"But it isn't the cost," Deleah explained; her face was rose-red with her effort to say that which she had determined should be said to the man they all disliked, but who was showing himself by the thoughtful little attentions to which she alluded, in his true colours. "It isn't the cost alone, it is the kind thought for which we are so grateful."

"Oh, come, Deleah!" Reggie interrupted. "I offered you tickets, you remember, and you weren't a bit grateful for the kind thought. And as for the lilies, I dare say I could send you flowers every morning from the conservatories at home, if you'd care for them."

"I should not in the least care for them from your conservatories. Don't send them, Reggie, or we should have to send them back."

"Why, pray? Speak for yourself, please," Bessie cried. "If you've any flowers going begging I'm not above taking them, Reggie, remember."

"The flowers aren't mine," Reggie reminded her at once. "They grow there--tons of them--and no one to look at them now, but Francis and Ada.

Yet, if I want to send a few to a girl there's questions asked, and a sickening fuss made. I order them from the nurseryman rather than have the f.a.g of it."

"Well--?"

"Oh, all right. I'll order some for you, Bessie."

Then, when tea was all but finished, a step was heard upon the stairs, and presently Mr. Gibbon came in. At the sight of the other two men his face fell perceptibly. To him also the Sabbath was a precious time. The hour, especially, which brought the meal over which they need not hurry for any evening work; in the room made sweet with flowers; in the company of the three charming ladies; on the table the extra delicacies Emily always provided for the occasion.

Boult! Forcus! The two men whom, least on earth, he desired to see there.

"Hallo, Gibbon!" his chief said; and the man addressed felt in his bones that the tone was unmistakably that of the employer to the employed. "Been getting forward for to-morrow, I suppose?"

No, Gibbon said, he had not; and he spoke curtly, and kept his heavy head up, and drew his brows together, and was somewhat offensive in manner, in the effort to show he was not subservient. He bowed sulkily to Mr.

Reginald Forcus, when Mrs. Day murmured that gentleman's name. The fact that the young man when he came of an age to take the third share which was to be his in the brewery would be rolling in money, was nothing to him, and he wished to show to all present it was not! At the concert he, who was ugly, and short, and poor, and of no account in the world, had had the best of the elegant young man with his fortune and the name which was one to conjure with in Brockenham. He had wrested Deleah from him, and pushed him on one side. He did not propose to smile amiably at him across the tea-table after that.

He was going to Lancashire to buy goods for his department to-morrow--he was absent there for four or five days every three weeks. This was his last evening of Paradise for a while; and the Serpent had entered there!

"You are late," Bessie rebuked him sweetly. "And you must wait for more tea to be made. Where have you been, pray? Give an account of yourself."

He had walked out five miles, he told her, to the garden of a friend who had a small conservatory. He had hoped to be rewarded with some flowers to return with, but had only been accorded the three roses he held in his hand.

"Very sweet of you to bring them for me, all the same," Bessie said, smiling graciously.

Gibbon was, however, shy or sullen this evening, for he seemed by no means anxious to relinquish the flowers; and when he did so he laid them between his plate and Deleah's, who promptly put them into Bessie's extended hand.

When pinned in the bosom of her grey frock the flowers had a charming effect, to which she called the attention of all present.

"Aren't they sweet, mama! Mr. Boult, Reggie, aren't they simply sweet! And poor Mr. Gibbon to have walked so many miles for them!"

And so, at cross purposes, with heart-burnings and some bitterness of spirit, they got through their Sunday tea.

"It would have been delightful if you had not invited your old Scrooge,"

Bessie, who, at any rate, had thoroughly enjoyed herself, flung at her sister.

CHAPTER XV

The Manchester Man

Mrs. Day had retired to write her letter to Bernard in the privacy of her own room, and Bessie, in radiant spirits, had gone off to dress for evening service, where she was to go escorted by Franky and Emily. Deleah was left in charge of the boarder.

It was a point of honour with them all that the young man should have his money's worth while under their roof, and above all, should have his meals in comfort. The cup which Bessie had poured out for him stood cold and untasted by his side. Deleah took it from him. Certainly he should not have the dregs of the tea-pot; she would brew a fresh pot for him.

