"At all events, you are candid. Well! I don't see any good in our dallying here--I had best go back with you to Sydenham. I've got a letter to write first, but I shan't be long."

He was long enough, however, for Shiel to have another chat with Gladys. "Do you believe in dreams?" she asked him. "I had such a queer one last night, about trees and flowers; and, oddly enough, my father also dreamed of trees and flowers, and of the very same ones too. I am going into Town to-day to consult a firm that has just set up, called the Modern Sorcery Company Ltd. They profess to interpret dreams, and I am anxious to see whether they can."

"In c.o.c.kspur Street, aren't they?" Shiel asked. "I saw their advertis.e.m.e.nt in one of the papers. I presume you are not going there alone?"

"No!" Gladys laughed, "I shall go with a friend, though I often do go into Town alone. I can a.s.sure you I am quite capable of looking after myself. In that respect, at least, I am quite up to date. Probably you are more accustomed to French girls?"

"Yes! I have spent most of my life in Paris," Shiel said. "But how could you tell that?"

"Oh! I guessed you were an artist--and had probably spent some time in Paris"--Gladys rejoined, "by the way you looked at the house and garden. I could read appreciation in your eyes and gesture; such appreciation, as I knew, could only come from an artist. G.W. Barnett helped me in planning this cottage and the garden."

"What! Barnett the landscape painter! I am a great admirer of his work. Were you a pupil of his?"

"Yes, he was one of the visiting R.A.'s at the Beechcroft Studio in St.

John's Wood, where I worked for three years. We were then living in Blackheath--St. John's Park--a hateful place. Mr. Barnett was awfully good, when I told him we were moving, and that I wanted to live in really artistic surroundings--he suggested that I should be my own architect, and promised to do everything he could to a.s.sist me,"

"And your father hadn't a say in the matter," Shiel commented, with an amused smile.

"Not in that," Gladys said complacently, "though there are one or two things in which he has a very decided say. Father can be very self-willed and obstinate, when he likes. But as I was remarking when you interrupted me--"

"I beg pardon!" Shiel murmured.

"Mr. Barnett promised to a.s.sist me. He came over here with me, and we chose this site."

"Is he an old man?" Shiel inquired, a trifle anxiously.

"Not much more than middle aged--fifty perhaps!" Gladys said, "though he looks much younger. He is still very good-looking. Well! he came over here--we chose this site, and--"

"Is he married?"

"No! Really you seem very interested in him. Perhaps you will meet him some day: he comes here a good deal. As I was saying, we chose the site together, and he supervized the plans I drew up for the garden and cottage; I don't think, perhaps, I should have thought of that avenue if it hadn't been for him!"

"At all events it does you both credit," Shiel remarked, "for a more charming house and garden I have never seen. I should like to live here all my life. I should like--" but he was interrupted by John Martin. "Come, it's time we were off," the latter called out brusquely, "time and trains wait for no man!"

"A young a.s.s!" John Martin whispered in Gladys' ear, as the trio pa.s.sed through the entrance of the railway station on to the platform, "not a bit of good to me. Don't encourage him, whatever you do!"

"Encourage him!" Gladys retorted indignantly, seeing that Shiel, who had his ticket to get, was out of hearing. "Do I encourage any one?

All the same," she added defiantly, "I rather like him. It isn't every one's good fortune to be as smart as you, John Martin. Quick--hurry up! That's your train--and the guard's about to blow his whistle."

With a vigorous push she hustled her father into the first compartment they came to, and Shiel sprang in after him as the train moved out of the station.

An hour later Gladys, looking extremely demure and proper, was rapping with a daintily gloved hand at the inquiry office in the great stone lobby of the Modern Sorcery Company's building in c.o.c.kspur Street.

"Have you an appointment, madam?" the commissionaire, in a bright blue uniform, asked.

"No," Gladys replied. "Is it necessary?

"The firm are unusually busy," the man explained, "and unless you have made an appointment with them some days beforehand, it is doubtful whether they will be able to see you. However, if you will step into the waiting room and fill in one of the forms you see on the table, I will take it to them. Which member of the firm have you come to consult?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," Gladys said. "I want to have a dream interpreted."

"Then, that will be Mr. Kelson," the man observed "he does all that kind of thing--tells dreams, characters, pasts, and reads thoughts.

Mr. Curtis solves all manner of puzzles and tricks; and Mr. Hamar divines the presence of metals and water. There is a lady in the waiting-room now, come to have a dream interpreted. She's been there nearly an hour. This way, madam!"--and he escorted, rather than ushered, Gladys into a large, elaborately furnished room, in which a dozen or so well dressed people--of both s.e.xes--were waiting, looking over the leaves of magazines and journals, and trying in vain to hide their only too obvious excitement.

