A shadow of depression rested upon all the young people, though Ruth could not help feeling thankful for a reasonable excuse for a sadness which had nothing to do with Uncle Bernard or his health. Now, no one would wonder if she were sad or silent, and she would escape the questioning she had so much dreaded. Immediately breakfast was over she announced her intention of devoting the morning to photography, and disappeared indoors, while Victor took his accustomed path to the stables.

Mollie would have followed her sister, but Jack detained her with an appeal which could not be denied.

"Stay and talk to me a little while; do! or I shall think you are offended by my stupidity yesterday. I have to thank you for your reminder last night. If you had not stopped me I should have spoken even more strongly than I did, and have been filled with remorse. As it is, I don't think anything I said could have been responsible for this attack. Considering all things I kept pretty cool, didn't I now?"

"I think you did," conceded Mollie, smiling. "No; I expect it has been coming on for some days, and that was why he was so cross. You generally find people are ill if they are more than usually snappy.

Poor Uncle Bernard! I wish one could help; but I am glad he has not Mrs Wolff to fidget him. Do you know," said Mollie, fixing her candid eyes upon Jack's face, and inwardly rejoicing at having hit on an impersonal topic of conversation,--"do you know Mrs Wolff is an unending problem to one! I think about her for hours at a time, and try to puzzle her out, but I never get one step further."

"Really!" Jack searched in his pockets for materials, and began rolling up one of the everlasting cigarettes. "I'm surprised to hear that. I should not have thought she could have occupied more than two minutes.

For my own part I find it impossible to think of her at all. She was born; she exists; she will probably die! Having said so much, you have exhausted the subject."

"Not at all," contradicted Mollie frankly. "There's lots more to consider. What is she really, and what is the real life that she lives inside that funny little sh.e.l.l? And was she ever a child who laughed and danced, and raced about, and was good and naughty, and played with toys, and lived among giants and fairies? We _lived_ fairy tales, Ruth and I, and had giants to tea in a nursery four yards square. And we hunted ferocious lions and tigers, who either turned out kind and harmless, or were slain by imaginary swords. Did Mrs Wolff always know exactly that two and two make four, and never by any chance made a delicious pretence that it was five? And when she went to school had she a chum whom she adored, and wrote letters to every other day filled with 'dears' and 'darlings,' and did she ever shirk 'prep,' or play tricks on the teachers, or sit up to a dormitory supper?"

"Certainly not! She was a good little girl who never soiled her pinafore, nor dreamt of anything she could not see, and she worked hard at school and remained persistently in the middle of the cla.s.s, and gained high marks for neatness and decorum. She never had a chum because she is incapable of caring for one person more than another."

"But what about 'poor Mr Wolff'? Surely she must have had, at least, a preference for him! That's another problem--how did anyone come to fall in love with her, and what did he fall in love with, and why, and when, and where? I long to know all about it, for it seems so incomprehensible."

Jack laughed with masculine amus.e.m.e.nt at her curiosity.

"Not incomprehensible at all. I can give a very good guess how it happened. She was a timid, shrinking, little thing, rather pretty--her features are not at all bad--and 'poor Mr Wolff' was a big burly fellow who took a fancy to her because she was a contrast to himself. She didn't say much, so he credited her with thinking the more. She agreed with everything he said, so he considered her the cleverest woman he knew. He discovered his error, no doubt, in sackcloth and ashes, poor fellow; but mercifully he had not to endure many years of disenchantment. I can't imagine a worse fate than being tied for life to an automaton!"

"Humph!" Mollie pondered, pinching her soft chin between thumb and finger. "He might not be so particular as you... Did you ever... Have you ever,--I mean, did you ever meet..."

Jack blew a cloud of smoke from between his lips with a half-embarra.s.sed smile.

"Did I ever meet a girl whom I imagined might be my Mrs Wolff! Is that what you want to ask? Yes--once!--for a pa.s.sing moment. We met, and I caught a glimpse of her face, and recognised it as the fulfilment of a dream. Then she disappeared. Romantic, isn't it, and disappointing into the bargain? I am not a sentimental fellow, I suppose, for I have never even imagined myself in love, though I have known scores of charming girls; but at that moment I realised possibilities!"

"But, oh, how disappointing! Did she really disappear? Couldn't you find her? Is there no chance that you may meet again?"

"Sometimes I think there is; at other times it seems impossible. In any case, I am powerless to help, or to hinder."

"I should not say that if I were a man! I would search the world over till I found her!" Mollie sat silently, with bent head and thoughtful air, then suddenly lifted her eyes to his with a sweet, grave glance.

"I hope you _will_ meet! I hope you will be very happy together some day,--you, and your Lady of Dreams!"

