"Your own!" The audacious self-complacency of the announcement astonished him, and seemed out of keeping with Miss Grey's character and ways. Do you write poems?"

"Oh, no; if I did, I don't think I could admire them."

"But how then--what do you mean?"

"Well--one can feel such poetry in every blink of sunshine even in this West Centre, and every breath of wind, and every stray recollection of some great book that one has read, when we were young, you know. That poetry never is brought to the awful test of being written down and read out. I do so feel for Mr. Blanchet; I suppose his poems seemed glorious before they were written out."

"But I think they seem glorious to him even still."

"They do--and to Mary. Mr. Heron, tell me honestly and without affectation--are you really a judge of poetry?"

"Not I," said Heron. "I adore a few old poets and one or two new ones, but I couldn't tell why--and those that I admire everybody else admires too, so that I can't pretend to myself that I have any original judgment. My opinion, Miss Grey, isn't worth a rush."

"I am very glad to hear it--very. Neither is mine. So you see we may be both of us quite mistaken about Mr. Blanchet's poems."

"Of course we may--I dare say we are; in fact I am quite sure we are,"

said Heron, growing enthusiastic.

"Anyhow it is possible. Now I have been thinking----"

"Yes, you have been thinking?"

"I don't know whether I am only going to prove myself a busybody; but I am so fond of Mary Blanchet."

"Yes: quite right; so am I--I mean I like her very much. But what do you think of doing?"

"Well, if one could do anything to get these poems published, or brought out in some way--if it could be done without Mr. Blanchet's knowledge, or if he could be got to approve of it, and was not too proud."

"All that I have been thinking of already," Victor said. "I do think it's a shame that a fellow shouldn't have a chance of fighting his battle for the want of a few wretched pounds."

"How glad I am now that I spoke of this to you! Then if I get up a little plot, you'll help me in it."

"I'll do everything--delighted."

"But first you must understand me. This is for my dear old friend, Mary Blanchet--not for Mr. Blanchet; I don't particularly care about him, in that sort of way, and I fancy that men generally can take care of themselves; but I can't bear to have Mary Blanchet disappointed, and that is why I want to do something. Now will you help me? I mean will you help me in my way?"

"I will help in anyway you like, so long as I am allowed to help at all.

But I don't quite understand what you mean."

"Don't you? I wish you did without being told so very, very clearly.

Well, my Mary Blanchet is proud; and though she might accept for her brother a helping hand from me, it would be quite a different thing where a stranger was concerned. In plain English, Mr. Heron, whatever money is to be paid must be paid by me; or there shall be no plot. Now you understand."

"Yes, certainly; I quite understand your feelings. I should have liked----"

"No doubt; but there are so many things one could have liked. The thing is now, will you help me--on my conditions?"

"Of course I will; but what help can I give, as you have ordered things?"

"There are ever so many things to do which I couldn't do, and shouldn't even know how to go about: seeing publishers and printers, and all that kind of work."

"All that I'll do with pleasure; and I am only sorry that you limit me to that. May I ask, Miss Grey, how old are you?"

"What on earth has that to do with the matter? Shall you have to give the publishers a certificate of my birth?"

"No, it's not for that. But you seem to me a very young woman, and yet you order people and things as if you were a matron."

Minola smiled and colored a little. "I have lived an odd and lonely sort of life," she said, "and never learned manners; perhaps that is the reason. If I don't please you, Mr. Heron--frankly, I shan't try."

There was something at once constrained and sharp in her manner, such as Heron had not observed before. She seemed changed somehow as she spoke these unpropitiatory words.

"Oh, you do please me," he said; "sincere people always please me.

Remember that I too admire the 'Misanthrope.'"

"Yes, very well; I am glad that you agree to my terms--and we are fellow-conspirators?"

"We are--and----"

"Stop! Here comes Mary."

Mary Blanchet came back. Her face had a curiously deprecating expression. She herself had been filled with wonder and delight by the reading of her brother's poems; but she had known Minola long enough to be as sensitive to her moods and half-implied meanings as the dog who catches from one glance at his master's face the knowledge of whether the master is or is not in a temper suited for play. Mary had done her very best to rea.s.sure her brother; but she had not herself felt quite satisfied about Minola's admiration.