Having filled in the necessary form, and given it to the commissionaire, Gladys looked round for a seat, and espying one, next to a strikingly handsome girl, she at once appropriated it.

There was something about this showy girl that had attracted Gladys.

She was one of those rare people that have a personality, and although this was a personality that Gladys was not at all sure she liked, nevertheless she felt anxious to become more closely acquainted with it. Both girls suddenly realized that they were staring hard at one another. The girl with the personality was the first to speak. With a smile that, while revealing a perfect set of white teeth, at the some time revealed exceedingly thin lips, she remarked, "It's most wearisome work waiting. I've been here nearly an hour. I shouldn't stay any longer, only I've come from a distance. London is so hot and stuffy, I detest it."

"Do you?" Gladys observed. "I don't. I find it so full of human interest--indeed, of every kind of interest. Not that I should care to live in it, but I like being near enough to come up several times a week. I live at Kew."

"Then you're lucky!" the girl said, "I'd live at Kew if I could. But I can't--I'm one of those unfortunate creatures who have to earn their living."

"I sometimes wish I had to," Gladys remarked.

"Do you! Then you don't know much about it. It isn't all jam by a long way. I loathe work. I've been spending my holiday at Kew. I've just come from there."

"Are you by any chance Miss Rosenberg?" Gladys asked.

"That's my name," the girl replied with a look of astonishment. "How do you know?"

Gladys explained. "I've just been to the Vicarage," she said, "and Mrs. Sprat has told me about the verses. Did you really dream them?"

"Of course! I shouldn't have said so if I hadn't," Miss Rosenberg replied angrily. "I don't tell crams. Besides, I've never composed a line of poetry in my life. The verses were repeated to me in my sleep by some occult agency--of that I am quite certain. They were so vividly impressed on my mind that I had no difficulty at all in remembering them--every one of them, and I got up and wrote them down.

Of course they must mean something."

Gladys was about to make some observation, when the commissionaire, opening the door of the room, called out, "Miss Rosenberg;" whereupon, with a sigh of relief, Miss Rosenberg took her departure.

CHAPTER X

HOW THE DREAMS WERE INTERPRETED

"Tell Miss Rosenberg I'll see her now," Matt Kelson said; and as he leaned back in his luxurious chair with that dignity of self-a.s.surance only the man who is rich can maintain, it was hard to realise that he and the Matt Kelson of a year ago were the same. A year ago he had been a poor, underpaid, ill nourished pen-driver, with all the odious marks of a pen-driver's servility thick upon him. It was true he had been fastidious as to his appearance--that is to say, as fastidious as any one can be, who has to buy clothes ready made and can only afford to pay a few dollars for them; that he had sacrificed meals to wear white shirts--boiled shirts as one called them in San Francisco--and to get his things got up decently at a respectable laundry; but his teeth in those days did not receive the attention they ought to have received (he could not afford a dentist), the tobacco he smoked was often offensive; and there were to be found in him sundry other details that one usually finds in clerks, and in most other people who literally have to fight for a living.

But now, all that was changed. Kelson was rich. He bought his suits at Poole's, his hats at Christie's, his boots in Regent Street. He patronized a dentist in Cavendish Square, and a manicurist in Bond Street. He belonged to a crack club in Pall Mall, and never smoked anything but the most expensive cigars. His ambition had been speedily realized. He had pa.s.sionately longed to be a fop--he was one. The only thing that troubled him, was that he could not be an aristocrat at the same time. But, after all, what did that matter? The girls looked at him all the same, and that was all he wanted. He worshipped, he adored, pretty girls; and he was most anxious that they should adore him.

Consequently, his first thought, when he saw Lilian Rosenberg's name on the form the commissionaire presented him, was "Is she pretty?" And the first thing he said to himself directly the door opened to admit her was, "By Jove! she is."

Then he a.s.sumed an air more suited to a partner in a big London firm, and flourishing a richly bejewelled hand, said "Pray take a seat, madam. What can I do for you?"

"I want you to tell me the meaning of these verses," Lilian Rosenberg said, handing him two sheets of foolscap and then sitting down. "They were suggested to me in my sleep--in other words, I dreamed them."

"You dreamed them, did you!" Kelson said, noticing with approval that the girl had well-kept white hands, and that her clothes, though not particularly expensive, were _chic_, and up-to-date. "Do you want me only to interpret this poem, or shall I tell you something about yourself first?"

"By all means tell me something about myself first--if you can,"