He turned the handle of the door and went in, rather dreading to find Mary engaged with other visitors; but she was alone. She turned round from her desk as he came in, and, jumping up at sight of him, she came to meet him with an outstretched hand.

"Congratulate me," she said. "The book is finished and accepted.

Strangmans have taken it. They took only a week to decide. I am wild with pride and joy. Maurice Ilbert is one of their readers. He got it to read and recommended it enthusiastically. They are to publish it in June. Wasn't it generous of him, because there is so little of it he can agree with?"

"Oh, Ilbert's conscience is pretty elastic, I should say, and he can agree with many things," Sir Robin answered. He felt vaguely annoyed that Ilbert should have had anything to do with Mary or her book. Ilbert was one of the younger school of Tories, a free-lance he called himself, handsome, conceited, immensely clever, a golden youth with an air of Oxford and the Schools added to him. He was one of the youngest members of Parliament, and was gifted with a dazzling and impertinent wit. Sir Robin had occasionally smarted under Ilbert's sallies. He was a target for them, with his serious and simple views, his lean air of Don Quixote.

Mary looked at him reproachfully, as though the speech grieved her.

"He is very generous," she repeated. "He has come to see me. I found him most sympathetic. It is not a question of parties. He thinks awfully well of the book. He says it will stir the public conscience. To be sure, it is written out of experience, just the plain story of things as they are. I have learned so much since I began this work."

He had got over his first ill-temper, and now he spoke gently.

"I am sure it is a good book," he said. "I have always felt that you would make a good book of it because you know. Ilbert is a very capable critic."

He did Ilbert justice with some difficulty. He had a sharp thought of Ilbert coming in and out as he had been used to, when he should come no more. For the first time in his life, which had had no room for self-consciousness, he compared himself with another man, handsome, debonair, and remembered the lean visage over which mornings he pa.s.sed the razor, dark, lantern-jawed, almost grotesque. It was the only aspect of himself he knew, the one which was presented to him when he shaved.

"Now you are like yourself," Mary said sweetly. "It was not like you to throw cold water on my pleasure."

He turned away his head from her reconciled eyes. She was making what he had come to say doubly hard for him.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "I should like you to hear it from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me. I have spoken to you of my cousin, Nelly. I wanted you to be her friend.

Well--I am to marry my cousin in July."

There was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds of the street outside.

"There has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself," he went on as though he set his teeth to it. "I couldn't tell you when it began. It was made for us. I was always ready to be bound by it. She is as sweet a thing as ever lived; but sometimes I have thought that perhaps, perhaps, the cousinly closeness would make the other tie a difficult thing for Nelly to accept. I was wrong. She has no desire to break through that implicit bond."

He was making an explanation, and Mary Gray was not the girl to misunderstand him.

"I am very glad," she said cheerfully, "very glad. I hope you will be very happy. I am sure that you will be."

He looked at her with relief, which was not altogether agreeable. He had not done her any wrong after all. She was not angry with him. But, to be sure, why should she be? It was unlikely that she would have taken more than a friendly interest in him. He mocked at himself, and thought of his harsh uncomeliness. If he had been Ilbert now his conduct of all this winter past would have been unpardonable. But Ilbert and he were made in a different mould. Oddly, the thought did not comfort him--was a bitter one, rather.

"Won't you sit down and tell me about it?" Mary said, her eyes looking at him frankly and kindly. "I am not at all busy. The business of the Bureau is pretty well over for the day, and I can finish my proofs at home. Do, Sir Robin."

She pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down in it. He felt that he ought to go. It was a concession to his own weakness that he stayed. And he had no inclination at all to talk about his engagement. He tried to say something, tried to imagine what a man happily engaged to be married would find to say to a sympathetic woman-friend about it. He could think of nothing, only that so far as he could see there was no consciousness in the serious bright eyes that watched him. To be sure he ought to be glad. He would be the most miserable hound on earth if he wished her to be unhappy because he was marrying his cousin. Yet he was not glad of that ready sympathy.

"Well," she said at last, "you have nothing to tell me."

"What can I say"--he laughed awkwardly--"that I have not already said?

We have been brought up like brother and sister, but our elders always expected us to marry when we should be old enough. We have been taking it easy, Nell and I; thought there was plenty of time, you know."

"And at last you have decided that the plenty of time is up?" she said, filling the gap in his speech. Her eyes were wondering now. It was a strange thing to her that lovers should take it easy.

"Yes, that was it."

"Of course, I understand now why you felt you had to go that Thursday in Holy Week. It was very good of you to give us so much of your time."

"You didn't tell me how you got on, what you did," he said eagerly. He was glad to escape from the discussion of his too intimate affairs.

"What did you do on Good Friday, after all?"

"Mrs. Morres spent the day with me. It was a lovely day. We went to the service at St. Hugh's. The music was wonderful. Afterwards we sat by the open window and talked. My window-box was full of daffodils. They are just over now. Mrs. Morres said it was like the country. Afterwards I locked up the flat, put the key in my pocket, discovered a hansom--it wasn't easy, but 'Tilda, who comes in to tidy up for me every day, managed it. Her young man is a hansom-driver. I stayed the night at the Square, and we went down to Hazels next morning."