Jack looked at her, and his face changed strangely. He said nothing, not even a word of thanks for her good wishes, and presently got up from his seat, and limped into the house, leaving Mollie depressed and self- reproachful.

"I suppose I should not have said it. He thinks it 'gush,' and won't condescend to answer. I wonder what she was like? Dark, I suppose, and stately, and serious; the very opposite from me. She will appear again some day, and they will be married and look so handsome together. I'm awfully, awfully glad; at least, I should be if Uncle Bernard were not ill. That makes one feel so dull and wretched that one can't be glad about anything," said poor Mollie to herself.

Jack did not appear again; and she was not in the mood to take any interest in Ruth's photographic efforts, so she strolled through the grounds and gathered an armful of flowers to send home to the little mother. This was always a pleasant undertaking, and just now there was a special reason for choosing the freshest and most fragrant blossoms, for the last few letters had hinted at a recurrence of the old money troubles.

"Something is up!" wrote Trix, in school-girl parlance. "Father and mother are talking in his den all the evening, and she comes down to breakfast with her eyes swollen with crying, and he looks like a sheet, and doesn't eat a bite. Horrid old business again, of course. How I hate it! We shall have to sc.r.a.pe a little more, I suppose; and where we are to sc.r.a.pe from, I'm blest if I know! My blue serge is green, and the boys' Etons shine like the rising sun. It was a fine day on Sunday, and they fairly glittered going to church. I don't want to give you the blues, but thought I'd better tell you, so that you could write to cheer them up, and also be more a.s.siduous in your attentions to the old man.

You must and shall get that fortune between you, or we shall be bivouacking in the workhouse before you can say Jack Robinson! My heart too truly knows the signs full well!"

Mollie recalled these expressive sentences, and sighed in sympathy.

"Poor old Trix! too bad that she should be left at home to bear the brunt, while we are living in the lap of luxury. I expect it is just one of the old crises, and we shall worry through as usual, but it is depressing while it lasts. I can't endure to see mother with red eyes.

She will smile when she sees these roses, bless her! I defy anyone not to enjoy opening a box of flowers; and when we go home we will cheer them up again,--fortune or no fortune. Dear old Trix shall have some of my fineries made down, as a change from the green serge."

Mollie's spirits lightened perceptibly as she loitered about the garden, for to a town-bred girl it was luxury indeed, not only to look upon a wealth of roses, but to be able to gather them lavishly as she pleased.

When the basket was full of half-opened beauties, ranging in every shade, from white to the bloomy crimson of "Prince Camille," she turned to more shady corners for the sprays of ferns and foliage, which are even more prized than flowers themselves by the unhappy dwellers in cities, then returned to the house to find a box and pack it for the post. The terrace was empty, but Mrs Wolff was sitting knitting just inside the drawing-room window.

"Your uncle is better," she announced, as Mollie approached. "He has had a quiet sleep since breakfast, and James thinks he will be able to sit up for an hour or two to-morrow. I haven't seen anything of Ruth or Mr Melland. Mr Druce came back from the stables to say that he was not going to ride to-day, but take a long walk, and he would be sure to be home in time for lunch. He is always so kind and considerate!"

The poor little woman looked wan and dispirited, and Mollie reflected with a pang of remorse that she herself had shown little consideration for her feelings. Even a nonent.i.ty, it appeared, could feel dull when left by herself in a big, empty house, and also could appreciate a little act of thoughtfulness. Victor disappeared so regularly for the morning hours, that it seemed strange that he should have especially explained his intentions this morning of all others; but perhaps he had done so, just because to-day was distinguished by a special load of anxiety which he was anxious not to increase. Mrs Wolff lived in a constant state of fidget, and even so little a thing as the uncertainty whether the household would a.s.semble punctually to partake of the luncheon which she had ordered, might easily add to her distress.

"He is awfully considerate at times; much more than the rest of us,"

Mollie admitted to herself. "He never forgets the least little thing that Uncle Bernard says or does, or likes or dislikes, while I--silly, blundering thing!--always try to help him out of his chair at the wrong side, or stumble over his sticks."

She stood looking down at Mrs Wolff with a new impulse of sympathy.

Hitherto, they had seemed divided by an impa.s.sable gulf, but this morning the girl's usual radiant sense of well-being had died away, and left a little rankling ache in its place. "Uncle Bernard's illness, and this new bother at home," was Mollie's explanation even to her own heart, but the result thereof was to fill her with pity for the life of a woman whom n.o.body loved, and who was homeless in a land of homes.

