"Gibbs? You won't mind being known as 'Our Miss Gibbs,' will you?" His tone was free of all offence, and Toni smiled in response. "Now, here's a chair for me, and if only our chief will hold his peace for half an hour, I'll soon put you wise, as the Yankees say."

He sat down beside her, and pulling a couple of galley proof-sheets towards him, began to initiate her into the mysteries of "reading." For all his laughing manner he was an excellent teacher; and after twenty minutes of his clear and lucid exposition the girl felt she was beginning to grasp her lesson thoroughly. She proved, too, wonderfully quick at detecting mistakes, and Barry, who had pet.i.tioned the heads of the office they had selected not to send him any Council School product, was pleased to find that her spelling was admirable, her grammar pa.s.sable, and her memory retentive.

As to the meaning which the article they were correcting conveyed to her, Barry was a little doubtful.

It was a short summary, by a famous Catholic writer, of some of the lesser-understood aspects of mysticism; and Barry suspected that a good deal of it was Greek to her, though she did her best to answer him intelligently when he questioned her, rather artfully, on the correct reading of a somewhat involved sentence.

As a matter of fact, Toni was wondering inwardly what on earth it was all about. Her education, though sound so far as it went, had been thoroughly old-fashioned; and at this period of her development it is to be feared there were whole tracts of mind and brain left vacant--for Toni belonged, by adoption at least, to a cla.s.s who read only for amus.e.m.e.nt and occupation, and are not in the least anxious to try their mental teeth on any abstract theories or philosophies of life. She was at present all for the concrete. Things seen and known were of importance, things unseen were alike uninteresting and incredible. The abstract virtues were all very well, but life was much too vivid and important to allow itself to be ousted by dreams and speculations.

Something of this Barry, who had an almost femininely swift intuition, guessed as he sat beside Toni on this first morning; but Toni was much too intent on her work to wonder what he thought of her; and by the time she had done a little typing, taken down a few letters, and read a short proof all by herself, it was one o'clock, and she was dismissed in search of lunch.

When she returned, nearly an hour later, she found Owen alone, studying a dummy copy of the review; and seeing she was interested, Owen handed it over for her to see.

"The _Bridge_." She quoted the t.i.tle a little dubiously. "Is that what you call it? But--what does it mean?"

Taking it back into his own hands, Owen pointed with a pencil to the design on the cover.

"Here is the Bridge, you see, and this stream of people pa.s.sing over it symbolize the present generation. This side of the bridge represents the past, from which the present comes; this, over the bridge, is the future, towards which the pilgrims are hastening. The idea is to bridge the gulf between past and future, between the old worlds and the new; and with that in mind we try, while never neglecting the storehouse of the past, to point to the future, with all its wonderful, and as yet unwon, rewards and discoveries."

She murmured a word or two, and he went on with a note of enthusiasm in his voice.

"Personally, I look to the future with confidence. Some people say the golden age of poetry, of music and letters generally, is past; but I don't agree. I think that there will be a fresh Renaissance presently, that there will be found fresh hands to pa.s.s on the sacred torch ... there's a flood of brilliant youth let loose in the world just now; and every bit of help the _Bridge_ can give is at the service of that marvellous band."

He broke off suddenly, the light of the visionary gleaming in his eyes; but seeing, with a slight pang of disappointment, that his outburst was unintelligible to his hearer, he threw down the paper and laughed.

"There, Miss Gibbs, I have finished! Don't start me on the subject unless you're ready to be bored. Talk to Barry about it--he is able to look upon the _Bridge_ quite sanely, as a means of providing bread and b.u.t.ter; but I'm afraid I'm a bit of a fanatic."

Toni, uncertain of her ground, but desperately anxious to appear intelligent, murmured something shyly, and Rose pulled out his watch with a smile.

"After two already! Well, Miss Gibbs, I'm off for lunch. You might just sort these papers out a bit, will you? We seem to have let things get into rather a muddle."

"I'll do it at once. There would be plenty of room for everything if some of these papers wore tidied up."

"Yes, I suppose you're right." Owen, who loved order, but was too impatient to preserve it, spoke dubiously. "Of course some of those papers are done with, but you wouldn't know which to keep, would you?"

"Perhaps Mr. Raymond would help me?"

Owen's face cleared.

"Of course--do the idle young beggar good. All right, Miss Gibbs, he shall give you a hand this afternoon when he gets back. He's an awfully good sort, you know, though I pretend to rag him. He's as clever as you please, and with it all as obliging and unspoilt as possible. Well, I'd better go. You can get along all right, can you?"

Receiving her reply, he lit a cigarette and went out, a.s.suring himself that so far she promised well.

"Pretty little thing, and anxious to please us. Shallow, I expect, emotional probably, and not brainy enough to appreciate the symbolism of the _Bridge_. Well, we don't want too brilliant a typist, after all--Miss Jenkins and her 'culture' were a bit trying at times!"

And then meeting by chance an old friend who insisted on carrying him off to lunch, Owen speedily forgot that such a person as Miss Antonia Gibbs existed in the world.

CHAPTER VI

It did not take Miss f.a.n.n.y Gibbs very long to discover that her cousin's new post held for her an interest beyond that which an unusually congenial situation might be expected to hold.

In Miss Gibbs' world one's "job" was generally of very secondary importance to one's private affairs; and the fact is not to be wondered at when one remembers that the life of the average shop or business girl can by no manner of means be called either pleasant or exciting.

Hitherto Toni had been fully in accord with her cousin's opinion.

