" Helen snapped. "Run off to her at once. To think that if I hadn't happened to hear the bell ring, and come out to see what was the matter, I should have been the talk of Bursley before I was a day older!"

She picked up the candle.

"I must have a light!" said James, somewhat lamely.

"Why?" Helen asked, calmly. "If you could begin in the dark, why can't you finish in the dark? You and she seem to like being in the dark."

"Mr. Ollerenshaw!" The voice was a little nearer.

"Her's coming!" James e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Helen seemed to lose her courage before that threat.

"Here! Take this one, then!" said she, giving James her candle, and fleeing down the corridor.

James had the sensation of transacting a part in a play at a theatre where the scenery was absolutely realistic and at the same time of a romantic quality. Moonlight streaming in through the windows of the interminable corridor was alone wanting to render the illusion perfect.

It was certainly astonishing--what you could buy with seven thousand two hundred and fifty pounds! Perhaps the most striking portion of the scenery was Helen's peignoir. He had not before witnessed her in a peignoir. The effect of it was agreeable; but, indeed, the modern taste for luxury was incredible! He wondered if Mrs. Prockter practised similar extravagances.

While such notions ran through his head he was hurrying to the stairs, and dropping a hail of candle-grease on the floor. He found Mrs.

Prockter slowly and cautiously ascending the stairway. If he was at the summit of Mont Blanc she had already reached Les Grands Mulets.

"What is it?" she asked, pausing, and looking up at him with an appealing gesture.

"What's what?"

"Why have you been so long?" It was as if she implied that these minutes without him were an eternity of ennui. He grew more and more conceited.

He was already despising Don Juan as a puling boy.

"Helen heard summat, and so she had come out of her bedroom. Her's nervous i' this big house."

"Did you tell her I was here, Mr. Ollerenshaw?"

By this time he had rejoined her at Les Grands Mulets.

"No," he said, without sufficiently reflecting.

"She didn't hear me call out, then?"

"Did ye call out?" If he was in a theatre, he also could act.

"Perhaps it's just as well," said Mrs. Prockter, after a momentary meditation. "Under the circ.u.mstances she cannot possibly suspect our little plot."

Their little plot! In yielding to the impulse to tell her that Helen was unaware of her presence in the house he had forgotten that he had made it excessively difficult for him to demolish the said plot. He could not one moment agree with enthusiasm to the plot, and the next moment say that the plot had better be abandoned. Some men, doubtless, could. But he could not. He was scarcely that kind of man. His proper course would have been to relate to Mrs. Prockter exactly what had pa.s.sed between himself and Helen, and trust to her common sense. Unhappily, with the intention of pleasing her, or rea.s.suring her, or something equally silly, he had lied to her and rendered the truth impracticable. However, he did not seem to care much. He had already pushed Helen's affairs back again to quite a secondary position.

"I suppose ye think it'll be all right, missis," he said, carelessly--"ye going up to Mrs. Swetnam's o' that 'n, and--"

"Rely on me," said she, silencing him. Thus, without a pang, he left Helen to her fate. They had touched the ground-floor. "Thank you very much, Mr. Ollerenshaw," said Mrs. Prockter. "Good-night. I'll make the best of my way home."