But a devil of defiance had entered into me. With a face as snakily sweet as I could make it, I made my daintiest bow to Mrs Monnerie's guests--to Lord Chiltern, a tall, stiffish man, who blinked at our introduction almost as solemnly and distastefully as had Mrs Bowater's Henry, and to Lady Diana Templeton. A glance at this lady reminded me spitefully of an old suspicion of mine that Mrs Monnerie usually invited her duller friends to luncheon and the clever to dinner. Not that she failed to enjoy the dull ones, but it was in a different way.

A long, gilded Queen Anne mirror hung opposite my high chair, so that whenever I glanced across I caught sight not only of myself with cheeks like carnations above my puffed blue gown, but also of Adam Waggett.

Ever and again his red hand was thrust over my shoulder--the hand that had held the wren. And I was so sick at heart--on yet another wren's behalf--that I could hardly repress a shudder. Poor Adam; whenever I think of him it is of a good, yet weak and silly man. He has found his Eden, so I have heard, in New Zealand now, and I hope he has forgiven my little share in his life.

Throughout that dull luncheon my tongue went mincing on and on--in sheer desperation lest any one should detect the state of mind I was in. With pale eyes Percy sn.i.g.g.e.red over his soup. Susan was silent and self-conscious. Captain Valentine frowned and nibbled his small moustache. Lady Diana Templeton smiled like a mauve-pink snapdragon, and Mrs Monnerie led me on. It was my last little success. Luncheon over, I was helped down from my chair, and allowed "to run away."

What was it Lord Chiltern was saying? I paused on the threshold: "An exquisite little performance. But isn't it a little selfish to hide her light under your admirable bushel, Mrs Monnerie? The stage, now?"

"The stage!" exclaimed Mrs Monnerie in consternation. "The child's as proud as Lucifer. She would faint at the very suggestion. You have heard her deliciously sharp little tongue, but her tantrums! Still, she's a friendly and docile little creature, and I am very well satisfied with her."

"And not merely that"; paced on the rather official voice. "I was noticing that something in the eyes. Almost disconcertingly absent yet penetrating. She thinks. She comes and goes in them. I noticed the same peculiarity in poor Willie Arbuthnot's. And this little creature is scarcely more than a child."

"I think it is _perfectly_ sad, Lord Chiltern," broke in a reedy, vibrating voice. "In some circ.u.mstances it would be _tragic_. It's a mercy she does not realize ... _habit_, you know...."

Listeners seldom hear such good things of themselves. Why, then, was it so furious an eavesdropper that hastened away with a face and gesture worthy of a Sarah Siddons!

No: my box remained locked. Yet, thought I, as I examined its contents, any dexterous finger could have opened that tiny lock--with a hairpin.

And how else could my secret have been discovered? Fleming or f.a.n.n.y--or both of them: it maddened me to think of them in collusion. I would take no more risks. I tore Mr Anon's letter into fragments, and these again into bits yet smaller, until they were almost like chaff. These I collected together and put into an envelope, which I addressed in sprawling capitals to Miss f.a.n.n.y Bowater, at No. 2.

Then for a sombre half-hour I communed intensely at the window with my Tank. It was hot and taciturn company--not a breath of air stirred my silk window-blind--yet it managed to convey a few home truths, and even to increase the light a little in which I could look at the "bushel."

There _were_ "mercies," I suppose. Out of the distance rolled the vague reverberation of the enormous city. I watched the sparrows, and they me.

When the time came for my afternoon walk, I put on my hat, with eyes fixed on my letter, and, finally--left it behind me.

Was it for discretion's sake, or in shame? I cannot say, but I remember that during my slow descent to the empty hall I kept my eyes fixed with peculiar malignity on the milk-white figure of a Venus (not life-size, thank Heaven), who had been surprised apparently in the very act of entering the water for a bathe. Why I singled her out for contempt I cannot say; for she certainly looked a good deal more natural and modest than many of the fine ladies who heedlessly pa.s.sed her by. It was merely my old problem of the Social Layers over again. And my mind was in such a state of humiliation and discomfort that I hadn't the energy even to smile at a marble G.o.ddess.

f.a.n.n.y was awaiting me on my return. A strand of hair was looped demurely and old-fashionedly round each small ear; her clear, unpowdered skin had the faint sheen of a rose. She stood, still and shimmering, in the height of pleasant spirits, yet, I thought, watchful and furtive through it all. She had come, she said, to congratulate me on my "latest conquest."