Although the robust, if promiscuous, flirtations in which f.a.n.n.y, before her engagement, had indulged freely had never appealed to the more fastidious Toni, she had always been quite ready to join in any fun which might be going. She had eaten sweets gaily in the cheap seats of theatre or picture-palace, had made one at the many informal and harmless little gatherings for which f.a.n.n.y had a taste; and had cheerfully and quite normally grumbled if detained at the office one moment longer than she considered fair.

But of late Antonia had altered strangely; and f.a.n.n.y's shrewd eyes noted the change almost from the first.

To begin with, Toni was always in a fidget to get to work. Miss Gibbs took her annual week's holiday just then, and had plenty of time to note her cousin's behaviour; and the way in which Toni swallowed her breakfast and clad herself for the start was a revelation to one who knew her former dilatory nature.

Toni had always been careful of her appearance--more so than her cousin considered at all necessary; but now she was absolutely ridiculous, so thought f.a.n.n.y, with her new Peter-Pan collars and her fussy attention to her pretty hands, set off by tiny lace cuffs to match the collars. Her black frock, only a year old, was perfectly good and serviceable yet; but the extravagant creature must needs make herself another one in her spare time, and never had she been so particular about the cut, nor so incessant in her demands on f.a.n.n.y for a helping hand with the "trying-on." She bought herself a new hat, too, a little soft affair in which she looked perfectly delicious; and as the days went by it seemed to f.a.n.n.y that her cousin was growing prettier and more attractive every week, with a still more bewitching colour in her rounded cheeks, and a still more sparkling light in her Southern eyes.

Yet even her woman's wit could not fathom the mystery of Toni's new joy in life. When interrogated concerning her employers, Toni was always vague. That there were two of them f.a.n.n.y knew; but from Toni's extremely colourless description, Miss Gibbs gathered that neither was at all what the girls called interesting; and Mr. Rose, at least, almost middle-aged. (Heaven knows what flight of fancy on the part of Toni--Toni, whose magic romance was the shyest, most delicate fantasy in the world--was responsible for that fallacy!)

That Barry was younger f.a.n.n.y understood; but so lightly did Toni touch upon his kindness that f.a.n.n.y could not be accused of density in her conception of him as a nonent.i.ty in whom her little cousin could take no interest.

Yet that someone was responsible for Toni's sudden outburst of new beauty Miss Gibbs felt a.s.sured; and it gradually dawned upon her that there were other men about the place to whom Miss Antonia Gibbs might well appeal.

When questioned about these others, the subordinates who were workers like herself, Antonia at first stared, then coloured impatiently, and finally laughed, with a queer note of impishness in her laughter which puzzled f.a.n.n.y more than ever.

That she, who was privileged to breathe the same atmosphere as Owen Rose, could be supposed even to realize the existence of any outsider was in itself absurd, if not almost insulting; but Toni was quick to see that here was the opportunity she sought to conceal her wonderful, presumptuous dream.

For she was in love--she knew it now--wildly, deliriously, gloriously in love with Owen. To her he was the embodiment of all that was most n.o.ble, most G.o.d-like in man. His voice was music, his commands gifts, his rare vexation as the frown of Jove. She trembled and turned pale at his footstep, and when he spoke to her suddenly her heart throbbed and her colour came and went until she felt as though he must observe her emotion.

In a word, she was in love; and when it is remembered that on one side of her Toni was purely of the South--the glowing, ardent, pa.s.sionate South--it is not to be wondered at that this new emotion dominated her whole being to the exclusion of all else.

Her love, indeed, was pathetic in its young ignorance. Anyone could have told her that she was wasting her treasure, that it was the act of a fool to pour out her priceless gift at the feet of one who did not want it, who would consider it a mere presumption.

Her place in Owen's life was that of a servant, a subordinate; and her common sense should have told her that in that light alone would Owen inevitably behold her. Vaguely she realized this--knew well enough that he never thought of her save as his more or less useful secretary, but after all, she could not be expected to reason out this thing too closely. Its very vagueness, indeed, lent it charm. Her love was veiled, as it were, in a most delicate, most diaphanous mist, which took from it all earthliness, and left it intangible, magical as some gift from fairyland. So far, no hint of desire had entered into it. It was all unselfish, girlish adoration, an almost childish reverence for one immeasurably her superior; and though she made her new dress and adjusted her little bits of muslin and lace with scrupulous care, it was not so much in the hope that she might find favour in Owen's eyes as in the personal longing to make herself more worthy of the love within her.

It never entered her head that Owen would suspect her secret. Indeed, the whole affair was so dream-like, of so unsubstantial, so gossamer a lightness, that merely to speculate upon her romance would have been to shatter it, as one might put a finger through a fairy cobweb.

She loved--and at present that was enough. To be with Owen daily, to sit in the same room, breathe the same air, obey his wishes, help him with his work, was all she desired; and being at heart an incurable little optimist, she was content to weave her rose-coloured dreams, spin her shining web, with no anxiety about the future to shadow and darken her thoughts.

Yet Barry, with his quick intuition, was uncannily aware of the girl's infatuation; and it was Barry who, through his very knowledge of her secret, precipitated the inevitable revelation.

One day during Toni's absence for lunch the two men were sitting together in Owen's room when Owen suddenly threw a large unmounted photograph across to his friend.

"What's this, Owen? Oh--your house at Willowhurst, isn't it? By Jove, it's a lovely place--I wonder you don't live there."

The moment he had spoken he would willingly have recalled his words, but Owen gave him no time.

"You forget--I was going to live there!" His smile was forced. "The people who have had it for years cleared out last October, and it was all put in apple-pie order then, in antic.i.p.ation of my wife's arrival."