Montagu Babbacombe, was altogether another. I hadn't time to consider; to ask myself what was the meaning of her presence there. It was a case of act first and think afterwards. That was what I did.

A smile lit up her face when she saw me standing there with Pollie in my arms. With the prettiest cry she came towards me, holding out both her hands. There never was a lovelier woman in this world than my Mary; nor a better shaped. And her movements are in keeping. I'm keen on grace in a woman. If there's anything more graceful than she is, whether she sits, or stands, or moves, it's in a picture. I'll swear it isn't flesh and blood. As she came, with her arms stretched towards me, I thought that I'd never seen her looking better.

'James!'

I'd have given a trifle to have been able to take her in my arms. But I didn't dare. I drew back--civility itself.

'I beg your pardon?'

She came closer.

'James!'

'I think there must be some mistake.'

When I said that, her arms dropped to her sides; the smile vanished; her face went white. It hurt me to see how she changed. I asked myself if there was any game going in which the stakes were worth all this.

'Don't you--don't you know me, James? I'm--I'm Mary.'

'Mary?' How the very name rang in my heart as I repeated it. 'I'm afraid I'm hardly ent.i.tled to address a stranger by her Christian name.'

'A stranger? I'm--I'm your wife.'

'My wife?' Lord! how glad I was to know it. Never man had one so good.

'I'm afraid that, unlike many men who are more fortunate, that's an article I don't possess.'

I could see that she pressed her finger-tips into her palms. I had never seen her look more lovely than she did then, in her bewilderment and distress. My heart cried out to me to take her and to hold her fast. But I didn't dare.

'What does it mean? You know my children, and you don't know me?'

'Your children?' I was still holding Pollie. On this I put her down.

'This young lady and gentlemen address me as dad, but I fear that that is an honourable appellation to which I have no t.i.tle. There would seem to be a singular confusion. It appears that there must be some one in existence who has an uncomfortable resemblance to myself.

Already this morning my ident.i.ty has been mistaken. I was addressed as Mr.--really at the moment I forget the name, it was rather an uncommon one, something like--Babbincombe.'

'Do you deny me, James?'

'I don't see, madam, how I can be said to deny you when this is the first time I have had the pleasure of encountering your charming personality. Nor is my name James. I am the Marquis of Twickenham.'

'Daddy, I want to have a game with you.'

This was that rascal, Jimmy. I'm sure I was quite as ready for a game as he was. Only at that particular second I didn't altogether see my way. Mary caught at his words, with a sort of sob, which brought a lump into my throat.

'He knows his father!'

'They say it's a wise child which knows its own father. It would seem, madam, that your little boy is not overstocked with the quality which King Solomon so ardently desired. You seem to take this matter somewhat to heart. It is the humorous side of it which appeals to me.

Suppose I had taken advantage of your innocent misapprehension, what a vista of tragedy suggests itself! I think that when you return home you will probably find that your husband is awaiting you. And it is then that the humorous side of the situation will appeal to you.'

'I don't understand! I don't understand!'

'Nor I. I have been away from home for something like fifteen years, and have returned to find there are two or three things which I don't understand. I am taken for a ghost by some; for a Mr. Babbington, or some such person, by some one else; for their father by those two dear little children; and for her husband by the most charming lady I have had the honour of meeting. You will allow, madam, that these circ.u.mstances present a concatenation of misunderstandings which are not unlikely to confuse the rather befogged brains of a wayfarer who has so recently returned to the purlieus of civilisation.'

I was beginning to believe that I had brought off the greatest feat which I had ever yet essayed--I had almost persuaded Mary that I wasn't me. She certainly couldn't depose on oath that either voice, manner, or language was her husband's. It was, of course, impossible to convince her altogether; at least, as she stood before me there and then. That I recognised. Complete conviction would require time and--well, we'll say other circ.u.mstances. But I had managed to shake her faith--to instil a doubt in her mind as to whether she mightn't, in some altogether incomprehensible way, be wrong. I knew my Mary. She was one of those not infrequent persons who are bewildered by an appearance of calm a.s.surance. You had only to tell her, with an air which suggested that you were stating the merest commonplace, that two and two make five, and if you persisted long enough she'd begin to wonder if the thing could possibly be. When she began to wonder she was lost; at least while the wonder continued. Her mental processes were never clear ones. And the simple explanation of her credulity was that she preferred to distrust her own senses, rather than believe that there was such a liar in existence.

It was a failing on virtue's side, and I loved her for it. I protest it cut me to the quick to play the scoundrel with her on such lines.