She sat down beside Mrs Wolff, determined to make the hour before luncheon pa.s.s more cheerfully than its predecessor, and a few judicious questions soon set the good lady's tongue prattling over past and future. She said that as a girl she had always had a partiality for blue merino, and had owned a Dunstable bonnet, trimmed with roses, which was said to be particularly becoming. It was a pity that roses faded so in the sun; ribbons were more economical wear. Did Mrs Connor buy her fish wholesale from Whitby, or retail from a fishmonger? They did say there was a great saving in the former way, only you got tired of cod, if it were a very big fish...

The worst of a large house was having to keep so many servants! A friend of hers, who was "reduced," said she had never known what comfort meant till she came down to two. That James really took too much upon himself! Talking of black-currant jelly--how beautiful the peaches were on the south wall! Her cousin's little boy--Eddie, not Tom--fell over a garden barrow the other day, and it might have been most serious, for the shears were only a few yards away. Children were more trouble than pleasure. Poor Mr Wolff always regretted having none, and she used to remind him of the school bills, and the breakages, and the dirt in the house...

Had Mollie ever knitted comforters for deep-sea fishermen? They said their ears did get so cold. There was nothing like an onion boiled really soft, and made into a poultice for ear-ache. Her cousin's little boy--Tom, not Eddie--had it very badly. Dear, dear, to hear his shrieks! They found onion much better than camphorated oil. When Mr Farrell died, she supposed whoever came into possession would re-cover the drawing-room furniture. It needed it, and you got lovely patterns from London...

On and on the stream flowed, until Mollie felt dazed and bewildered.

Mrs Wolff evidently felt it such a treat to have a listener that she was capable of continuing for hours at a time, and it was only the sounding of the gong for lunch which brought an end to the monologue.

In its pa.s.sing it had seemed a quiet, uneventful morning; no one guessed what importance its coming and going would a.s.sume in the near future.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

AN UNPLEASANT INTERVIEW.

Mr Farrell kept to his determination to see none of his visitors until he was able to come downstairs, but he sent a message by James, to the effect that he would be annoyed if his indisposition were allowed to interfere in any way with social engagements. Therefore, dinner-parties being the order of the day, the four young people feasted abroad every evening, and spent the afternoons at various tennis and croquet parties inst.i.tuted in their honour.

The rush of gaiety was in full swing, and the list of invitations which ought to be accepted stretched so far ahead that it seemed as if there would be little time left in which to entertain in return. In earlier days the girls had delighted to discuss gorgeous and bizarre ideas, smacking more of the Arabian Nights than of an English country house, by the execution of which they hoped to electrify the county and prove their own skill as hostesses; but of late these schemes had been unmentioned. Ruth was too much crushed by her disappointment to have spirit for frivolities, and the shadow of the universal depression at home, as well as at the Court, cast its shadow over Mollie also.

In a half-hearted way both girls were glad of the engagements which prevented _tete-a-tetes_, which had grown difficult and embarra.s.sing, yet with the unreasonableness of her s.e.x Ruth felt doubly hurt to realise that Victor shared in her relief. She had expected to have difficulty in avoiding him, and to hear reproaches for her coldness, but neither expectation was fulfilled.

"I suppose he thinks that he has made things safe with me by that last conversation, and can afford to take a little holiday and enjoy himself.

He does not want to compromise himself too far!" Ruth told herself, with a touch of bitterness which had developed during the last few days.

She knew that Victor's long absences in the morning were spent in trying to waylay Lady Margot in her walks and drives, and had the best authority for knowing him to have been successful more than once, for Margot had been present at one of the dinner-parties and had seized an opportunity to have a quiet word.

"I have met Mr Druce twice this week. I could have avoided him by staying in the grounds, but I do not wish to rouse his suspicions. He won't risk anything definite until matters are decided between you and Mr Farrell, and then he shall learn his lesson. From which of us he learns it, it does not matter. In the meantime, I shall make no change, and he can come and go as he sees fit."

"You must be very--very sure of yourself!" said Ruth wistfully; at which Margot reared her little head with a haughty gesture.

"Absolutely sure! If he had dared to ask me six months ago, I might have given up everything to be the wife of the imaginary Victor, but now I will not alter the slightest plan out of consideration for the real Mr Druce. I can trust myself; but,"--she turned a grave, direct gaze on the other's face--"can _you_ trust me, Ruth? I don't concern myself about appearances, so it is possible you may hear rumours which may not seem in keeping with our agreement. Can you trust me enough to believe that, however strange things may seem, I am really considering your interests even more than my own?"

"I think I can--oh yes, I am sure I can!" replied Ruth hesitatingly.

But even as she spoke a doubt crept up in her mind. If Victor did, indeed, become the owner of the Court, and remained persistent in his wooing, could Margot withstand him? She had loved him once. Would not the old feeling revive, and prove too strong for argument? It was Ruth's nature to distract herself with doubts and fears, and the little conversation did not help to raise her spirits.