"It'll kill her!" cried Marcia, pa.s.sionately; "what's left of her, after you've done!"

Coryston lifted his eyebrows and looked long and curiously at his sister.

Then he slowly got up from the gra.s.s and took a seat beside her.

"Look here, Marcia, do you think--do you honestly think--that I'm the aggressor in this family row?"

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know what to think!"

Marcia covered her face with her hands. "It's all so miserable!--" she went on, in a m.u.f.fled voice. "And this Glenwilliam thing has come so suddenly!

Why, he hardly knew her, when he made that speech in the House six weeks ago! And now he's simply demented! Corry, you must go and argue with him--you _must_! Persuade him to give her up!"

She laid her hand on his arm imploringly.

Coryston sat silent, but his eyes laughed a little.

"I don't believe in her," he said at last, abruptly. "If I did, I'd back Arthur up through thick and thin!"

"_Corry_!--how on earth can Arthur be happy if he marries her--how can he live in that set--the son-in-law of _that man_! He'll have to give up his seat--n.o.body here would ever vote for him again. His friends would cut him--"

"Oh come, come, my dear, we're not as bad as that!" said Coryston, impatiently.

But Marcia wailed on:

"And it isn't as if he had ideas and theories--like you--"

"Not a principle to his back!--I know," said Coryston, cheerfully. "I tell you again, I'd not dissuade him; on the contrary, I'd shove him into it!--if she were the right sort. But she's not. She's ruined by the luxury she's been living in. I believe--if you ask me--that she'd accept Arthur for his money--but that she doesn't care one bra.s.s farthing about him. Why should she?"

"Corry!"

"He's a fool, my dear, though a jolly one--and she's not been accustomed to living with fools. She's got wits as sharp as gimlets. Well, well"--he got up from the seat--"can't talk any more now. Now what is it exactly you want me to do? I repeat--I'm coming to see mother this afternoon."

"Don't let her guess anything. Don't tell her anything. She's a little worried about Arthur already. But we must stop the madness before she knows anything. Promise!"

"Very well. For the present--I'm mum."

"And talk to him!--tell him it'll ruin him!"

"I don't mind--from my own point of view," said Coryston, surveying her with his hands on his sides. Then suddenly his face changed. A cloud overshadowed it. He gave her a queer, cold look.

"Perhaps I have something to ask you," he said, slowly.

"What?" The tone showed her startled.

"Let _me_ come and talk to _you_ about that man whom all the world says you're going to marry!"

She stared at him, struck dumb for the moment by the fierceness of his voice and expression. Then she said, indignantly:

"What do you mean, Corry!"

"You are deceived in him. You can't marry him!" he said, pa.s.sionately. "At least let me talk to you."

She rose and stood facing him, her hands behind her, her dark face as full of energy and will as his own.

"You are thinking of the story of Mrs. Betts. I know it."

"Not as I should tell it!"

A moving figure in a distant field caught her attention. She made a great effort to master her excitement.

"You may tell me what you like. But I warn you I shall ask _him_ for his version, too."

Corry's expression changed. The tension relaxed.

"That's only fair," he said, indifferently. Then, perceiving the advancing man: "Ah, I see!--here he is. I'm off. It's a bargain. I say nothing to mother--and do my best to make Arthur hang himself. And I have it out with you--my small sister!--when we next meet."

He paused, looking at her, and in his strangely penetrating eyes there dawned, suddenly, the rare expression that Marcia remembered--as of a grave yet angry tenderness. Then he turned away, walking fast, and was soon invisible among the light shadows of a beech avenue, just in leaf. Marcia was left behind, breathing quick, to watch the approach of Edward Newbury.

As soon as he perceived Marcia under the shade of the hawthorns Newbury quickened his pace, and he had soon thrown himself, out of breath, on the gra.s.s beside her.

"What a heavenly spot!--and what a morning! How nice of you to let me find you! I was hoping Lady Coryston would give me lunch."

Radiant, he raised his eyes to her, as he lay propped on his elbows, the spring sun, slipping through the thin blossom-laden branches overhead, dappling his bronzed face.

Marcia flushed a little--an added beauty. As she sat there in a white hat and dress, canopied by the white trees, and lit by a warm reflected light, she stirred in Newbury's senses once more a thrilling delight made all the keener perhaps by the misgiving, the doubts which invariably accompanied it. She could be so gracious; and she could be so dumb and inaccessible.

Again and again he had been on the point of declaring himself during the last few weeks, and again and again he had drawn back, afraid lest the decisive word from him should draw the decisive word from her, and it should be a word of denial. Better--better infinitely--these doubts and checks, than a certainty which would divide him from her.

This morning indeed he found her all girlish gentleness and appeal. And it made his own task easier. For he also had matters on his mind. But she antic.i.p.ated him.

"I want to talk to you about Corry--my brother!" she said, bending toward him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS MORNING HE FOUND HER ALL GIRLISH GENTLENESS AND APPEAL]

There was a child in Marcia, and she could evoke it when she pleased. She evoked it now. The young man before her hungered, straightway, to put out his arms to her--gathering her to him caressingly as one does with the child that clings and confides. But instead he merely smiled at her with his bright conscious eyes.

"I, too, want to talk to you about Coryston," he said, nodding.

"We know he's behaving dreadfully--abominably!" laughed Marcia, but with a puckered brow.

"Mr. Lester tells me there was a great attack on Lord and Lady William yesterday in the Martover paper. Mother hasn't seen it yet--and I don't want to read it--"

"Don't!" said Newbury, smiling.

"But mother will be so ashamed, unhappy, when she knows! So am I. But I wanted to explain. We suffer just as much. He's stirring up the whole place against mother. And now that he's begun to attack you, I thought perhaps that if you and I--"

"Took counsel! Excellent!"