Mrs Monnerie, she told me, had been pleased with my entertainment of the late First Commissioner of--was it Good Works? But I must beware. "Once a coquette, Midgetina, soon _quite_ heartless," she twitted me.

To which I called sourly, as I stood drying my hands, that pretty compliments must be judged by where they come from.

"Come from, indeed," laughed f.a.n.n.y. "He's a positive Peer of the Realm, and baths, my dear, every morning in the Fount of Honours. You wouldn't be so flippant if ... hallo! what's this? A letter--addressed to Me!

Where on earth did this come from?"

Heels to head, a sudden heat swept over me. "Oh," said I hollowly, "that's nothing, f.a.n.n.y. Only a little joke. And now you are here---- But surely," I hurried on, "you don't really like that starched-up creature?"

But f.a.n.n.y was holding up my envelope between both her thumbs and forefingers, and steadily smiling at me, over its margin. "A joke, Midgetina; and one of your very own. How exciting. And how bulgy. May I open it? I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Please, f.a.n.n.y, I have changed my mind. Let me have it. I don't feel like jokes now."

"But honestly, _I_ do. Some jokes have such a deliciously serious side.

Besides, as you have just come in, why didn't this go out with you?" To which I replied stubbornly that it was not her letter; that I had thought better of it; and that she had no right to question me if I didn't want to answer.

"I see." Her voice had glided steadily up the scale of suavity. "It's a bit more of the dead past, is it? And you don't like the--the fragrance. But surely, if we are really talking about rights--and, according to my experience, there are none too many of them knocking about in this world--surely I have the right to ask what pulpy mysteries are enclosed in an envelope addressed to me in what appears to be a feigned ca--calligraphy? Look. I am putting the thing on the floor so that we shall be on--well--fairly equal terms. Even your sensitive Sukie could not be more considerate than that, could she? All I want to know is, what's inside that envelope? If you refuse to say, well and good. I shall retire to my maidenly couch and feed on the blackest suppositions."

It was a cul-de-sac; and the only thing to do was to turn back boldly and get out of it.

"Well, f.a.n.n.y; I have told you that I thought better of sending it. But I am not ashamed. Even if I am wrong, I suppose you are at liberty to have your little jokes too, and so is Percy Maudlen. It's a letter, torn up; that's all."

"A letter--so I guessed. Who from?"

I gazed at her silently.

"Yes?"

"It's hateful of you, f.a.n.n.y.... From the hunchback."

Her astonishment, surely, could not have been pretence. "And what the devil, you dear, stammering little midgelet, has your miserable little hunchback to do with me? Why send his scrawls to _me_--and in bits?"

"Because," said I, "I thought you had been making fun of him and me to--the others."

The light hands lifted themselves; the dark head tilted a little back and askew. "_What_ a roundabout route," she sighed. But her face was false to the smooth, scornful accents. "So you suspected me of spying on you? _I_ see. And gentle Susan Monnerie was kind enough to smear a little poison on the fangs. Well, Midgetina love, I tell you this. It's safer sometimes to lose your reputation than your temper. But there's a limit----"

"Hush," I whispered, for I had sharper ears than f.a.n.n.y even when rage had not deafened her own. I pounced on the envelope--but only just in time.

"It's Mr Percy, miss," announced Fleming, "and may he come in?"

"Hallo!" said that young man, lounging greyly into view, "a bad penny, Miss M. I happened to be pa.s.sing Buszard's just now, and there was the very thing! Miss Bowater says you have a sweet tooth, and they really are rather neat." He had brought me the daintiest little box of French doll bonbons. I glared at it; I glared at him--hardly in the mood for any more of his little jokes--not even one tied up with pale-blue ribbon.

"There's another thing," he went on. "Susan told us that your birthday was coming along--August 25th, isn't it? And I have proposed a Grand Birthday Party, sort of general rag. Miss M. in the Chair. Don't you think it's a ripping idea of mine, Miss Bowater?"

