... What would Virgie say now--Virgie, who was always so mean and stingy, reproving her for gratifying even the simplest taste, expecting her to live as though she had been brought up in one of the cottages on her husband's estate? She pictured the rapture of grat.i.tude and devotion with which the girl would realise that her mother's charm, her mother's ability to hold a man's affection for twenty years and more, was to mend the family fortunes. She faced--only to disregard it--the fact that Virginia would have some ridiculous scruples about her father's memory. She recollected very soon that, for Pansy's sake, the girl would welcome any way out--Pansy, whose lameness might be cured, if she could only have the required advice and treatment.

She sat before her gla.s.s in a dream of reminiscence.

There was a tap at the door, and her daughter entered, soft-footed, carrying a cup on a tray. "I've brought your cold beef-tea jelly, dearest, as it is such a hot day," said she, putting it down. "Would you like me to do your hair for you?"

"Oh, my chick, if you only would! I feel quite over-strained! I have had such extraordinary--such heart-searching news! I very nearly fainted when I was having my bath."

Virginia turned pale. The remembrance of Pansy's revelation concerning their "rewend" condition leapt to her mind. She had now been home three days, and her mother had said nothing of it, but seemed flush of cash.

Virginia had consulted the cheque-book--nothing out of the way there.

The money spent on house-keeping had been, as she expected, too large, but not out of all bounds.

Something had stolen Virginia's buoyancy. She felt an inward flinching, as though she could not bear a fresh blow. It must be the heat. She took up a silver brush, and said, as stoutly as she could:

"Well, Mums, tell me all about it. I can bear it."

Mrs. Mynors pushed aside her golden tresses, opened a small drawer, searched it, and drew out the solicitor's letter.

"Virgie, I could not tell you the very day you came home," she faltered. "It would have been brutal, but I suppose you must know."

Her daughter, taking the legal-looking doc.u.ments in her suddenly cold hands, sank rather than seated herself upon a chair, for the humiliating reason that she felt unable to stand.

There was stillness for a while in the tiny room, which, like the drawing-room downstairs, was a bower of luxury. Carpet, curtains, furniture, plenishings--all were costly relics of bygone days, something to make a pillow between the dainty head of its mistress and the hard cold boards of poverty. Even as she cleaned the silver toilet articles yesterday, Virgie had noted a fresh bottle of a particularly expensive perfume affected by her mother.

Now she read the letters--read the family doom.

All gone! Everything! Lissendean!...

She put her hands to her head. She must think.

What was left?

Nothing! They were paupers. Tony must leave school and begin to be an errand boy. She, Virginia, must go into service. Pansy must be got into a home for cripples! Her mother?...

... And she had gone without the necessities of life to keep up those payments, while Mrs. Mynors was squandering the money on petty luxuries!

For the moment pa.s.sion surged up so strongly in Virginia that she had to clench her hands and grind her teeth, while she shook with the effort to refrain from telling the pretty, golden-haired doll once for all what she thought of her. This mother, whom she had loved, whom dad had loved! Almost his last words had been a plea to his daughter not to let her mother suffer if she could help it.

Had she not done her best? What more could have been required of her that she had not given? She had sacrificed her whole life to the service of her loved ones, had drudged and toiled that her mother might have ease, had listened to her grumbling complaints, had humoured her wilfulness. Yet all had been in vain. In vain!

To her mother's consternation, and even annoyance, Virginia slipped off her chair in a dead faint.

With a sense of acute injury at being called upon to render such service, the plump, useless hands succeeded in lowering the girl to the floor. Then, still resentful, Mrs. Mynors actually got a wet sponge and laid it on her daughter's forehead. This not succeeding, she found _eau-de-Cologne_ and applied that. After a time Virginia slowly returned to life, and to a knowledge of the enormity of her behaviour.

She dragged herself to her mother's bed, and lay down there until her swimming senses should readjust themselves.

They were ruined; and her mother was buying winter coats and bottles of perfume! It was really laughable.

"You cannot reproach me, really, Virgie," said her mother presently, speaking with sad submissiveness from out her cloud of hair. "You must see that I could not help spending that money, and also that I never dreamed what would be the result of getting behindhand with my payments. Our own lawyer ought to have warned me. I consider him much to blame in the matter."

Virginia had nothing at all to say.

"I can see that you do blame me!" sharply cried Mrs. Mynors. "You lie there without a word of comfort--as if I had ruined you and not myself too! I suppose it is as hard for me as for you."

