"I hope it will be 'of course,' dear, and that you may be very, very happy; but it's a serious question. I'm an old-fashioned body, who believes in love. If it's the real thing it _lasts_, and it's about the only thing upon which you can count. Health comes and goes, and riches take wing. When I married Papa he was in tin-plates, and doing well, but owing to American treaties (you wouldn't understand!) we had to put down servants and move into a smaller house. Now, if I'd married him for money, how should I have felt _then_?"

Pixie wagged her head with an air of the deepest dejection. She was speculating as to the significance of tin-plates, but thought it tactful not to inquire.

"I hope--" she breathed deeply--"I hope the tin-plates--" and her companion gathered together her satchel and cloak in readiness for departure at the next station, nodding a cheerful rea.s.surance.

"Oh, yes; _quite_ prosperous again! Have been for years. But it only shows. ... And Papa has attacks of gout. They are trying, my dear, to _me_, as well as to himself; but if you love a man--well, it comes easier. ... Here's my station. So glad to have met you! I'll remember about the purple."

The train stopped, and the good lady alighted and pa.s.sed through the wicket-gate, and her late companion watched her pa.s.s with a sentimental sigh.

"'Ships that pa.s.s in the night, and signal each other in pa.s.sing.' She took to me, and I took to her. She'll talk about me all evening to May and Felicia, and the tin-plate Papa, and ten chances to one we'll never meet again. 'It's a sad world, my masters!'" sighed Pixie, and dived in her bag for a chocolate support.

The rest of the journey brought no companion so confidential, and Pixie was heartily glad to arrive at her destination, and as the train slackened speed to run into the station, to catch a glimpse of Esmeralda sitting straight and stately in a high cart ready to drive her visitor back to the Hall. Motors were very well in their way--useful trainlets ready to call at one's own door and whirl one direct to the place where one would be, but the girl who had hunted with her father since she was a baby of four years old was never _so_ happy as when she was in command of a horse. As the new-comer climbed up into the high seat the beautiful face was turned towards her with a smile as sweet and loving as Bridgie's own.

"Well, Pixie! Ah, dearie, this is good. I've got you at last."

"Esmeralda, _darling_! What an angel you look!"

"Don't kiss me in public, _please_," snapped Esmeralda, becoming prosaic with startling rapidity at the first hint of visible demonstration. She signalled to the groom, and off they went, trotting down the country lane in great contentment of spirits.

"How's everybody?" asked Esmeralda. "Well? That's right. You can tell me the details later on. Now, you have just to forget Bridgie for a bit, and think of _Me_. I've wanted you for years, and I told Bridgie to her face she was selfish to keep you away. If I'm not a good example, you can take example by my faults, and isn't that just as good?

And there's so much that I want you to do. You always loved to help, didn't you, Pixie?"

"I did," a.s.sented Pixie, but the quick ears of the listener detected a hint of hesitation in the sound. The dark eyebrows arched in haughty questioning, and Pixie, no whit abashed, shrugged her shoulders and confessed with a laugh: "But to tell you the truth, my dear, it was not so much for helping, as for having a good time for myself, that I started on this trip. Bridgie said I'd been domestic long enough, and needed to play for a change, and there's a well of something bubbling up inside me that longs, simply _longs_, for a vent. Of course, if one could combine the two..."

Joan Hilliard looked silently into the girl's bright face and made a mental comparison. She thought of the round of change and amus.e.m.e.nt which const.i.tuted her own life, and then of the little house in the northern city in which Pixie's last years had been spent; of the monotonous, if happy, round of duties, every day the same, from year's end to year's end, of the shortage of means, of friends, of opportunities, and a wave of compunction overwhelmed her. Esmeralda never did things by halves; neither had she any false shame about confessing her faults.

"I'm a selfish brute," she announced bluntly. "I deserve to be punished. If I go on like this I _shall_ be some day! I'm always thinking of myself, when I'm not in a temper with some one else. It's an awful thing, Pixie, to be born into the world with a temper. And now, Geoff has inherited it from me." She sighed, shook the reins, and brightened resolutely. "Never mind, you _shall_ have a good time, darling! There's a girl staying in the house now--you'll like her--and two young men, and lots of people coming in and out."

Pixie heaved a sigh of beatific content.

"To-night? At once? That's what I love--to tumble pell-mell into a whirl of dissipation. I never could bear to wait. I'm pining to see Geoffrey and the boys, and all your wonderful new possessions. You must be happy, Esmeralda, to have so much, and be so well, and pretty, and rich. Aren't you just burstingly happy?"