"Well?" Mary said, looking beseechingly at Minola, and then appealingly at Victor, as if to ask whether he would not come to the rescue. "Well?"

"We have been talking," Minola said, with a resolute effort--"we have been talking--Mr. Heron and I--about your brother's poems, Mary; and we think that the public ought to have a chance of judging of them."

"Oh, thank you!" Mary exclaimed, and she clasped her hands fervently.

"Yes, Mr. Heron says he is clear about that."

"I was sure Mr. Heron would be," said Mary with becoming pride in her brother. She was not eager to ask any more questions, for she felt convinced that when Minola Grey said the poems ought to go before the public, they would somehow go; and she saw fame for her brother in the near distance. She thought she saw something else, too, as well as fame.

The interest which Minola took in Herbert's poems must surely betoken some interest in Herbert himself. She knew well enough, too, that there is nothing which so disposes some women to love men as the knowledge that they are serving and helping the men. This subject of love the little poetess had long and quaintly studied. She had followed it through no end of poems and romances, and lain awake through long hours of many nights considering it. She had subjected it to severe a.n.a.lysis, bringing to the aid of the a.n.a.lyzing process that gift of imagination which it is rarely permitted to the hard scientific inquirer to employ to any purpose. She had pictured herself as the object of all manner of wooings, under every conceivable variety of circ.u.mstances. Love by surprise; love by the slow degrees of steady growth; love pressed upon her by ardent youth; gravely tendered by a dignified maturity which, until her coming, had never known such pa.s.sion; love bending down to her from a castle, looking up to her from the cottage of the peasant--love in every form had tried her in fancy, and she had pleased and vexed herself into conjuring up its various effects upon her susceptibility.

But the general result of the poetess's self-examination was to show that the love which would most keenly touch her heart would be that which was born of pa.s.sion and compa.s.sion united. He, that is to say, whom she had helped and patronized, and saved, would be the man she best could love. Perhaps Mary Blanchet's years had something to do with this turn of feeling. The unused emotions of the maternal went, in her breast, to blend with and make up the equally unsatisfied sentiments of love; and her vague idea of a lover was that of somebody who should be husband and child in one.

Anyhow the result of all this, in the present instance, was that Mary felt a sudden and strong conviction that to allow Minola Grey to do Herbert a kindly service was a grand thing gained toward inducing Minola to fall in love with him.

So the three conspirators fell to making their arrangements. The parts were easily divided. Mr. Heron was to undertake the business of the affair, to see publishers, and printers, and so forth; Mary Blanchet was to undertake, or at least endeavor, to obtain the consent of her brother, whose proud spirit might perhaps revolt against such patronage, even from friendly hands. Miss Grey was to bear the cost. It was soon a very gratifying thing to the conspirators to know that no objection whatever was likely to come from Mr. Blanchet. The poet accepted the proffered favor not only with readiness, but with joy, and was particularly delighted and flattered when he learned from Mary--what Mary was specially ordered not to tell him--that Miss Grey was his lady-patroness. He was to have been allowed vaguely to understand that friends and admirers--whose name might have been legion--were combined to secure justice for him. But Mary, in the pride of her heart, told him all the truth, and her brother was greatly pleased and very proud. The only stipulation he made was that the poems should be brought out in a certain style, with such paper, such margins, such binding, and so on; according to the pattern of another poet's works, whereof he was to furnish a copy.

"She will be rich one day, Mary," he said, "and she can afford to do something for art."

"Will she be rich?" Mary asked, eagerly. "Oh, I am so glad! She ought to be a princess; she should be, if I were a queen."

"Yes, she'll be rich--what you and I would call rich," he said carelessly. "Everything is to be hers when the stepmother dies; and I believe she is in a galloping consumption."

"How do you know, Herbert?"

"You asked me to inquire, you know," he said, "and I did inquire. It was easily done. Her father left his money and things to his second wife only for her life. When she dies everything comes to your friend; and I hear the woman can't live long. Keep all that to yourself, Mary."

"I am sure Minola doesn't know anything about it. I know she never asked nor thought of it."