"I beg you will not trouble, Miss Deleah. It is my fault in being late."

He, who held the creed that a gentleman must never allow a lady to wait on him (unless she was his mother, or he was married to her), must follow Miss Deleah to the kitchen, also on the upper floor, must watch her rinse the tea-pot, must advise with her as to the amount of tea required to make the three large cups he always drank, must himself pour the boiling water, she, with many exhortations from him to be very careful lest she scalded her fingers, holding the tea-pot. There was something delightfully homelike and familiar in this sharing of simple duties.

Deleah, returned to the sitting-room where she sat to fill his cup and to cut him bread-and-b.u.t.ter, was as lovely a vision as any man could desire to see at his board. Pleasantly and gaily she chattered, waiting on him with her dainty hands. He, tongue-tied, answering little, embarra.s.sed and ill at ease in that sweet society.

For a year and a half he had lived in the dingy house above the shop in Bridge Street. He had for eighteen months enjoyed that propinquity, that familiar intercourse, which is all that is necessary to make many an ugly woman beautiful in the eyes of the man in enjoyment of her society. It is small wonder then, if the poor Manchester man exaggerated in his own mind those unusual charms which Deleah incontestably possessed.

A year and a half! And in all that time he could never recall an occasion when he had been left for any length of time alone with Deleah, before. It was Bessie who had const.i.tuted herself his especial friend, had seized on him, talked to him, made confidences to him, and satisfied herself it was his wish to talk to her. Deleah, he knew, had looked on him as Bessie's property. He had resented this a.s.sumption, but had not known how to dispute it.

Besides being of a loveliness which he had come to think unsurpa.s.sed, she was so gentle, so tender-hearted, so pitiful, this young Deleah; so adorably kind. She had learnt in that grief and shame which he knew had befallen her a lesson, taught her he was sure by the pitying angels of G.o.d; to think no sorrow too trivial to be despised, to be tender even to the scratched finger, the bruised shins of the poor men and women scrambling painfully along the tough and th.o.r.n.y path of life.

He was a short and broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; and with his soul he worshipped the soul of Deleah.

"I am sorry," he suddenly said, cutting across some little triviality of hers with which she was striving to cover his silence--"sorry you did not have even one of the roses I walked ten miles to get for you."

"I?" she glanced fleetingly at him. "Oh, it does not matter, of course.

Bessie has them, and she loves them so. I had far rather Bessie had them."

He gazed upon her, reproachful but silent.

"Bessie so loves flowers," she said, remembering how Bessie had pounced upon the poor roses before they had been offered. It had not been a pretty sight--but Bessie--poor Bessie!--did such things.

"Miss Bessie so loves them to wear in her dress," he corrected.

And at that moment Miss Bessie burst into the room, attired for conquest and for church, the flowers which the boarder had walked so far to procure, pinned, as was the mode of the day, beneath the collar of her jacket. Gibbon glanced grudgingly at them, nestling becomingly enough under Bessie's plump chin.

"Oh, how glum you look!" cried Bessie in the best of spirits.

"Not glum at all," said Mr. Gibbon with something less than his usual politeness of tone.

"Only cross? Ah! I am so afraid of you! I must run away."

She beckoned to Deleah, who followed her to the tiny landing. "The Honourable Charles has got his back up because of Reggie," she whispered, "and Reggie is furious because of the Honourable Charles's flowers. Did you hear how he snapped at me just now?"

"Why should Mr. Gibbon be angry because of Reggie?"

"Oh, my dear innocent babe! Don't you know that men are sometimes jealous?"

"Yes. I know it. And I know another thing: and that is you were doing your best to make them jealous."

Bessie laughed delightedly as at a compliment: "I leave one of them to you. Try to get him into a better frame of mind before I come back," she said, and turned to run downstairs.

Deleah leaned over the railing of the tiny landing, lit by a single gas-jet above her head, to watch her go. She liked to see Bessie good-tempered and in good spirits, and if to believe that every man she knew was in love with her made her so, Deleah was willing to humour her.

About the devotion of young Forcus for Bessie she had her doubts, but that of the lodger she took as a matter of course.