It was no Protestant sister to whom the Reverend Cecil had reached his hand. It was only his umbrella. Betty breathed again.

Well, now at least he'll come and speak to me: he must come himself; even _he_ couldn't give the key to the servants and say: "Please go and unlock Miss Lizzie and bring her down!"

Betty would not move. "I shall just stay here and pretend I didn't know the door was locked," said she.

But her impatience drove her back to the caged-lioness walk and when at last she heard the key turn in the door she had only just time to spring to the window-seat and compose herself in an att.i.tude of graceful defiance.

It was thrown away.

The door only opened wide enough to admit a dinner tray pushed in by a hand she knew. Then the door closed again.

The same thing happened with tea and supper.

It was not till after supper that Betty, gazing out on the pale watery sunset, found it blurred to her eyes. There was no more hope now. She was a prisoner. If He was not a prisoner he ought to be. It was the only thing that could excuse his silence. He might at least have gone by the gate or waved a handkerchief. Well, all was over between them, and Betty was alone in the world. She had not cried all day, but now she did cry.

Vernon always prided himself on having a heart for any fate, but this was one of the interviews that one would rather have avoided. All day he had schooled himself to resignation, had almost reconciled himself to the spoiling of what had promised to be a masterpiece. Explications with Betty would brush the bloom off everything. Yet he must play the part well. But what part? Oh, hang all meddlers!

"Miss Desmond," said the landlady; and he braced his nerves to meet a tearful, an indignant or a desperate Betty.

But there was no Betty to be met; no Betty of any kind.

Instead, a short squarely-built middle-aged lady walked briskly into the room, and turned to see the door well closed before she advanced towards him.

He bowed with indescribable emotions.

"Mr. Eustace Vernon?" said the lady. She wore a sensible short skirt and square-toed brown boots. Her hat was boat-shaped and her abundant hair was screwed up so as to be well out of her way. Her face was square and sensible like her shoulders, and her boots. Her eyes dark, clear and near sighted. She wore gold-rimmed spectacles and carried a crutch-handled cane. No vision could have been less like Betty.

Vernon bowed, and moved a chair towards her.

"Thank you," she said, and took it. "Now, Mr. Vernon, sit down too, and let's talk this over like reasonable beings. You may smoke if you like. It clears the brain."

Vernon sat down and mechanically took out a cigarette, but he held it unlighted.

"Now," said the square lady, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, "I am Betty's aunt."

"It is very good of you to come," said Vernon helplessly.

"Not at all," she briskly answered. "Now tell me all about it."

"There's nothing to tell," said Vernon.

"Perhaps it will clear the ground a little if I say at once that I haven't come to ask your intentions, because of course you haven't any. My reverend brother-in-law, on the other hand, insists that you have, and that they are strictly dishonourable."

Vernon laughed, and drew a breath of relief.

"I fear Mr. Underwood misunderstood,--" he said, "and--"

"He is a born misunderstander," said Miss Julia Desmond. "Now, I'm not. Light your cigarette, man; you can give me one if you like, to keep you in countenance. A light--thanks. Now will you speak, or shall I?"

"You seem to have more to say than I, Miss Desmond."

"Ah, that's because you don't trust me. In other words, you don't know me. That's one of the most annoying things in life: to be really an excellent sort, and to be quite unable to make people see it at the first go-off. Well, here goes. My worthy brother-in-law finds you and my niece holding hands in a shed."

"We were not," said Vernon. "I was telling her fortune--"

"It's my lead now," interrupted the lady. "Your turn next. He being what he is--to the pure all things are impure, you know--instantly draws the most harrowing conclusions, hits you with a stick.--By the way, you behaved uncommonly well about that."

"Thank you," said Vernon, smiling a little. It is pleasant to be appreciated.

"Yes, really very decently, indeed. I daresay it wouldn't have hurt a fly, but if you'd been the sort of man he thinks you are--However that's neither here nor there. He hits you with a stick, locks the child into her room--What did you say?"

"Nothing," said Vernon.

"All right. I didn't hear it. Locks her in her room, and wires to my sister. Takes a carriage to Sevenoaks to do it too, to avoid scandal.

I happen to be at my sister's, on my way from Cairo to Norway, so I undertake to run down. He meets me at the station, and wants me to go straight home and blackguard Betty. But I prefer to deal with princ.i.p.als."

"You mean--"

"I mean that I know as well as you do that whatever has happened has been your doing and not that dear little idiot's. Now, are you going to tell me about it?"

He had rehea.r.s.ed already a form of words in which "Brother artists"

should have loomed large. But now that he rose, shrugged his shoulders and spoke, it was in words that had not been rehea.r.s.ed.

"Look here, Miss Desmond," said he, "the fact is, you're right. I haven't any intentions--certainly not dishonourable ones. But I was frightfully bored in the country, and your niece is bored, too--more bored than I am. No one ever understands or pities the boredom of the very young," he added pensively.

"Well?"

"Well, that's all there is to it. I liked meeting her, and she liked meeting me."

"And the fortune-telling? Do you mean to tell me you didn't enjoy holding the child's hand and putting her in a silly flutter?"

"I deny the flutter," he said, "but--Well, yes, of course I enjoyed it. You wouldn't believe me if I said I didn't."

"No," said she.

"I enjoyed it more than I expected to," he added with a frankness that he had not meant to use, "much more. But I didn't say a word of love---only perhaps--"

"Only perhaps you made the idea of it underlie every word you did speak. Don't I know?" said Miss Desmond. "Bless the man, I've been young myself!"

"Miss Betty is very charming," said he, "and--and if I hadn't met her--"

"If you hadn't met her some other man would. True; but I fancy her father would rather it had been some other man."

"I didn't mean that in the least," said Vernon with some heat. "I meant that if I hadn't met her she would have gone on being bored, and so should I. Don't think me a humbug, Miss Desmond. I am more sorry than I can say that I should have been the means of causing her any unhappiness."

"'Causing her unhappiness,'--poor little Betty, poor little trusting innocent silly little girl! That's about it, isn't it?"