"It was only twenty minutes," says Mona.

"Twenty minutes! By Jove, she must be more interesting than we thought,"

says Mr. Darling, "if you can put it at that time. I thought she was going to eat you, she looked so pleased with you. And no wonder, too:"

with a loud and a hearty sigh.

"She was very nice to me," says Mona, "and is, I think, a very pleasant old lady. She asked me to go and see her next Thursday."

"Bless my stars!" says Nolly; "you _have_ been going it. That is the day on which she will receive no one but her chief pets. The d.u.c.h.ess, when she comes down here, reverses the order of things. The rest have an 'at home' day. She has a 'not at home' day."

"Where are people when they are not at home?" asks Mona, simply.

"That's the eighth wonder of the world," says Mr. Darling, mysteriously.

"It has never yet been discovered. Don't seek to pry too closely into it; you might meet with a rebuff."

"How sad Nicholas looks!" says Mona, suddenly.

In a doorway, somewhat out of the crush, Sir Nicholas is standing. His eyes are fixed on Dorothy, who is laughing with a gay and gallant plunger in the distance. He is looking depressed and melancholy; a shadow seems to have fallen into his dark eyes.

"Now he is thinking of that horrid lawsuit again," says Nolly, regretfully, who is a really good sort all round. "Let us go to him."

"Yes; let me go to him," says Mona, quickly; "I shall know what to say better than you."

After a little time she succeeds in partially lifting the cloud that has fallen on her brother. He has grown strangely fond of her, and finds comfort in her gentle eyes and sympathetic mouth. Like all the rest, he has gone down before Mona, and found a place for her in his heart. He is laughing at some merry absurdity of hers, and is feeling braver, more hopeful, when a little chill seems to pa.s.s over him, and, turning, he confronts a tall dark young man who has come leisurely--but with a purpose--to where he and Mona are standing.

It is Paul Rodney.

Sir Nicholas, just moving his gla.s.s from one eye to the other, says "Good evening" to him, bending his head courteously, nay, very civilly, though without a touch, or suspicion of friendliness. He does not put out his hand, however, and Paul Rodney, having acknowledged his salutation by a bow colder and infinitely more distant than his own, turns to Mona.

"You have not quite forgotten me, I hope, Mrs. Rodney. You will give me one dance?"

His eyes, black and faintly savage, seem to burn into hers.

"No; I have not forgotten you," says Mona, shrinking away from him. As she speaks she looks nervously at Nicholas.

"Go and dance, my dear," he says, quickly, in a tone that decides her.

It is to please him, for his sake, she must do this thing; and so, without any awkward hesitation, yet without undue haste, she turns and lays her hand on the Australian's arm. A few minutes later she is floating round the room in his arms, and, pa.s.sing by Geoffrey, though she sees him not, is seen by him.

"Nicholas, what is the meaning of this?" says Geoffrey, a few moments later, coming up with a darkening brow to where Nicholas is leaning against a wall. "What has possessed Mona to give that fellow a dance?

She must be mad, or ignorant, or forgetful of everything. She was with you: why did you not prevent it?"

"My dear fellow, let well alone," says Nicholas, with his slow, peculiar smile. "It was I induced Mona to dance with 'that fellow,' as you call him. Forgive me this injury, if indeed you count it one."

"I don't understand you," says Geoffrey, still rather hotly.

"I think I hardly understand myself: yet I know I am possessed of a morbid horror lest the county should think I am uncivil to this man merely because he has expressed a hope that he may be able to turn me out of doors. His hope may be a just one. I rather think it is: so it pleased me that Mona should dance with him, if only to show the room that he is not altogether tabooed by us."

"But I wish it had been any one but Mona," says Geoffrey, still agitated.

"But who? Doatie will not dance with him, and Violet he never asks. I fell back, then, upon the woman who has so little malice in her heart that she could not be ungracious to any one. Against her will she read my desire in my eyes, and has so far sacrificed herself for my sake. I had no right to compel your wife to this satisfying of my vanity, yet I could not resist it. Forget it; the dance will soon be over."

"It seems horrible to me that Mona should be on friendly terms with your enemy," says Geoffrey, pa.s.sionately.

"He is not my enemy. My dear boy, spare me a three-act drama. What has the man done, beyond wearing a few gaudy rings, and some oppressive neckties, that you should hate him as you do? It is unreasonable. And, besides, he is in all probability your cousin. Parkins and Slow declare they can find no flaw in the certificate of his birth; and--is not every man at liberty to claim his own?"

"If he claims my wife for another dance, I'll----" begins Geoffrey.

"No, you won't," interrupts his brother, smiling. "Though I think the poor child has done her duty now. Let him pa.s.s. It is he should hate me, not I him."

At this Geoffrey says something under his breath about Paul Rodney that he ought not to say, looking the while at Nicholas with a certain light in his blue eyes that means not only admiration but affection.

Meantime, Mona, having danced as long as she desires with this enemy in the camp, stops abruptly before a curtained entrance to a small conservatory, into which he leads her before she has time to remonstrate: indeed, there is no apparent reason why she should.

Her companion is singularly silent. Scarce one word has escaped him since she first laid her hand upon his arm, and now again dumbness, or some hidden feeling, seals his lips.

Of this Mona is glad. She has no desire to converse with him, and is just congratulating herself upon her good fortune in that he declines to speak with her, when he breaks the welcome silence.

"Have they taught you to hate me already?" he asks, in a low, compressed tone, that make her nerves a.s.sert themselves.

"I have been taught nothing," she says, with a most successful grasp at dignity. "They do not speak of you at the Towers,--at least, not unkindly." She looks at him as she says this, but lowers her eyes as she meets his. This dark, vehement young man almost frightens her.

"Yet, in spite of what you say, you turn from me, you despise me,"

exclaims he, with some growing excitement.

"Why should I despise you?" asks she, slowly, opening her eyes.

The simple query confounds him more than might a more elaborate one put by a clever worldling. Why indeed?

"I was thinking about this impending lawsuit," he stammers, uneasily.

"You know of it, of course? Yet why should I be blamed?"

"No one blames you," says Mona; "yet it is hard that Nicholas should be made unhappy."

"Other people are unhappy, too," says the Australian, gloomily.

"Perhaps they make their own unhappiness," says Mona, at random. "But Nicholas has done nothing. He is good and gentle always. He knows no evil thoughts. He wishes ill to no man."

"Not even to me?" with a sardonic laugh.

"Not even to you," very gravely. There is reproof in her tone. They are standing somewhat apart, and her eyes have been turned from him. Now, as she says this, she changes her position slightly, and looks at him very earnestly. From the distant ballroom the sound of the dying music comes sadly, sweetly; a weeping fountain in a corner mourns bitterly, as it seems to Mona, tear by tear, perhaps for some lost nymph.

"Well, what would you have me do?" demands he, with some pa.s.sion. "Throw up everything? Lands, t.i.tle, position? It is more than could be expected of any man."

"Much more," says Mona; but she sighs as she says it, and a little look of hopelessness comes into her face. It is so easy to read Mona's face.

"You are right," he says, with growing vehemence: "no man would do it.

It is such a brilliant chance, such a splendid scheme----." He checks himself suddenly. Mona looks at him curiously, but says nothing. In a second he recovers himself, and goes on: "Yet because I will not relinquish my just claim you look upon me with hatred and contempt."

"Oh, no," says Mona, gently; "only I should like you better, of course, if you were not the cause of our undoing."