"Very good, madam!" the man answered, and withdrew.

He was back again before the next hand had been played. Once more he stood waiting in respectful silence.

"Well?" his mistress asked.

"His name, madam, is Mr. Victor Macheson. He said that he would wait as long as you liked, but he preferred telling you his business himself."

"I fancy that I know it," Wilhelmina answered. "You can show him in here."

"Is it the young man, I wonder," Lady Peggy remarked, "who came up the avenue as though he were walking on air?"

"Doubtless," Wilhelmina answered. "He is some sort of a missionary.

I had him shown in here because I thought his coming at all an impertinence, and I want to make him understand it. You will probably find him amusing, Mr. Deyes."

Gilbert Deyes shook his head quietly.

"There was a time," he murmured, "when the very word missionary was a finger-post to the ridiculous. The comic papers rob us, however, of our elementary sources of humour."

They all looked curiously towards the door as he entered, all except Wilhelmina, who was the last to turn her head, and found him hesitating in some embarra.s.sment as to whom to address. He was somewhat above medium height, fair, with a ma.s.s of wind-tossed hair, and had the smooth face of a boy. His eyes were his most noticeable feature. They were very bright and very restless. Lady Peggy called them afterwards uncomfortable eyes, and the others, without any explanation, understood what she meant.

"I am Miss Thorpe-Hatton," Wilhelmina said calmly. "I am told that you wished to see me."

She turned only her head towards him. Her words were cold and unwelcoming. She saw that he was nervous and she had no pity. It was unworthy of her. She knew that. Her eyes questioned him calmly. Sitting there in her light muslin dress, with her deep-brown hair arranged in the Madonna-like fashion, which chanced to be the caprice of the moment, she herself--one of London's most beautiful women--seemed little more than a girl.

"I beg your pardon," he began hurriedly. "I understood--I expected----"

"Well?"

The monosyllable was like a drop of ice. A faint spot of colour burned in his cheeks. He understood now that for some reason this woman was inimical to him. The knowledge seemed to have a bracing effect. His eyes flashed with a sudden fire which gave force to his face.

"I expected," he continued with more a.s.surance, "to have found Miss Thorpe-Hatton an older lady."

She said nothing. Only her eyebrows were very slightly raised. She seemed to be asking him silently what possible concern the age of the lady of Thorpe-Hatton could be to him. He was to understand that his remark was almost an impertinence.

"I wished," he said, "to hold a service in Thorpe on Sunday afternoon, and also one during the week, and I wrote to your agent asking for the loan of a barn, which is generally, I believe, used for any gathering of the villagers. Mr. Hurd found himself unable to grant my request. I have ventured to appeal to you."

"Mr. Hurd," she said calmly, "decided, in my opinion, quite rightly. I do not see what possible need my villagers can have of further religious services than the Church affords them."

"Madam," he answered, "I have not a word to say against your parish church, or against your excellent vicar. Yet I believe, and the body to which I am attached believes, that change is stimulating. We believe that the great truths of life cannot be presented to our fellow-creatures too often, or in too many different ways."

"And what," she asked, with a faint curl of her beautiful lips, "do you consider the great truths of life?"

"Madam," he answered, with slightly reddening cheeks, "they vary for every one of us, according to our capacity and our circ.u.mstances. What they may mean," he added, after a moment's hesitation, "to people of your social order, I do not know. It has not come within the orbit of my experience. It was your villagers to whom I was proposing to talk."

There was a moment's silence. Gilbert Deyes and Lady Peggy exchanged swift glances of amused understanding. Wilhelmina bit her lip, but she betrayed no other sign of annoyance.

"To what religious body do you belong?" she asked.

"My friends," he answered, "and I, are attached to none of the recognized denominations. Our only object is to try to keep alight in our fellow-creatures the flame of spirituality. We want to help them--not to forget."

"There is no name by which you call yourselves?" she asked.

"None," he answered.

"And your headquarters are where?" she asked.

"In Gloucestershire," he answered--"so far as we can be said to have any headquarters at all."

"You have no churches then?" she asked.

"Any building," he answered, "where the people are to whom we desire to speak, is our church. We look upon ourselves as missioners only."

"I am afraid," Wilhelmina said quietly, "that I am only wasting your time in asking these questions. Still, I should like to know what induced you to choose my village as an appropriate sphere for your labours."

"We each took a county," he answered. "Leicestershire fell to my lot. I selected Thorpe to begin with, because I have heard it spoken of as a model village."

Wilhelmina's forehead was gently wrinkled.

"I am afraid," she said, "that I am a somewhat dense person. Your reason seems to me scarcely an adequate one."

"Our belief is," he declared, "that where material prosperity is a.s.sured, especially amongst this cla.s.s of people, the instincts towards spirituality are weakened."

"My people all attend church; we have no public-house; there are never any scandals," she said.

"All these things," he admitted, "are excellent. But they do not help you to see into the lives of these people. Church-going may become a habit, a respectable and praiseworthy thing--and a thing expected of them. Morality, too, may become a custom--until temptation comes. One must ask oneself what is the force which prompts these people to direct their lives in so praiseworthy a manner."

"You forget," she remarked, "that these are simple folk. Their religion with them is simply a matter of right or wrong. They need no further instruction in this."

"Madam," he said, "so long as they are living here, that may be so.

Frankly, I do not consider it sufficient that their lives are seemly, so long as they live in the shadow of your patronage. What happens to those who pa.s.s outside its influence is another matter."

"What do you know about that?" she asked coldly.

"What I do know about it," he answered, "decided me to come to Thorpe."

There was a moment's silence. Any of the other three, Gilbert Deyes especially, perhaps, would have found it hard to explain, even to realize the interest with which they listened to the conversation between these two--the somewhat unkempt, ill-attired boy, with the nervous, forceful manner and burning eyes, and the woman, so sure of herself, so coldly and yet brutally ungracious. It was not so much the words themselves that pa.s.sed between them that attracted as the undernote of hostility, more felt than apparent--the beginning of a duel, to all appearance so ludicrously onesided, yet destined to endure.

Deyes turned in his chair uneasily. He was watching this intruder--a being outwardly so far removed from their world. The niceties of a correct toilet had certainly never troubled him, his clothes were rough in material and cut, he wore a flannel shirt, and a collar so low that his neck seemed ill-shaped. He had no special gifts of features or figure, his manner was nervous, his speech none too ready. Deyes found himself engaged in a swift a.n.a.lysis of the subtleties of personality.

What did this young man possess that he should convey so strong a sense of power? There was something about him which told. They were all conscious of it, and, more than any of them, the woman who was regarding him with such studied ill-favour. To the others, her still beautiful face betrayed only some languid irritation. Deyes fancied that he saw more there--that underneath the mask which she knew so well how to wear there were traces of some deeper disturbance.

"Do you mind explaining yourself?" she asked. "That sounds rather an extraordinary statement of yours."

"A few months ago," he said, "I attended regularly one of the police courts in London. Day by day I came into contact with the lost souls who have drifted on to the great rubbish-heap. There was a girl, Martha Gullimore her name was, whose record for her age was as black as sin could make it. Her father, I believe, is the blacksmith in your model village! I spoke to him of his daughter yesterday, and he cursed me!"

"You mean Samuel Gullimore--my farrier?" she asked.

"That is the man," he answered.

"Have you any other--instances?" she asked.