Joan did not answer. She stared ahead over the horse's head with a strange, rapt look in the wonderful eyes. An artist would have loved to paint her at that moment, but it would not have been as a type of happiness. The expression spoke rather of struggle, of restlessness, and want--a spiritual want which lay ever at the back of the excitement and glamour, clamouring to be filled.

Pixie looked at her sister, just once, and then averted her eyes. Hers was the understanding which springs from love, and she realised that her simple question had struck a tender spot. Instead of waiting for an answer she switched the conversation to ordinary, impersonal topics, and kept it there until the house was reached.

Tea was waiting in the large inner hall, and the girl visitor came forward to be introduced and shake hands. She was a slim, fair creature with ma.s.ses of hair of a pale flaxen hue, swathed round her head, and held in place by large amber pins. Not a hair was out of place--the effect was more like a bandage of pale brown silk than ordinary human locks. Her dress was made in the extreme of the skimpy fashion, and her little feet were encased in the most immaculate of silk shoes and stockings. She looked Pixie over in one quick, appraising glance, and Pixie stared back with widened eyes.

"My sister, Patricia O'Shaughnessy," declaimed Esmeralda. Whereupon the strange girl bowed and repeated, "Miss Pat-ricia O'Shaughnessy. Pleased to meet you," in a manner which proclaimed her American birth as unmistakably as a flourish of the Stars and Stripes.

Then tea was brought in, and two young men joined the party, followed by the host, Geoffrey Hilliard, who gave the warmest of welcomes to his little sister-in-law. His kiss, the grasp of his hand, spoke of a deeper feeling than one of mere welcome, and Pixie had an instant perception that Geoffrey, like his wife, felt in need of help. The first glance had shown him more worn and tired than a man should be who has youth, health, a beautiful wife, charming children, and more money than he knows how to spend; but whatever hidden troubles might exist, they were not allowed to shadow this hour of meeting.

"Sure, and this is a sight for sore eyes!" he cried, with a would-be adaptation of an Irish accent. "You're welcome, Pixie--a hundred times welcome. We're overjoyed to see you, dear."

Pixie beamed at him, with an attention somewhat diverted by the two young men who stared at her from a few yards' distance. One was tall and fair, the other dark and thick set, and when Esmeralda swept forward to make the formal introductions it appeared that the first rejoiced in the name of Stanor Vaughan, and the second in the much more ordinary one of Robert Carr.

"My sister Patricia," once more announced Mrs Hilliard, and though the young men ascribed Pixie's blush to a becoming modesty, it arose in reality from annoyance at the sound of the high-sounding t.i.tle which had been so persistently dropped all her life. Surely Esmeralda was not going to insist upon "Patricia!"

For a few moments everybody remained standing, the men relating their experiences of the afternoon, while Esmeralda waited for some further additions to the tea-table, and Pixie's quick-seeing eyes roamed here and there gathering impressions to be stored away for later use. She was too excited, too interested, to talk herself, but her ears were as quick as her eyes, and so it happened that she caught a fragment of conversation between Miss Ward and the tall Mr Vaughan, which was certainly not intended for her ears.

"...A _sister_!" he was repeating in tones of incredulous astonishment.

"A sister! But how extraordinarily unlike! She must have thrown in her own beauty to add to Mrs Hilliard's share!"

"Oh, hush!" breathed the girl urgently. "_She heard_!"

Stanor Vaughan lifted his head sharply and met Pixie's watching eyes fixed upon him. His own glance was tense and shamed, but to his amazement hers was friendly, humorous, undismayed. There was no displeasure in her face, no hint of humiliation nor discomfiture-- nothing, it would appear, but serene, unruffled agreement.

Stanor Vaughan had not a good memory: few events of his youth remained with him after middle life, but when he was an old, old man that moment still remained vivid, when, in the place of rebuke, he first met the radiance of Pixie. O'Shaughnessy's broad, sweet smile.

CHAPTER SIX.

A TALK ABOUT MEN--AND PICKLES.

Stanor Vaughan was deputed to take Pixie in to dinner that evening, an arrangement which at the beginning of the meal appeared less agreeable to him than to his partner. He cast furtive glances at the small, plain, yet mysteriously attractive little girl, who was the sister of the beautiful Mrs Hilliard, the while she ate her soup, and found himself attacked by an unusual nervousness. He didn't know what to say: he didn't know how to say it. He had made a bad start, and he wished with all his heart that he could change places with Carr and "rot" with that jolly Miss Ward. All the same, he found himself curiously attracted by this small Miss O'Shaughnessy, and he puzzled his handsome head to discover why.

