"I believe you've been snubbing her. You know, old man, you have a sort of horribly lordly, touch-me-not air about you when you choose.

But I don't see why you should choose with Miss Quentin. She's such an awfully good sort."

"Yes," agreed Errington. "Miss Quentin is quite charming."

"She thinks you don't like her," pursued Jerry, after a moment's pause.

"I--not like Miss Quentin? Absurd!"

"Well, that's what she thinks, anyway," persisted Jerry. "She told me so, and she seemed really sorry about it. She believes you don't want to be friends with her."

"Miss Quentin's friendship would be delightful. But--you don't understand, Jerry--it's one of the delights I must forego."

When Errington spoke with such a definite air of finality, his young secretary knew from experience that he might as well drop the subject.

He could get nothing further out of Max, once the latter had adopted that tone over any matter. So Jerry, being wise in his generation, held his peace.

Suddenly Errington faced round and laid his hands on the boy's shoulder.

"Jerry," he said, and his voice shook with some deep emotion. "Thank G.o.d--thank Him every day of your life--that you're free and untrammelled. All the world's yours if you choose to take it. Some of us are shackled--our arms tied behind our backs. And oh, my G.o.d! How they ache to be free!"

The blue eyes were full of a keen anguish, the stern mouth wry with pain. Never before had Jerry seen him thus with the mask off, and he felt as though he were watching a soul's agony unveiled.

"Max . . . dear old chap . . ." he stammered. "Can't I help?"

With an obvious effort Errington regained his composure, but his face was grey as he answered:--

"Neither you nor any one else, Jerry, boy. I must dree my weird, as the Scotch say. And that's the hard part of it--to be your own judge and jury. A man ought not to be compelled to play the double role of victim and executioner."

"And must you? . . . No way out?"

"None. Unless"--with a hard laugh--"the executioner throws up the game and--runs away, allowing the victim to escape. And that's impossible! . . . Impossible!" he reiterated vehemently, as though arguing against some inner voice.

"Let him rip," suggested Jerry. "Give the accused a chance!"

Errington laughed more naturally. He was rapidly regaining his usual self-possession.

"Jerry, you're a good pal, but a bad adviser. Get thee behind me."

Steps sounded on the stairs outside. Adrienne and Mrs. Adams had come back, and Errington turned composedly to greet them, the veil of reticence, momentarily swept aside by the surge of a sudden emotion, falling once more into its place.

CHAPTER XI

THE YEAR'S FRUIT

Spring had slipped into summer, summer had given place again to winter, and once more April was come, with her soft breath blowing upon the sticky green buds and bidding them open, whilst daffodils and tulips, like slim sentinels, swayed above the brown earth, in a riot of tender colour.

There is something very fresh and charming about London in April. The parks are aglow with young green, and the trees nod cheerfully to the little breeze that dances round them, whispering of summer. Even the houses perk up under their spruce new coats of paint, while every window that can afford it puts forth its carefully tended box of flowers. It is as though the old city suddenly awoke from her winter slumber and preened herself like a bird making its toilet; there is an atmosphere of renewal abroad--the very carters and cabmen seem conscious of it, and acknowledge it with good-humoured smiles and a flower worn jauntily in the b.u.t.tonhole.

Diana leaned far out of the open window of her room at Brutton Square, sniffing up the air with its veiled, faint fragrance of spring, and gazing down in satisfaction at the delicate shimmer of green which clothed the trees and shrubs in the square below.

The realisation that a year had slipped away since last the trees had worn that tender green amazed her; it seemed almost incredible that twelve whole months had gone by since the day when she had first come to Brutton Square, and she and Bunty had joked together about the ten commandments on the wall.

The year had brought both pleasure and pain--as most years do--pleasure in the friends she had gathered round her, Adrienne and Jerry and Bunty--even with Olga Lermontof an odd, rather one-sided friendship had sprung up, born of the circ.u.mstances which had knit their paths together--pain in the soreness which still lingered from the hurt that Errington had dealt her. Albeit, her life had been so filled with work and play, her mind so much occupied, that a surface skin, as it were, had formed over the wound, and it was only now and again that a sudden throb reminded her of its existence. Love had brushed her with his wings in pa.s.sing, but she was hardly yet a fully awakened woman.

Nevertheless, the brief episodes of her early acquaintance with Errington had cut deep into a mind which had hitherto reflected nothing beyond the simple happenings of a girlhood pa.s.sed at a country rectory, and the romantic flair of youth had given their memory a certain sacred niche in her heart. Some day Fate would come along and take them down from that shelf where they were stored, and dust them and present them to her afresh with a new significance.

For a brief moment Errington's kiss had roused her dormant womanhood, and then the events of daily life had crowded round and lulled it asleep once more. In swift succession there had followed the vivid interest of increasing musical study, the stirrings of ambition, and a whole world of new people to meet and rub shoulders with.

So that the end of her second year in London found Diana still little more than an impetuous, impulsive girl, possessed of a warm, undisciplined nature, and of an unconscious desire to fulfil her being along the most natural and easy lines, while in spirit she leaped forward to the time when she should be plunged into professional life.

