"Devotion? You have no devotion!" she cried wildly. "You are taking advantage of my helplessness to torture me! You would torture Virgie!

How can you feel any devotion for a girl you have only set eyes upon once?"

"Well, we will say it is not devotion that inspires me, but a desire to get a bit of my own back," said he, with a most unpleasant smile. "She will be the Andromeda, sacrificed for the rest of you--offered to the Beast--myself. You flinched from such a fate. If she now undertakes to brave it, will not that be poetic justice?"

Mrs. Mynors swallowed once or twice, blinked, tried to visualise the impression this speech gave. Since his entrance, nothing that Gaunt said had sounded real. There had been a sarcasm, a jeering cadence; he had been playing with her all the time. But these words had a different ring. He was in earnest. It seemed as if the last sentence revealed to her something of his inner state of mind. It was like coming, in the dusk, upon the sudden mouth of a black pit. She had said, "You would torture Virginia!" and something in his reply suggested that her random words were true.

She sat staring, confronting the set mask of his face. The old fear of him came back, after twenty years, racing up across the vistas of memory as the Brittany tide races over the St. Malo sands. In this man there was something perverted, something evil, something with which she must hold no traffic, make no bargain. She knew that she ought to end this preposterous interview; to speak a few dignified reproachful words and leave the tempter and his monstrous proposal.

"Virginia," she managed at last to say, "shall never even know of your horrible suggestion."

He took his watch from his pocket, glanced at it, replaced it, and spoke.

"Then you reject this offer unconditionally?"

"As you foresaw that I should!" she cried, with a burst of tears hastily choked back.

"Oh, pardon me, I foresaw nothing of the kind. You forget that in old times I knew you rather well; and I never thought you a fool."

"But you are impossible--outrageous!" she expostulated. "Why should you want to marry Virginia?"

"I am old enough to know my own mind, I suppose. My reasons--pardon me--are not your concern. My terms are before you, and I am somewhat pressed for time. If you refuse _tout court_, there is nothing further to be said. I will take my leave. But it seems to me that you might submit the case to the judgment of Miss Mynors. Tell her that I have an estate in Derbyshire, and can settle five thousand pounds upon her, in addition to what I propose doing for her family. If she has anything like her mother's eye to the main chance, she will think twice before turning me down."

Part of the rage which surged in the woman's heart as she glared at him was sheer jealousy--jealousy of her young, fresh daughter. They had met, those two. He had seen Virginia in a picture-gallery. He, a man of past forty, wanted to marry this girl of twenty! Oh, what a fool! What a fool! When she, the suitable age, the suitable partner, the old, lost love in almost all her old charm, sat there before him!

"Osbert," she murmured faintly, "don't jeer at me! For pity's sake be yourself, your old self, for five minutes! Tell me the meaning of this unkind jest."

"Once more, madam, let me a.s.sure you that I am in earnest. I mean what I say. I am aware that my proposal does sound quixotic; but I will have it all legally embodied and made certain. If Miss Mynors will marry me, I will do for you what I have said. If she will not, then I regret to be unable to offer you _any_ a.s.sistance."

He took up his hat and rose. "May I know whether you will undertake to convey my offer to your daughter?" he asked. "If you decline, I leave London to-day. I farm my own land, and we are busy at Omberleigh just now. If you decide to tell her, I will await the first post here in London the day after to-morrow; and, in the event of her being favourably inclined, I shall come down to Wayhurst that afternoon."

Mrs. Mynors clenched her small, ineffectual fists. There he stood, pitiless. Her presence meant nothing to him. It left him utterly unmoved. How he had changed from the days of his emotional youth!

He was master of the situation. If she arose in her offended majesty, marched off and left him--to what must she return? To absolute pauperism. She had no relatives of her own, and her husband's few distant cousins had been far more frequently appealed to than her daughter knew, and were tired of helping. By promising to let Virginia know his terms, she committed herself to nothing. If there had been an alternative.... But there really was not!

She, too, rose. "I--I suppose I must tell Virginia," she said sullenly; "but I shall forbid her to accept your preposterous suggestion."

"Oh, no, you won't," he replied, again with that odious smile. "Too much hangs upon it for you. We part, then, with at least a sporting chance of meeting again. I hope I shall prove a dutiful son-in-law.

Good morning."

He bowed, seeming not to notice her appealing hands, outstretched in one last attempt to pierce his armour.

He was gone. Thus ended her mission--the last throw of the dice, upon which she had staked so much!

Nothing now between her and beggary but the remains of the cheque for twenty pounds, sent to her by Mr. Rosenberg.

CHAPTER VI

GAUNT'S TERMS

"_Her hand was close to her daughter's heart And it felt the life-blood's sudden start; A quick deep breath did the damsel draw Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw._"--Rossetti.