"_Most_ ripping," said f.a.n.n.y, meeting his long, slow, sneaking glance with a slight and seemingly involuntary lift of her narrow shoulder. A long look I could not share pa.s.sed between them; I might have been a toy on the floor.

"But you don't look positively in the pink," he turned to me. "Now, does she? Late hours, eh? You look crumpled, doesn't she? Cherry, too: we must have in another Vet." The laugh died on his long lips. His eyes roved stealthily from point to point of the basking afternoon room, then once more sluggishly refastened on f.a.n.n.y. I sat motionless, watching his every turn and twist, and repeating rapidly to myself, "Go away, my friend; go away, go away." Some nerve in him must have taken the message at last, or he found f.a.n.n.y's silence uneasy. He squinnied a glinting, curious look at me, and as jauntily as self-consciousness permitted, took his departure.

The door shut. His presence fainted out into a phantasm, and that into nothing at all. And for sole evidence of him basked on my table, beneath a thread of sunlight, his blue-ribboned box.

"_Is_n't he a ninny?" sighed f.a.n.n.y. "And yet, my dear: there--but for the grace of G.o.d--goes Mr f.a.n.n.y Bowater."

Her anger had evaporated. There stood my familiar f.a.n.n.y again, slim as a mast, her light eyes coldly shining, her bearing, even the set of her foot showing already a faint gilding of Mrs Monnerie. She laughed--looking straight across at me, as if with a challenge.

"Yes, my dear, it's quite true. I'm not a bit cross now. Milk and Honey.

So you see even a fool may be a lightning conductor. I forgive," she pouted a kiss from the tips of her fingers, "I forget."

And then she was gone too, and I alone. What an easy, consoling thing--not to care. But though f.a.n.n.y might forgive, she must have found it unamusing to forget. The next evening's post brought me an exquisitely written little fable, signed "F. B.," and ent.i.tled _Asteroida and the Yellow Dwarf_. I couldn't enjoy it very much; though no doubt it must have been exceedingly entertaining when read aloud.

Still f.a.n.n.y did not _care_. While I myself was like those railway lines under the green bank I had seen on my journey to Lyme Regis. A day's neglect, a night's dews, and I was stained thick with rust. A dull and heedless wretchedness took possession of me. The one thought that kept recurring in every instant of solitude, and most sharply in those instants which pounced on me in the midst of strangers, was, how to escape.

I put away the envelope and its contents into my box again. And late that night, when I was secure from interruption, I wrote to Wanderslore.

Nibbling a pen is no novelty to me, but never in all my life have I spent so blank and hideous an hour merely in the effort to say No to one simple question so that it should sound almost as pleasant as Yes, and far more unselfish. "Throw the stone," indeed; when my only desire was to heal the wound it might make.

Thank goodness my letter was kinder than I felt. My candelabra burned stilly on. Cold, in the blues, I stood in my dressing-gown and spectacling my eyes with my hands, looked out of the chill gla.s.s into the London night. Only one high garret window shone out in the dark face of the houses.... Who, where, was Willie Arbuthnot with the peculiar eyes? Had Lord Chiltern a tank on his roof--his back-yard? What a fool I had been to abandon myself and come here. If they only knew how I despised them. And the whole house asleep. So much I despised them that not until I was dressing the following morning did I stoop into my Indian mirror to see if I could discover what Lord Chiltern had meant.

During the next few weeks Mrs Monnerie--with ample provocation--almost yawned at sight of me. In a bitter instant of rebellion our eyes met.

She detected the "ill-wish" in mine, and was so much taken aback by it that I should hardly have recognized the set face that glared at me as hers at all. Well, the fancier had wearied of her fancy--that was all.

If I had been just an ordinary visitor, she would soon have washed her hands of me. But I was notorious, and not so easily exchanged as bronchitic Cherry had been for her new Pekinese, Plum.

Possibly, too, the kind of aversion she now felt against me was a closer bond than even virtuosity or affection. She would sit with a sullen stare under her heavy eyelids watching me grow more and more heated and clumsy over my sc.r.a.p of embroidery or my game of Patience. Meanwhile Chakka would crack his nut, and with stagnant eye sidle thievishly up and down the bars of his cage; while Plum gobbled up dainties or snored on his crimson cushion. We three.