"And--on the way?"

"Honoured madam--"

"They said--what?--quoting whom?"

"A Mr. Silk. But again--ma'am, I am awkward at lying. I cannot manage it."

"I like you the better for it."

"I did not believe--"

"Yet you might have believed. . . . And suppose that it were true, sir?"

He shook visibly. "I pray G.o.d to protect you," he managed to stammer.

Her face was white, but she answered him steadily. "I believe you to be a good man. . . . I will go to them. Where is d.i.c.ky?"

She glanced back along the alley.

"d.i.c.ky will stand where I have told him to stand: for hours unless I release him."

"Is that your naval code? And can a mere child stand by it so proudly? Oh," cried she, fixing on him a look he remembered all his days, "would to G.o.d I had been born a man!"

Yet fearlessly as any man she entered the great drawing-room. Miss Quiney still lay collapsed on her sofa. Mrs. Harry bent over her, but faced about.

"Mr. Hanmer managed, then, to discover you? Two women have called.

. . . I thought it better, their errand being what it was, to show them out."

"I can guess it, perhaps," Ruth caught her up with a wan smile.

"They managed to talk with him before he gave them their dismissal."

"Forgive me. I had not thought them capable--"

"There is nothing to forgive," Ruth a.s.sured her. "They probably told the truth, and the fault is mine."

Miss Quiney, incredulous, slowly raised her face from the cushions and stared.

"Yes," repeated Ruth, "the fault is entirely mine."

"But--but," stammered Mrs. Harry. Ruth had turned away towards the window, and the honest wife stared after her, against the light.

"But he will make it all right when he returns." She started, of a sudden. Cunningly as Ruth had dressed herself, Mrs. Harry's eyes guessed the truth. "You have written to him?"

"No."

"He guesses, at least?"

"No."

"Then you are writing to him? There is enough time."

"No."

Their eyes met. Ruth's asked, "And if I do not, will you?" Mrs.

Harry's met them for a few seconds and were abased.

No words pa.s.sed between these two. "And as for my Tatty," said Ruth lightly, stepping to the sofa, "she is not to write. I command her."

Chapter V.

A PROLOGUE TO NOTHING.

Sir Oliver wrote cheerfully. His lawsuit was prospering; his prompt invasion of the field had disconcerted Lady Caroline and her advisers. He had discovered fresh evidence of the late Sir Thomas's insanity. His own lawyers were sanguine. They a.s.sured him that, at the worst, the Courts would set aside the '46 will, and fall back for a compromise on that of '44, which gave the woman a life-interest only in the Downton estates. But the case would not be taken this side of the Long Vacation. . . . (It was certain, then, that he could not return in time.)

He had visited Bath and spent some weeks with his mother. He devoted a page or two to criticism of that fashionable city. It was clear he had picked up many threads of his younger days; had renewed old acquaintances and made a hundred new ones. Play, he wrote, was a craze in England; the stakes frightened a home-comer from New England. For his part, he gamed but moderately.

"As for the women, you have spoilt me for them. I see none--not one, dearest--who can hold a taper to you. Their artifices disgust me; and I watch them, telling myself that my Ruth has only to enter their b.a.l.l.s and a.s.semblies to triumph--nay, to eclipse them totally. . . .

And this reminds me to say that I have spoken with my mother.

She had heard, of course, from more than one. Lady Caroline's account had been merely coa.r.s.e and spiteful; but by that lady's later conduct she was already prepared to discount it. The pair encountered in London, at my Lady Newcastle's; and my mother (who has spirit) refused her bow. Diana, to her credit, appears to have done you more justice; and Mrs. Harry writes reams in your praise.

To be sure my mother, not knowing Mrs. Harry, distrusts her judgment for a Colonial's; but I vow she is the soundest of women. . . .

In short, dear Ruth, we have only to regularise things and we are forgiven. The good soul dotes on me, and imagines she has but a few years left to live. This softens her. . . .

"There is a rumour--credit it, if you can!--that my Aunt Caroline intends to espouse a Mr. Adam Rouffignac, a foreigner and a wine merchant; I suppose (since he is reputed rich) to arm herself with money to pay her lawyers. What _his_ object can be, poor man, I am unable to conjecture. It is a strange world. While her ugly mother mates at the age of fifty, Diana--who started with all the advantages of looks--withers upon the maiden thorn. . . ."

His letters, every one, concluded with protests of affection.

She rejoiced in them. But it was now certain that he could not return in time.

At length, as her day drew near, she wrote to him, conceiving this to be her duty. She knew that he would take a blow from what she had to tell, and covered it up cleverly, lightly covering all her own dread.

She hoped the child would be a boy. ("But why do I hope it?" she asked herself as she penned the words, and thought of d.i.c.ky.)

She said nothing of Mr. Silk's treachery; nothing of her ostracism.

This indeed, during the later months, she recognised for the blessing it was.

Towards the end she felt a strange longing to have her mother near, close at hand, for her lying-in. The poor silly soul could not travel alone. . . . Ruth considered this and hit on the happy inspiration of inviting Mrs. Strongtharm to bring her. Tatty was useless, and among the few women who had been kind Mrs. Strongtharm had been the kindest.

Ruth sat down and penned a letter; and Mrs. Strongtharm, unable to write, responded valiantly. She arrived in a cart, with Mrs.

Josselin at her side; and straightway alighting and neglecting Mrs.

Josselin, sailed into a seventh heaven of womanly fuss. She examined the baby-clothes critically.

"Made with your own pretty hands--and with all this mort o' servants tumblin' over one another to help ye. But 'tis nat'ral. . . .

It came to nothing with me, but I know. And expectin' a boy o'

course. . . . La! ye blushin' one, don't I know the way of it!"