"I am dismissed then," she said. "Good-night!"

His smile answered hers. He looked regretful, but very kindly. "I am glad to see Piers takes care of you," he said.

She laughed a little drearily as she went away, making no other response.

Crowther turned back to the table with its shaded candles and gleaming wine. He saw that Piers' gla.s.s was practically untouched.

Piers himself was searching a cabinet for cigars. He found what he sought, and turned round with the box in his hand.

"I don't know what you generally smoke," he said. "Will you try one of these? It's a hot night. We may as well have coffee in the garden."

He seemed possessed with a spirit of restlessness, just as he had been on that night at the Casino in the spring. Crowther, ma.s.sive and self-contained, observed him silently.

They went out on to the terrace, and drank their coffee in the dewy stillness. But even there Piers could not sit still. He prowled to and fro eternally, till Crowther set down his cup and joined him, pushing a quiet hand through his arm.

"It's a lovely place you've got here, sonny," he said; "a regular garden of Paradise. I almost envy you."

"Oh, you needn't do that. There's a serpent in every Eden," said Piers, with a mirthless laugh.

He did not seek to keep Crowther at arm's length, but neither did he seem inclined for any closer intimacy. His att.i.tude neither invited nor repelled confidence. Yet Crowther knew intuitively that his very indifference was in itself a barrier that might well prove insurmountable.

He walked in silence while Piers talked intermittently of various impersonal matters, drifting at length into silence himself.

In the western wing of the house a light burned at an upper window, and Crowther, still quietly observant, noted how at each turn Piers' eyes went to that light as though drawn by some magnetic force.

Gently at length he spoke. "She doesn't look altogether robust, sonny."

Piers started sharply as if something had p.r.i.c.ked him. "What? Avery do you mean? No, she isn't over and above strong--just now."

He uttered the last two words as if reluctantly, yet as if some measure of pride impelled him.

Crowther's hand pressed his arm, in mute sympathy. "You are right to take care of her," he said simply. "And Piers, my lad, I want to tell you how glad I was to know that you were able to win her after all. I somehow felt you would."

It was his first attempt to pa.s.s that intangible barrier, and it failed.

Piers disregarded the words as if they had not reached him.

"I don't know if I shall let her stay here through the winter," he said.

"I am not sure that the place suits her. It's damp, you know; good hunting and so on, but a bit depressing in bad weather. Besides I'd rather have her under a town doctor. The new heir arrives in March," he said, with a slight laugh that struck Crowther as unconsciously pathetic.

"I'm very pleased to hear it, sonny," said Crowther. "May he be the first of many! What does Avery think about it? I'll warrant she's pleased?"

"Oh yes, she's pleased enough."

"And you, lad?"

"Oh yes, I'm pleased too," said Piers, but his tone lacked complete satisfaction and he added after a moment, "I'd rather have had her to myself a bit longer. I'm a selfish brute, you know, Crowther. I want all I can get--and even that's hardly enough to keep me from starvation."

There was a note of banter in his voice, but there was something else as well that touched Crowther's kindly heart.

"I don't think Avery is the sort of woman to sacrifice her husband to her children," he said. "You will always come first, sonny,--if I know her."

"I couldn't endure anything else," said Piers, with sudden fire. "She is the mainspring of my life."

"And you of hers," said Crowther.

Piers stopped dead in his walk and faced him. "No,--no, I'm not!" he said, speaking quickly, unrestrainedly. "I'm a good deal to her, but I'm not that. She gives, but she never offers. If I went off on a journey round the world to-morrow, she'd see me go quite cheerfully, and she'd wait serenely till I came back again. She'd never fret. Above all, she'd never dream of coming to look for me."

The pa.s.sionate utterance went into a sound that resembled a laugh, but it was a sound of such bitterness that Crowther was strongly moved.