"Was it good?"

"Exquisite. I finished the book there. We had miraculous weather. I was able to work out of doors in the very same green garden where her Ladyship and I worked at the novel last year. The dogs used to sit all around me: and I believe the birds remembered me. I am sure I recognised one robin. I came back like a lion refreshed, with the full copy of the book done up in my portmanteau. Since then I have been enjoying the sweets of a mind at ease."

"You look it."

She did, indeed, look like a flower refreshed. She was wearing a soft grey gown with a little good, yellowed lace about the shoulders. The lace had been a gift from Lady Anne. It gave the final touch of distinction to Mary's air. She had the warm, pale complexion that goes well, with grey, and her hair seemed to have more than usual of gold in it. Standing against the light it was blown out like a little aureole full of stars. He had thought that he could like her in nothing so well as her dark blue frock, but now he thought that grey should be her only wear.

"What time do you leave?" he asked, glancing at the clock.

"Not for a long time yet. It is only half-past five. People come in and out here up to quite late. I foresee that my hours will be later and later."

"You mustn't let them take too much of your time. You must have time for exercise, for meals, for rest, for your friends----"

"I am so profoundly interested in the work that I don't grumble. As for my friends, they can see me here. For exercise I walk most of the way between Kensington and this, either coming or going. Society is not likely to claim me--at least, not in her Ladyship's absence. My few friends can find me here."

It was on his lips to ask her to let him walk part of the way home with her. He might have this last pleasure since he was coming here no more, at least not in the old way. But, as though her words had been a challenge, there was a clatter of wheels and horses in the narrow street below.

"A carriage," Mary said. "It will be one of the fine ladies who are interested in philanthropy and politics."

There was a rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs.

Sir Robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. Why should one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty, unimportant visit his last hour with Mary Gray?

He sat irritated, shy, awkward, his feelings faithfully reflected in his face. The door opened. A lady came in whom he had occasionally met in drawing-rooms, a slight, tall woman, with a brilliant brunette face. A delicate perfume came with her entrance. She was finely dressed, as fine as a humming-bird, and it became her. She looked incredibly young to be the mother of the slim youth who followed her. The youth was Maurice Ilbert. His mother, Mrs. Ilbert, was well known as one of the most brilliant and exclusive hostesses in fine London circles. Now she was holding Mary's two hands in her own grey-gloved ones.

"I insisted that my son should bring me to see you, Miss Gray," she was saying with _empress.e.m.e.nt_. "I hope you will excuse my descending on you like this. But I positively had to. This wonderful book of yours--my boy has been talking of it every hour we have been alone. It is such a pleasure to meet you. Ah--Sir Robin Drummond, how do you do? Are you also privileged to know about the wonderful book?"

To Robin Drummond's mind Ilbert's smile and nod had something amused, mocking in them. He had acknowledged the greeting with the curtest of nods.

Now he got up, shook hands awkwardly with Mrs. Ilbert, and made his farewells to Mary Gray. It was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as they had come. He had wanted to ask Mary if he might bring Nelly when she returned to town. He had wanted ... a good many other things. But now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. If the Ilberts were going to take her up!--to exploit the book! The Ilberts belonged to the young Tory party which his soul detested, or he said so in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in the matter of politics he had no personal rancours. Yet at the moment he thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because Mary Gray, who had learnt in the Radical school, was going to be made much of by advanced Tories. As he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward"

into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it was like chewing the cud of bitterness. Mary Gray had expanded to answer the genial warmth of Mrs. Ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun.

It was not in her to be ungracious, and Mrs. Ilbert was a charming woman.

And now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or six weeks till his mother and Nelly came home? All the winter he had been in the habit of seeing Mary Gray two or three times a week. He had been home a week from Lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take the old familiar road. He had found it a hard struggle to keep away for those ten days. And how was he going to do it for all those weeks to come? He had always had so much to say to her--or, at least, there had always been things he wanted to say, for in his most intimate moments he was naturally rather silent.

For a second his thoughts escaped his control, and settled on the pleasantness that bare ugly work-a-day room had meant to him all the winter through. The sodden winter streets, swept by bitter winds, horrible in fog and snow, through which he had hurried on his way had had something heavenly about them. "Ah, le beau temps pa.s.se!"

He pulled himself together with a sharp shock of reproach. He was to marry Nelly in less than three months' time, and he was an honourable man. When Nelly was his wife he meant that every thought of his heart should belong to her. He must see Mary Gray no more. Yet as he pushed the thought of her away from him it came to him that another man might find the ugly gas-lit room, the wet winter streets with their bawling crowds and flaring lights, something of the same magical world that he had found them. Supposing that man were Ilbert? Well, supposing it were so, what business had he to resent it? But however he might ask himself rhetorical questions, the jealousy of the natural man swept over him in pa.s.sion and fury. He said to himself that now he knew why he had always hated Ilbert. It was a prevision of this hour.

And at the moment the General was offering up his heartfelt thanks that Nelly's happiness was secure in the keeping of one so steady and reliable, if rather dull and slow, as Robin Drummond.

CHAPTER XXI