said the hypocrite. "He was not pleased, as you may imagine. But business is sometimes urgent, you know. Had he not gone, I must have done so myself: and he thought a night journey to Liverpool rather much to expect from a man of my age who had a son to send. Eh?"

"Of course," murmured Virginia. "But it is a pity! Spoils our last evening!"

"Oh, now, now, Miss Virginia! That is a little rough upon poor Bent, who has rallied up at a moment's notice to make your party complete.

Confess now--in the lamentable circ.u.mstances, could I have done better?

Eh? I think not. There is dinner announced. Come, take my arm. Mims must divide herself between the two young men."

CHAPTER III

VIRGINIA AT HOME

"_Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend, Seeking a higher object. Love was given, Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end, That self might be annulled--her bondage prove The fetters of a dream, opposed to Love!_"

--Wordsworth.

The six-forty-six express from London swept majestically into the station at Wayhurst.

It was one of the events of the day in the sleepy place--the arrival of the 6.46; the evening papers came down on that train. Many residents were on the platform--the retired Army men to fetch their _Pall Mall Gazette_, others to meet friends. There was n.o.body to meet Virginia Mynors, but evidently she did not expect it. She stood among the throng, in her simplest linen suit, and searched with her eyes for the outside porter. It was some time before she could secure his services--he was busy with more important clients--and when at last he had shouldered her trunk and hat-box, it was with the remark that he couldn't "promise to be out at the villas, not much afore nine o'clock, at any rate."

Virginia intimated that nine o'clock would suit, and turned, travelling-bag and umbrella-case in hand, to brave her hot walk. It was a sultry evening. The country town was bathed in dust; the roads, though it was almost seven o'clock, seemed shadeless. After a while the girl stopped to withdraw her sunshade from the case, and proceeded on her way, holding it up with one hand, the weight of her hand-luggage in the other.

She looked pale and dispirited. Somehow, the end of her glorious London visit had tailed off in dissatisfaction. The Rosenbergs had been kind--most kind--to the last. They had insisted upon keeping her one day longer, that Mr. Bent might take them to Hendon to see some flying.

But longer than that she would not stay, for Pansy, her little lame sister, had written her a letter containing the following disquieting news:

_Mama is in an awfull stayt. I think she has had bad news. She says we are rewend._

This last word Virginia interpreted "ruined," and as she plodded along the High Street, and up the Balchurch Road, past Sycamore Terrace and its handsome houses, to the region of tiny villas, these words were haunting her. She had supposed their ruin already accomplished. What could have happened afresh? What had mamma been doing? Incurring debts which she could not pay? This she was constantly doing upon a small scale, in spite of the fact that her daughter rigorously supervised her cheque-book and controlled the household expenditure.

Virginia took it for granted that her mother would always spend more than she ought, and was quite used to depriving herself of necessaries in order to provide mamma with such small luxuries as expensive soap, note-paper, perfume, a library subscription, and so on. Graver expenditure than this she had not antic.i.p.ated; but she was blaming herself for having yielded to the imploring desire of Mims that she should go to London, and her mother's eager advocacy of the plan. She ought not to have left mamma to the management of anything; she knew it. She was prepared to find the weekly expenses doubled, but she had still a couple of sovereigns in her purse with which she hoped to meet this deficiency.

As she moved along in the heat, laden and depressed, her face a.s.sumed an aspect of anxiety which altered it surprisingly. Seen thus, it was obvious that she was not merely slender, but sadly thin: hollows were discernible in the cheeks, shadows lurked around the smiling mouth when it was grave.

At last Laburnum Villa was reached.

With a sigh of relief Virginia trod the tiny garden approach, pushed open the narrow door, and deposited her burdens within the pa.s.sage.

The pa.s.sage was extremely small. It was distempered in pale green (Virginia had distempered it), and the paint was white (Virginia had enamelled it). The floor was stained (Virginia had stained it), and on the ground there lay a very valuable old Persian corridor-rug, relic of Lissendean. From Lissendean, too, came the marble fountain-head which was used for umbrellas, and the little carved oak table.

Cinderella's expression changed as she entered her home--changed to an eager, glowing delight of antic.i.p.ation. Light-footed she ran up the tiny staircase, and, pushing open the door of the back room on the landing, flew to the side of a child who lay almost flat upon an invalid-couch at the open window.

There were ecstatic cries: "Virgie, Virgie!" and "Pansy, my Pansy blossom!" and the two sisters were clinging together in a rapture of affection.

"Let's look at you, Virgie, darling! Oh, yes, you are better! It has done you good, hasn't it, dear? Plenty to eat--you never have enough at home."

"Pansy, Pansy, what nonsense you talk, you silly baby! Of course I always have plenty to eat! The point is, how have _you_ been getting on? Has old Mrs. Brown fed you properly?"

Pansy was able to rea.s.sure her. The "supply" had been quite satisfactory. "Only she said she thought the missus didn't ought to expect no general to do up her boots for her, and mend her stockings,"

remarked the child. "I told her to give mamma's stockings to me--you know her darning was abominable. Mamma would never have worn them afterwards if she had done them. She grumbles enough as it is at having to wear darned stockings at all. Mrs. Brown is quite a kind old thing.