There was no beauty in the little face, and, as a rule, Stanor, as he himself would have expressed it, had "no use" for a girl who was plain.

What really attracted him was the happiness and serenity which shone in Pixie's face, as light shines through the encircling gla.s.s, for to human creatures as to plants the great necessity of life is sun, and its attraction is supreme. Walk along a crowded street and watch the different faces of the men and women as they pa.s.s by--grey faces, drab faces, white faces, yellow faces, faces sad and cross, and lined and dull, faces by the thousand blank of any expression at all, and then here and there, at rare, rare intervals, a _live_ face that speaks. You spy it afar off--a face with shining eyes, with lips curled ready for laughter, with arching brows, and tilted chin, and every little line and wrinkle speaking of _life_.

That face is as a magnet to attract not only eyes, but hearts into the bargain; the pa.s.sers-by, rouse themselves from their lethargy to smile back in sympathy, and pa.s.s on their way wafting mental messages of affection.--"What a _dear_ girl!" they cry, or "woman," or "man," as the case may be. "What a charming face! I should like to know that girl."

And the girl with the happy face goes on _her_ way, all the happier for the kindly, thoughts by which she is pursued.

When strangers were first introduced to Pixie O'Shaughnessy they invariably catalogued her as a plain-looking girl; when they had known her for an hour they began to feel that they had been mistaken, and at the end of a week they would have been prepared to quarrel with their best friend if he had echoed their own first judgment. The charm of her personality soon overpowered the physical deficiency.

Stanor Vaughan was as yet too young and prosperous to realise the real reason of Pixie's attraction. He decided that it was attributable to her trim, jaunty little figure and the unusual fashion in which she dressed her hair. Also she wore a shade of bright flame-coloured silk which made a special appeal to his artistic eye, and he approved of the simple, graceful fashion of its cut.

"Looks as if she'd had enough stuff!" he said to himself, with all a man's dislike of the prevailing hobble. He pondered how to open the conversation, asking himself uneasily what punishment the girl would award him for his _faux pas_ of the afternoon. Would she be haughty?

She didn't look the kind of little thing to be haughty! Would she be cold and aloof? Somehow, glancing at the irregular, piquant little profile, he could not imagine her aloof. Would she snap? Ah! Now he was not so certain. He saw distinct possibilities of snap, and then, just as he determined that he really must make the plunge and get it over, Pixie leaned confidentially toward him and said below her breath--

"_Please_ talk! Make a start--any start--and I'll go on. ... It's your place to begin."

"Er--er--" stammered Stanor, and promptly forgot every subject of conversation under the sun. He stared back into the girl's face, met her honest eyes, and was seized with an impulse of confession. "Before I say anything else, I--I ought to apologise, Miss O'Shaughnessy. I'm most abominably ashamed. I'm afraid you overheard my--er--er--w-what I said to Miss Ward at tea--"

"Of course I heard," said Pixie, staring. "What could you expect? Not four yards away, and a great ba.s.s voice! I'm not _deaf_. But there's no need to feel sorry. I thought you put it very nicely, myself!"

"Nicely!" He stared in amaze. "_Nicely_! How could you possibly--"

"You said I had given Esmeralda my share. I'd never once looked at it in that way; neither had any one else. And it's _so soothing_. It gives me a sort of credit, don't you see, as well as a pride."

She was speaking honestly, transparently honestly; it was impossible to doubt that, with her clear eyes beaming upon him, her lips curling back in laughter from her small white teeth. There was not one sign of rancour, of offence, of natural girlish vanity suffering beneath a blow.

"Good sport!" cried Stanor, in a voice, however, which could be heard by no one but himself. His embarra.s.sment fell from him, but not his amazement; _that_ seemed to increase with each moment that pa.s.sed. His glance lingered on Pixie's face, the while he said incredulously--

"It's--it's wonderful of you. I've known heaps of girls, but never one who would have taken it like that. You don't seem to have a sc.r.a.p of conceit--"

"Ex-cuse me," corrected Miss O'Shaughnessy. For the first time she seemed to be slightly ruffled, as though the supposition that she could be bereft of any quality, or experience common to her kind was distinctly hurtful to her pride. "I _have_! Heaps! But it's for the right things. I've too much conceit to be conceited about things about which I've no _right_ to be conceited. I'm only conceited about things about which I'm--"