I'd never done it before, I'd not have done it then had not the situation developed in such unexpected directions that I saw no other way. While her white face, quivering hands, and trembling form were almost tearing me in two--and--hurting me the more because I dare not show it--the situation was fortunately relieved by the advent of Miss Desmond.

All at once she stood in the open doorway, observing the picture we presented.

CHAPTER XXIV

AN IDYLL

I went to her upon the instant.

'Surely it is Cousin Edith?'

'Twickenham? Leonard. What does it all mean?'

'That, cousin, is the question which I asked myself. I return, after, it is true, a somewhat lengthy absence, to find all sorts of things.

For instance, a lady whom I have never seen before claims me as her husband.'

'Then she is not your wife?'

'Cousin! I have no wife!'

'Then you are not Montagu Babbacombe?'

'Who on earth is Montagu Babbacombe? Is that this lady's husband's name? Have I had the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Babbacombe?'

'Come!'

Miss Desmond put her arm round Mary's shoulders, and with Pollie attached to her disengaged hand, and Jimmy hanging on to her skirts, escorted my family out of the room. Which was nice for me. I might have succeeded in throwing dust into Mary's lovely eyes, but the knowledge that, for the time at least, I'd possibly gained my ends, didn't puff me up unduly. If it were not for the fact that I'd made it a rule of my life never to quit a position I've once taken up till driven from it at the bayonet's point, the Marquis of Twickenham would have been sent flying, and James Merrett would have gone hopping up those stairs to make love to his wife.

That first day as a marquis didn't come up to my expectations. I know that first impressions are not to be trusted. That which begins in a fog ends, occasionally, in a blaze of sunlight. But I didn't feel as if there was going to be much shine about this little racket.

I went down to the library, sent for Miss Desmond, and caught her just as she was going to shake the dust of Twickenham House from off her trotter cases. We had a _tete-a-tete_. Talk about the glacial period!

It was warm compared to her. I said one or two nice things, or tried to, but the cold she radiated was altogether too much for their vitality. I made one or two friendly inquiries about how the family had got on, and she in particular; but for all I could sc.r.a.pe out of her it didn't seem as if there had been any family to get on. She'd kind of brought into that apartment a wall about twenty feet thick and a hundred high; she'd set it between us, and kept me on the other side of it. It was no manner of use my trying to jump up so as to get a peep at her over the top, because I couldn't do it. When I showed a mild curiosity as to the personality of the lady who'd mistaken me for her husband, the way in which she received my fugitive observations I didn't like one little bit. I'd a dreadful notion that right inside of her she'd a suspicion that I'd been treating Mary as no man ought to, and that I now proposed to add desertion to the rest of my offences.

It did make me feel funny, the idea that she should think a thing like that. Of my Mary, too! That quiet-speaking female had such a way of making me understand that whether I was or wasn't the Marquis of Twickenham she didn't set much account on me anyhow, that I was glad to see the last of her. If the other members of the House of Twickenham were going to model their behaviour on hers, we should still continue to be a divided family.

Old Foster came up to dine with me, as per invitation. He wasn't what you'd call exciting, but he was amusing. He'd got some interesting things to talk about, and a.s.sisted me in cramming up family details at a rate of which he had no notion. The style in which he took it for granted that there was no deception this time was to me a cause of perpetual surprise. He was a long-headed man, and, in a general way, if you'd wanted to get on his blind side, you'd have had to get up early. But Reggie and Howarth had put his nose out of joint. They'd given him to understand that he was to have the kick because his conduct during my fifteen years of absence hadn't suited their convenience. No man likes to have the Order of the Boot as a reward for his fidelity. My re-appearance meant his triumph over his enemies.

His appreciation of that fact I rather think tended to blunt his faculties of observation. In the first flush of his joy he was perhaps naturally unwilling to spoil the situation by any show of impertinent curiosity.

At the same time let me hasten to add that his opinion of the Marquis of Twickenham didn't seem to be much higher than Miss Desmond's. He didn't say so in so many words, but it was easy to see that morally and mentally he didn't rate his lordship very high. It was painful to me to reflect that I'd come back to a family whose good opinion of me I should have to level up; if there was any of it to level. Because, so far as I could gather, there wasn't any one anywhere who thought anything of the Marquis of Twickenham at all.

For instance, when I asked in a casual sort of way, as the conversation seemed to lag: 'And how are all my old friends?' Foster looked at me curiously out of the corners of his eyes; then down at his gla.s.s. There was a dryness in his tone as he answered,