"You forget I'm an old woman!" She caught at the phrase in self-defence. "Old enough to be your mother."

"_You_...?"--he stooped over her--"I ... sometimes ... almost wish you were!"

"Stephen!"--she drew away, startled. "You mustn't talk like that!"

But she felt a curious exultation, a sudden throb of fear and pride.

For oh! Youth is sweet to hold and sad to lose; and a woman clings to the delusion for long years after grey hairs appear.

"Well--I do. You're too ... sweet! Don't you know what it means to me? Have you never _even_ guessed?" He broke off, his eyes dilated.

Mrs. Uniacke shrank back.

"Don't--you mustn't. Stephen!--you're mad!" ... For the man was on his knees by her side; her hands were caught, she could feel his lips, smooth and young, pressed upon them.

"I can't help it!--You know _now_. Of course you'll send me out of your life. But, this once, I've got to tell you--I love you so!"--the words were out.

And, indeed, a spark of truth lay in the declaration. This lover's scene, carefully rehea.r.s.ed by him, found him amazed at the strength of his own desire. He stood upon the brink of pa.s.sion. For habit plays queer tricks, and the daily intercourse of years had flowered unseen.

This was the fruit.

All that was good in Somerfield went out toward the loving woman who had played the part of mother to him, a lonely man through his own folly. And all that was base prompted him to take this chance that life still offered: a home, the tender care of a wife in the midst of financial ruin.

He had staked on the last deal of the cards. The costly lunch, the private room, the wine, the flowers ... his own youth ... thrown down with a gambler's hand.

But to the woman sitting there no such sordid picture rose. She was lost in a glory that dazzled her--this wonderful new gift of love!

Tears stole into her eyes over the bent head pressed to her hands--the thick, fair hair with its youthful gloss, the supple shoulders that breathed of strength. Could she--dare she live out the dream? For she knew, at last, that she loved Stephen; that this Indian Summer of life could be hers, a swift thrusting away of age.

No more need she face the lonely years.

Jill would marry. Roddy go forth to fight his battle with the world--to disappoint her cherished hopes. What was left her? The tears ran down.

"Stephen..."

He raised his eyes to hers, bewildered himself by his own emotion.

"I know----" a sudden despair gripped him. "Your children?" He watched her moodily, trying to define her thoughts. Then, as across some silent pool, a mischievous breeze sends an answering ripple, he saw a wave of resentment pa.s.s over her tense and delicate face.

"Jill!" The name slipped from her lips. The old rancour against the child who had outgrown her, forming views on life apart from the mother's standard and held to them, strong, rebellious, rose up, flooding her with a painful sense of helplessness.

She did not see that her Suffrage work had interfered with that of her home, that her own involuntary neglect of her children had sapped her influence.

"I should not ask for _Jill's_ advice!--What does she ever care for mine? She will go her own way--to the end!--And so shall I."--Her voice rang with a new imperious note. Stephen saw he had gained the day.

"Mary!"--his arms were around her. "You will...? You _do_ ... care a little?"

Triumph flamed in his face but the fond woman saw only love.

"Wait----" she drew back, timid again. "I must think first. It's too serious. I can't answer you like this..." But the man held her still closer.

"You can--you _shall_!" He knew his power--"I want you. You shan't go from here--except as my promised wife! It's either _that_--or good-bye." He felt her quiver at the word. "I can't stand it any more--this playing at friendship--it's not fair! Say you love me--say it, Mary?" There came a desperate little pause.

Mrs. Uniacke felt the room spinning round before her eyes. In a mist she saw her lover's face, heard the ardent, pleading voice...

And the sense of a dream returned to her--a dream too sweet to relinquish. She must not--_could_ not wake again!

With a stifled cry she kissed Stephen.

CHAPTER XXIX

McTaggart, when he left the Leasons, broke his long journey home by a week's stay at North Berwick with a college friend, addicted to golf.

From thence he drifted down to Rugby, visiting his old school with the somewhat wistful pleasure that lies in conjuring up boyhood's days.

But all the time he was keenly aware of the magnet that drew him to the South. Each careless, friendly letter of Jill's increased his desire to see her. In Scotland he had met Cydonia, through a mischievous trick of Lady Leason's. But his old infatuation was dead. He could find no lingering charm about her.

Marriage had changed her whole outlook. For, with it, ambition seemed to have flowered, a late but very vigorous plant, to the absorption of her nature. More serious, more composed, she had that solid wedded look which marks a certain type of blonde, even in girlhood statuesque.

She ordered her little husband about with a regal calm, and entertained loftily her numerous guests, among whom the clergy were freely sprinkled. McTaggart found her heavy and dull and refused her pressing invitation to a week-end party, with a smile, realizing that he owed it alone to the change in his fortunes.

In the background of the historic Castle that the Flemmings had taken for the Summer Mrs. Cadell hovered, restless; superintending domestic details with a stern eye on her husband, when he turned up from time to time, a social trial to the guests.

Euan Flemming reminded McTaggart of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

With his nervous manner and neat dress he seemed to exist in perpetual fear of offending those useful political props whom Cydonia collected on his behalf.

"Euan," she told her mother one day, "always talks to the wrong people.

So now I have invented a sign which he understands and when I use it he moves on to another guest. It's really very tiresome of him! At the party I gave for the Premier he was lost to view for over an hour and I found him in the library showing his books to a struggling author and discussing a new method of binding!"

When he compared Cydonia with Jill at the luncheon party to which Lady Leason had invited the Flemmings during his visit, McTaggart wondered not a little at this love affair of his youth.

Even during the dinner that followed at the Castle, in all the magnificence of her surroundings, Cydonia left him shrewdly amused and indifferent.

He told himself that here again was a proof of the depths of his love for Jill.

Neither Fantine nor Mrs. Flemming could add a beat to his steady pulse.

At North Berwick a new temptation awaited him in his host's sister, one of the most beautiful girls he had seen for many a long year.

But, although daily opportunities for flirtation offered themselves to the pair, McTaggart reaped no advantage from them. They parted in firm but simple friendship.

Surely he knew his heart at last?--that vagrant double heart of his!

No other woman could reign in it, side by side with his little Jill.

He loved her. And he felt afraid--a new experience for McTaggart! He began to fear that the sunny weeks by the sea might hold some dangerous rival; procrastination prove his undoing.

Jill herself, young, impulsive, might weary of such a tardy wooing; and he searched her letters anxiously, striving in vain to find some sign that the girl's heart was indeed his.