Virginia, lily-pale in the heat, sat at the window of the tiny parlour dignified by the name of dining-room, adding up accounts. She had given Pansy her lunch, eaten some bread and cheese herself, and left the child to her daily afternoon rest while she applied herself to the discussion of ways and means.

It was Tony's half-holiday, and he would be home, he promised, at five o'clock, to help her carry down the little invalid into the garden to have tea. He was renouncing an hour of his precious cricket to do this.

What a darling he was! Virginia's eyes grew misty as she thought of him--how pluckily he went without things that "other chaps" had! How loyally he refrained from piercing her heart with the thought of her own helplessness to supply him with what he wanted!

Now, for the first time, she was alone with the problem created by her mother's improvidence. In all its bare hideousness, the thing confronted her. The rent was due. They had always waited to pay it until the cheque for the quarter's rent at Lissendean came in. Now there was no cheque to be expected. If her mother's errand to-day had failed, she must give notice to quit that very afternoon. Even so, where was this quarter's rent to come from? The balance at the bank was seven pounds six and two-pence.

The furniture must be sold. This, with her mother's pretty things, would pay the landlord. Afterwards--what?

The sweet eyes grew dim with a secret, bewildered kind of pain. Why had Gerald Rosenberg gone away without a word?... Yet, when she asked herself why not, she had no intelligible answer to give. Nothing had pa.s.sed between himself and her, in words. Only she had been conscious of his unceasing, absorbed attention, given to herself, whenever they had been in company. There had been a tiny secret thread of mutual understanding--or so Virginia had thought. It now appeared that she was mistaken. There had been nothing between them. It was like brushing gossamer from before one's eyes. It had been there, but it was nothing.

The first strong light of reason dispersed it. Something that had been very sweet, very poignant, had come to an end. While telling herself that it had all been her own fancy, inwardly she knew it was not so.

There had been something. But it was only gossamer--just midsummer madness.

Now that the doom had fallen, she would never see the Rosenbergs again.

She would have to be a governess, if such a post could be obtained.

Keenly she wondered what was pa.s.sing between Mrs. Mynors and her old lover. Though her nature revolted from the idea, she yet caught herself hoping that a marriage between the two might come about. If this Mr.

Gaunt--what an uncomfortable name!--was ready to take his former sweetheart to his home, he surely would offer asylum to her children, or if not, arrange that they could be together elsewhere.

Ah! That would be the thing! She lost herself in visions of this little home with herself, Pansy and Tony in it--no mother to wait upon; for dearly as she loved the privilege of waiting upon her mother, Virginia had to own that it was mamma who made things difficult.

She shut her neatly kept books with a sigh, and as she did so, glancing up, she saw to her surprise, that her mother was opening the garden gate.

She must have caught a very early train home!

Swiftly Virginia sprang up, hurried to the door, and admitted the returned traveller. One glance at the pretty, sulky face, the lids slightly puffed as with recent tears, told Virginia that the news was not good; and her heart sank to a degree so unexpectedly low that she girded at herself for a coward and a despicable person.

"Oh, my dear, you have walked all this way alone in the heat! How tired you must be. We are going to have tea in the garden later on--come to your sitting-room; let me put you on the sofa and take off your shoes.

You will soon feel better," she crooned over her mother, as she led her to the couch, tended her gently and lovingly, and--oh, crowning boon--asked no questions.

The care was accepted, but with a reservation which the sensitive girl was quick to feel. Gazing on the averted face and pouting lips, she could almost have thought that mamma was vexed with her, had that not been improbable under the circ.u.mstances. What was it? Did mamma think she ought to have met the train? Or did she want special tea made for her alone, immediately? Well, that was easily done. "Lie and rest, dear one," she said sympathetically, "and I will just make you a cup of tea; the kettle won't take five minutes to boil."

When she returned, with the dainty tray, and the wafer bread and b.u.t.ter, her mother was sitting up, her feet on the ground, her elbows on a small table, crying silently into her ridiculous pocket-handkerchief. This could, of course, only mean complete disaster. With a dreadful sinking of the heart Virginia murmured:

"You will tell me all about it when you feel able?"

Uncovering her eyes, Mrs. Mynors fixed them reproachfully upon her daughter; and the girl, conscious of some unspoken reproach, felt guilty, though no misdeeds came to her mind.

"Virgie," said a hollow voice, as at last the silence was broken, "did Miriam Rosenberg, when you were in town, take you to any picture galleries?"

Virgie stood, the picture of astonishment.

"Why, yes, we went to the Academy," said she, wonderingly, "and--oh, yes--we went to Hertford House as well."