She is staying to-night until eight o'clock to get supper, so that you should not have to set to work the moment you come home."

"That's a relief," owned Virginia, fetching a deck-chair and seating herself with her arms behind her head. "Where is mamma now?"

"She's still out, I think. I haven't heard her come in. She went this afternoon to call upon Major and Mrs. Simpson, and to buy some things to trim up a hat."

"Oh, but she doesn't want another hat----" began Virgie in vexation, and checked herself. "I only trimmed her a new one the day I left home."

"Well, somebody sent her some money yesterday, I think," replied Pansy.

"She went this morning and bought herself a winter coat at Baxter's sale. She said it was an economy."

"And when the winter comes, she'll say it's out of date," replied Virgie with a little groan. "Oh dear, I do wish she wouldn't do things like that--with poor Tony's suit almost in rags."

"Well, you know it is no use for me to say anything, don't you, dear?"

remarked Pansy, with the quaintest a.s.sumption of wisdom.

She would have been a pretty child but for her look of transparent, egg-sh.e.l.l frailness. Her hair, with bronze lights in it, cl.u.s.tered charmingly about her small face, and her eyes were as lovely as Virginia's own, but with the haggard, hungry expression of a child who has no health.

She was very small for her age, which was twelve. Her lameness was the result of a bad accident in babyhood. Mr. and Mrs. Mynors spent a winter on the Riviera, leaving their children in charge of a nurse who was not trustworthy. Mrs. Mynors had been warned that the nurse was flighty, but had taken no notice of the caution. She wished to set out on a certain date, and said she had no time to make other arrangements.

The woman went out for what is now known as a "joy-ride" with the chauffeur and other chosen companions. She took with her Pansy, who was the baby, and Bernard, the elder boy, who was her favourite, leaving Tony at home in charge of Virginia. The party refreshed itself at many taverns on the way, and it was hardly surprising that the affair ended in a serious accident. Bernard was killed, and the baby's spine was injured.

The shock of his eldest son's loss was thought to have been the source of Mr. Mynors' own lingering illness. He had forgiven his wife many a flirtation, much consistent neglect of himself. He never forgave her for Bernard's death.

Nine-year-old Virginia waited, all that terrible day, and part of the night, for the return of the motoring party. Old Brand, the butler, who had been with the Mynors from the time of her father's boyhood, and who had begged his mistress not to leave this nurse in charge of the children, sat hour after hour with Virginia on his lap, until, at ten o'clock, he carried her up to bed, left her in charge of the under-nurse, and himself went out with one or two gardeners to see if he could hear news of the motor-party.

Virginia, though in bed, could not sleep. She lay listening, listening for a sound in the silent house, until the dawn began to break. Then she heard wheels--wheels and voices on the gravel of the drive; and, slipping from her bed, without arousing the fast-sleeping nursemaid or Tony, she ran downstairs in her white nightie.

All her life she would remember Brand's face as he strode into the hall and laid down upon a settle the burden that he carried--Bernard, with his head all shrouded in white linen. Then came a doctor, stern and tight-lipped, with the moaning baby in his arms. Virginia could still recall the carbolic smell of the doctor's clothes as he went upstairs, the blueness of the baby's face in its waxen stillness, and the silence punctuated by faint moans.

The grim realities of life came then to the girl's consciousness for the first time, never to leave her more. For some years--until she went to the school at which she met Miriam Rosenberg--she was grave and silent with a gravity unbefitting her years, her fine health, her promising future. After that she yielded to the spell of youth and friendship and adventure, and the world had seemed ever more alluring, until the final shock of her father's loss.

This hot afternoon, gazing down upon Pansy's pathetic fragility, she thought what sorrows had been hers in the twenty years of her short life. The future looked sadder than usual, and her customary good cheer was temporarily absent; she felt a curious depression, or sense of coming trouble.

"You look so grave, Virgie darling!"

"Pansy, I'm a perfect pig. I believe I am suffering from that horrible feeling we used to call 'after-the-party' feeling."

"I don't wonder," replied Pansy sagely. "It must be pretty rotten to come back from all that fun and luxury and money to start being maid of all work again. Oh, Virgie, what are we to do?"

"Do? Why, get on, of course--do our work and enjoy it!" cried Virginia, springing up and going to the window. "Oh, Pansy, the delphiniums! How this hot weather has brought them out! There was not one in bloom when I left."

"I thought you'd be pleased with that!" cried the child in eager delight. "And look at the roses too, Virgie--the Hiawatha that you thought was dead!"

"Darling Hiawatha! He came from home," whispered Virginia. She knelt by the window, her elbows on the sill and her curved chin resting on her hands, while her Greuze eyes rested on the row of little garden plots, on the farther row that ab.u.t.ted upon them, and on the backs of the houses beyond those. She was young, it was summer-time, and yet, and yet----