"Yes, madam."

Mason went downstairs with the report that something was in the air.

She had a feeling, she said.

The interview with Taylor was shorter--more to the point.

"I'm expecting my brother--Mr. Traill, and probably a lady," she said.

She laid no stress on the last word, much as the temptation a.s.sailed her. "It's quite likely they may be down to lunch. When they come, there is no need to say that I am here, unless, of course, Mr. Traill asks you. You'd better go and change your dress at once."

Then she turned to Mrs. b.u.t.terick.

"You've taken off the chintz covers?" she said.

"Yes, madam."

"Ordered the flowers?"

"Yes, madam."

"Well, now, what have you got in for lunch?"

"There's some lamb, madam."

"Well--that's no good--I'd better tell you what I want. A heavy lunch like that is impossible. I want all dainty little dishes--something out of the common, I leave it entirely to you. Four courses will be enough. And Sauterne and Burgundy. Tell Taylor we'll have coffee in the dining-room. Now my hair, Mason."

So she marshalled forces, occupied positions and concentrated artillery in preparation for the siege. The generalship of a woman is never so keen, so instinct with strategy, as when she gives battle against another of her s.e.x. Her campaign against men, when once she takes up arms, is mimic warfare--a sham fight--compared to this.

Against a man, she needs but a company of fascinations, and in one attack his squares--the stern veterans of determination--are driven to flight. But with a woman, whole regiments of cunning, whole battalions of craft, with all the well-trained scouts of intuition and all the dashing cavalries of charm, are needed to rout her absolutely from the field.

Within an hour Mrs. Durlacher descended to the dining-room. The gown she wore would not have pleased a man to infatuation; but a woman would have realized its beauty, known its value. With deft fingers, she arranged the flowers. In a chair by the fire, hiding herself from view to any one outside the window, she sat and watched the table being laid, giving orders how the vases were to be placed on the old oak table.

"Lay two places--that's all," she said.

Taylor looked up. "I thought you said there would be a lady with Mr.

Traill, madam."

"I said--probably. You can lay another place if she comes." A vision crossed her mind of making so small a point as that, a moment of embarra.s.sment for her unwelcome guest.

Then a sound reached her ears. Her eyes were arrested, fixed unseeingly to a point before her as she listened.

"Is that a motor, Taylor?"

Taylor looked out of the window. "It's a taxi-cab, madam."

"Can you see who's inside?"

"I suppose it's Mr. Traill, madam. Yes--it is."

"Any one with him?"

"Yes, madam--a lady."

CHAPTER II

Circ.u.mstances will almost make a character in a day; in three years, a character can be moulded, bent, twisted or straightened, in the furnace of events; just as the potter, idling with the pa.s.sive clay, will shape it, heedlessly almost, as the fancy nerves his fingers.

But before he is aware, the time slips by, the clay gets set and there, in front of his eyes, is the figure as his fancy made it--brittle, easily broken into dust, but impossible of being moulded afresh until it shall again go back into the water of oblivion and become the shapeless ma.s.s that once it was.

So, in the three years that had pa.s.sed since she had yielded body and soul into the keeping of Jack Traill, had Sally's character become set in the moulding of his influence. Happiness she had--that to the full. He cared for her the more when once he had her gentle nature under his touch; showed her all those little attentions of which such a mind as his is capable of conceiving--teased her, petted her, laughed like a schoolboy at her feminine whims and fancies.

For the first month of their relationship, they went abroad. He gave her money, more money than she had ever had in absolute possession before, wherewith to fit herself for the journey. She tried to refuse half of it--told him the sum was preposterous, that less than half of what he was giving would provide her with the most expensive of frocks for the rest of her life.

"Sixty pounds?" he said. "My sister spends that in half an hour at a dressmaker's in Dover Street."

"Ah, yes, but that's your sister," she had objected pathetically.

"And you?"

"But thirty pounds will really be more than enough."

It lay deep in her mind, never offering to rise to the surface, to remind him that she was not his wife. But he would not give way. He had said sixty pounds--sixty pounds it had to be. So he mastered her, without effort, at every turn.

She went then with Janet to the shops--she, and her sixty pounds, gripped tight in brittle ten-pound notes in her purse. At that time she was still staying on at Kew, still attending her office in King Street; but at both places she had given notice to leave, and in a week's time would be free.

Her first intimation to Janet of all that had occurred and all that was to follow, was made, as usual, one night, when the darkness hid her face, and she could only tell by the sound of Janet's breathing what effect her story might have.

When she had finished, Janet made use of that remark--justified in her case--which every prophet, false or true, utters at one time or another--

"Didn't I tell you so?"

But then she went on, and they had talked far into the night; and at every moment, when doubt or regret seized and shook Sally with a quivering remorse, Janet laughed at her fears.

"You've got the best bargain in the world," she exclaimed. "You want a man's love--you've got it--haven't you? And yet you're free--as free as air. If you should tire--"

Sally laughed bitterly.

"Very well, then, if he should tire, you're your own mistress. All this caging of wild birds seems to me to be futile. Morals? Oh, morals be hanged! Are you going to call yourself immoral because the man has no great respect for matrimony?"

"Yes; but I have."

"You have! That's only because you were dragged up in a rectory, just outside the church door. I can't understand you. You've shaken off your belief in lots of things--you don't believe in the actual divinity of Christ--yet you cling to an antiquated sacrament that dates back long before the time of a man whose statement that he was the actual Son of G.o.d you're prepared to doubt. It's only because you labour under the misapprehension--as nearly everybody does--that marriage is a convenience to a woman. It's the inconvenience of the thing that makes the morality or the immorality in your mind. You're only a conventionalist like everybody else-you're not a moralist."

Yet, notwithstanding all these arguments of Janet's, there were dark moments during that week before she left Kew, when all the force of dogma, all the waves of conventionality, beat against her breast; but it was her faith in love that held her to the end; just as his faith in the dogma itself, had held the Rev. Samuel Bishop to the teachings of his Church. Love, she made the high altar of her worship; to that, unconsciously, she offered all prayers, made all sacrifice.

These dark moments hung heavy in her heart so long as they were present; but one meeting with Traill was sufficient to drive them in a body from her mind--gloomy phantoms of imagination which, in the night, have vivid reality, and with the first welcome break of morning are stricken out of sight.

When forty-five of the sixty pounds had been spent and she had bought every conceivable thing that she required, purchasing from habit where things were cheapest, she had brought the remainder back to Traill.