He put his hand on Piers' shoulder and gave it an admonitory shake. "My dear lad, don't be a fool!" he said, with slow force. "You're consuming your own happiness--and hers too. You can't measure a woman's feelings like that. They are immeasurable. You can't even begin to fathom a woman's restraint--a woman's reserve. How can she offer when you are always demanding? As to her love, it is probably as infinitely great, as infinitely deep, as infinitely selfless, as yours is pa.s.sionate, and fierce and insatiable. There are big possibilities in you, Piers; but you're not letting 'em grow. It would have done you good to have been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own d.a.m.n playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot to have done it!"

He paused, for Piers had made a sharp, involuntary movement as of a man in intolerable pain. He almost wrenched himself from Crowther's hand, and walked to the low wall of the terrace. Here he stood for many seconds quite motionless, gazing down over the quiet garden.

Finally he swung round, and looked at Crowther. "Yes," he said, in an odd tone as of one repeating something learned by heart. "I've got to remember that, haven't I? Thanks for--reminding me!" He stopped, seemed to collect himself, moved slowly forward. "You're a good chap, Crowther,"

he said. "I wonder you've never got married yourself, what?"

Crowther waited for him quietly, in his eyes that look of the man who has gazed for long over the wide s.p.a.ces of the earth.

"I never married, sonny," he said, "because I had nothing to offer to the woman I cared for, and so--she never knew."

"By gad, old chap, I'm sorry," said Piers impulsively.

Crowther held out a steady hand. "I'm happy enough," he said simply.

"I've got--all I want."

"All?" echoed Piers incredulously.

Crowther was smiling. He lifted his face to the night sky. "Yes,--thank G.o.d,--all!" he said.

CHAPTER V

THE SWORD FALLS

As Miss Whalley had predicted, Ina Rose's wedding was a very grand affair indeed. Everyone who was anyone attended it, and a good many besides. It took place in the midst of a spell of sultry weather, during which the sun shone day after day with brazen strength and the heat was intense.

It was the sort of weather Piers revelled in. It suited his tropical nature. But it affected Avery very differently. All her customary energy wilted before it, and yet she was strangely restless also. A great reluctance to attend the wedding possessed her, wherefore she could not have said. But for some reason Piers was determined that she should go.

He was even somewhat tyrannical on the subject, and rather than have a discussion Avery had yielded the point. For Piers was oddly difficult in those days. Crowther's visit, which had barely run into forty-eight hours, seemed to have had a disquieting effect upon him. There had developed a curious, new-born mastery in his att.i.tude towards her, which she sometimes found it hard to endure. She missed the chivalry of the early days. She missed the sweetness of his boyish adoration.

She did not understand him, but she knew that he was not happy. He never took her into his confidence, never alluded by word or sign to the change which he must have realized that she could not fail to notice. And Avery on her part made no further effort to open the door that was so strenuously locked against her. With an aching heart she gave herself to the weary task of waiting, convinced that sooner or later the nature of the barrier which he so stubbornly ignored would be revealed to her. But it was impossible to extend her full confidence to him. Moreover, he seemed to shrink from all intimate subjects. Instinctively and wholly involuntarily she withdrew into herself, meeting reserve with reserve.

Since he had become master rather than lover, she yielded him obedience, and she hid away her love, not deliberately or intentionally, but rather with the impulse to protect from outrage that which was holy. He was not asking love of her just then.

She saw but little of him during the day. He was busy on the estate, busy with the coming election, busy with a hundred and one matters that evidently occupied his thoughts very fully. The heat seemed to imbue him with inexhaustible energy. He never seemed tired after the most strenuous exertion. He never slacked for a moment or seemed to have a moment to spare till the day was done. He was generally late for meals, and always raced through them at a speed that Avery was powerless to emulate.

He was late on the day of Ina Rose's wedding, so late that Avery, who had dressed in good time and was lying on the sofa in her room, began to wonder if he had after all abandoned the idea of going. But she presently heard him race into his own room, and immediately there came the active patter of Victor's feet as he waited upon him.

She lay still, listening, wishing that the wedding were over, morbidly dreading the heat and crush and excitement which she knew awaited her and to which she felt utterly unequal.