The whole of her training under Baroni, with the big future that it held, tended to give her a somewhat egotistical outlook, an instinctive feeling that everything must of necessity subordinate itself to her demands--an excellent foundation, no doubt, on which to build up a reputation as a famous singer in a world where people are apt to take you very much at your own valuation, but a poor preparation for the sacrifices and self-immolation that love not infrequently demands.

Above all else, this second year of study had brought in fullest measure the development and enriching of her voice. Baroni had schooled it with the utmost care, keeping always in view his purpose that the coming June should witness her debut, and Diana, catching fire from his enthusiasm, had answered to every demand he had made upon her.

Her voice was now something to marvel at. It had matured into a rich contralto of amazing compa.s.s, and with a peculiar thrilling quality about it which gripped and held you almost as though some one had laid a hand upon your heart. Baroni hugged himself as he realised what a _furore_ in the musical world this voice would create when at last he allowed the silence to be broken. Already there were whispers flying about of the wonderful contralto he was training, of whom it was rumoured that she would have the whole world at her feet from the moment that Baroni produced her.

The old _maestro_ had his plans all cut and dried. Early in June, just when the season should be in full swing, there was to be a concert--a recital with only Kirolski, the Polish violinist, and Madame Berthe Louvigny, the famous French pianist, to a.s.sist. Those two names alone would inevitably draw a big crowd of all the musical people who mattered, and Diana's golden voice would do the rest.

This was to be the solitary concert for the season, but, to whet the appet.i.te of society, Diana was also to appear at a single big reception--"Baroni won't look at anything less than a ducal house with Royalty present," as Jerry banteringly a.s.serted--and then, while the world was still agape with interest and excitement, the singer was to be whisked away to Crailing for three months' holiday, and to accept no more engagements until the winter. By that time, Baroni antic.i.p.ated, people would be feverishly impatient for her reappearance, and the winter campaign would resolve itself into one long trail of glory.

Diana had been better able latterly to devote herself to her work, as Errington had been out of England for a time. So long as there was the likelihood of meeting him at any moment, her nerves had been more or less in a state of tension. There was that between them which made it impossible for her to regard him with the cool, indifferent friendship which he himself seemed so well able to a.s.sume. Despite herself, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand, caused a curious little fluttering within her, like the flicker of a compa.s.s needle when it quivers to the north. If he entered the same room as herself, she was instantly aware of it, even though she might not chance to be looking in his direction at the moment. Indeed, her consciousness of him was so acute, so vital, that she sometimes wondered how it was possible that one person could mean so much to another and yet himself feel no reciprocal interest. And that he did feel none, his unvarying indifference of manner had at last convinced her.

But, even so, she was unable to banish him from her thoughts. This was the first day of her return to London after the Easter holidays, which she had spent as usual at Crailing Rectory, and already she was wondering rather wistfully whether Errington would be back in England during the summer. She felt that if only she could know why he had changed so completely towards her, why the interest she had so obviously awakened in him upon first meeting had waned and died, she might be able to thrust him completely out of her thoughts, and accept him merely as the casual acquaintance which was all he apparently claimed to be. But the restless, irritable longing to know, to have his incomprehensible behaviour explained, kept him ever in her mind.

Only once or twice had his name been mentioned between Olga Lermontof and herself, and on each occasion the former had repeated her caution, admonishing Diana to have nothing to do with him. It almost seemed as though she had some personal feeling of dislike towards him. Indeed Diana had accused her of it, only to be met with a quiet negative.

"No," she had replied serenely. "I don't dislike him. But I disapprove of much that he does."

"He is rather an attractive person," Diana ventured tentatively.

Olga Lermontof shot a keen glance at her.

"Well, I advise you not to give him your friendship," she said, "or"--sneeringly--"anything of greater value."

A sharp rat-tat at the door of her sitting-room recalled Diana's wandering thoughts to the present. She threw a glance of half-comic dismay at the state of her sitting-room--every available chair and table seemed to be strewn with the contents of the trunks she was unpacking--and then, with a resigned shrug of her shoulders, she crossed to the door and threw it open. Bunty was standing outside.

"What is it?" Diana was beginning, when she caught sight of a pleasant, ugly face appearing over little Miss Bunting's shoulder. "Oh, Jerry, is it you?" she exclaimed delightedly.

"He insisted on coming up, Miss Quentin," said Bunty, "although I told him you had only just arrived and would be in the middle of unpacking."

"I've got an important message to deliver," a.s.serted Jerry, grinning, and shaking both Diana's hands exuberantly.

"Oh, never mind the unpacking," cried Diana, beginning to bundle the things off the tables and chairs back into one of the open trunks.

"Bunty darling, help me to clear a s.p.a.ce, and then go and order tea for two up here--and expense be blowed! Oh, and I'll put a match to the fire--it's quite cold enough. Come in, Jerry, and tell me all the news."

"I'll light that fire first," said Jerry, practically. "We can talk when Bunty darling brings our tea."