Virgie turned her face over and hid it on the pillow.

After gazing at her for some time, in a mood which accusing conscience made bitter, Mrs. Mynors decided to play her trump card.

"You need not put on all these airs of tragic despair, Virgie. I have told you the bad news first. This morning I have had other news--the most extraordinary thing--the most unlikely coincidence--that you ever heard! Do you want me to tell you about it, or are you too ill to pay any attention?"

Virgie made an effort and sat up. "I'm so sorry, mother. It was very sudden, you know, and it is all so horrible--like falling over a precipice. I felt as if I could not grasp it. I am better now."

She slipped off the bed and tottered to the window, leaning out into the air. "Please tell me--everything," she begged.

Mrs. Mynors leaned forward, and a little, mischievous smile showed her dimple, as she said, playing nervously with the articles in her manicure set: "Did you ever hear me speak of the man I was once engaged to--the man I jilted to marry your father--Mr. Gaunt?"

"I believe I have," replied Virginia, knitting her brows.

"It was a tiresome affair," went on the lady, with a sigh. "He was very young and impetuous; perhaps that is putting it too mildly; he had a shocking temper, and he didn't take his jilting at all peaceably. I know I was in fault, but what is a girl to do? He was a mere boy. When I promised to marry him I had never seen your father; and you know, Virgie darling, how irresistible he was."

"Yes. I know," said Virginia, telling herself that, after all, her mother must have loved the dead man better than had appeared. Yet why, if she loved him so much, had there always been so many others?

Virginia recalled the familiar figures--Colonel Duke, and Major Gibson, the M.F.H., and Sir Edmund Hobbs. Certainly, for the last two years of his life Bernard Mynors had been unable to escort his wife himself. If she hunted, it must be with others. It had, in fact, been with others.

The dainty lips curved into a yet broader smile. "Poor Gaunt! It seems that he has never married," went on the musical voice. "He was too madly in love, I suppose, for any transfer of his affections to be possible. But the point of it all is this. I have this morning heard that it is he who holds the mortgage on our property. Lissendean belongs to him!"

Virginia's big, woful eyes opened very wide.

"I heard this morning from the lawyers that he is in London for a week or two, and wants to get the business finished off. I have made my little plan. I mean to go up to town and see him, Virgie."

The words brought Virginia to her feet. "To go and see him?"

"Yes. I must, for my children's sake, make an appeal to his kindness of heart. The pain I caused him must long ago have been forgotten, and if I can only procure an interview with him, I feel very little doubt of being able to persuade him to allow us more time."

Virginia considered. "Do you think he will see you? It might be very painful for him. Have you heard nothing of him since your marriage?"

"Nothing. He lives in the country now, it seems. He must have inherited the place that belonged to his old great-aunts. He always used to tell me that there was not much chance of his coming into it. He was a fine fellow in his way, only difficult--so jealous, for one thing. However, it would be most interesting to meet him. I wonder"--coquettishly--"if he will know me again. I don't fancy that I have changed much."

"Very little, I should think," said Virgie; "the miniature that father had done of you the first year you were married is still just like you."

Mrs. Mynors smiled brightly. She was beginning to recover her good humour. "Unless he has altered strangely, he will not be cruel to the widow and the fatherless," she murmured pensively. "Cheer up, Virgie, all is not yet lost. Try to be a little hopeful, dear child."

Virginia sat, twisting her hands together, turning the matter over in her mind. Her mother's creditor was her mother's old lover. Her mother was going to seize this fact, and make the most of it. Something in Virginia revolted from the idea; but she could not urge her objections.

She fixed her purple-grey eyes upon the gay face in the mirror. It might have been that of a woman without a care. Every instinct in her mother was kindled at the idea of once more encountering, and most probably conquering, what had been hers once, and would turn to her again.

A step-father! That was an idea to make one wince. With all the ingrained fidelity of her simple nature, the girl hated the thought.

Yet, after all, what was the alternative?

She felt that the family fortunes had pa.s.sed beyond her own power to adjust or alter. As long as a foothold of dry ground remained she had, as it were, protected these dear ones from the raging flood. Now that the tide had swept them away, and they were all tossing on the waters, could she object to her mother's seizing a rope--any rope--that might be flung to them?

"I suppose he knows," she said, after a long pause, "he knows that it is you?"