"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get no reply to his question. However, his arguments seemed at length to have a calming effect, and, as he took leave, he even affected to laugh at the whole affair. For all that, he had never suffered such mental trouble in his life as during this visit and throughout the evening which followed. The mere thought of having been obliged to discuss such things with his cousin filled him with inexpressible shame and misery.

Waymark came to spend the evening with him, but found poor entertainment. Several times Julian was on the point of relating what had happened, and asking for advice, but he found it impossible to broach the subject. There was an ever-recurring anger against Harriet in his mind, too, for which at the same time he reproached himself. He dreaded the next meeting between them.

Harriet, though herself quite innocent of fine feeling and nice complexities of conscience, was well aware of the existence of such properties in her cousin. She neither admired nor despised him for possessing them; they were of unknown value, indifferent to her, indeed, until she became aware of the practical use that might be made of them. Like most narrow-minded girls, she became a shrewd reader of character, when her affections and interests were concerned, and could calculate Julian's motives, and the course wherein they would lead him, with much precision. She knew too well that he did not care for her in the way she desired, but at the same time she knew that he was capable of making almost any sacrifice to spare her humiliation and trouble, especially if he felt that her unhappiness was in any way caused by himself.

Thus it came about that, on the Tuesday evening of the ensuing week, Julian was startled by his landlady's announcing another visit from Miss Smales. Harriet came into the room with a veil over her face, and sank on a chair, sobbing. What she had feared had come to pa.s.s. The lodger had told Mrs. Ogle of what had taken place in her absence on the Sunday afternoon, and Harriet had received notice that she must find another place at once. Mrs. Ogle was a woman of severe virtue, and would not endure the suspicion of wrong-doing under her roof. To whom could she come for advice and help, but to Julian?

Julian was overwhelmed. His perfectly sincere nature was incapable of suspecting a far more palpable fraud. He started up with the intention of going forthwith to Gray's Inn Road, but Harriet clung to him and held him back. The idea was vain. The lodger, Miss Mould, had long entertained a spite against her, Harriet said, and had so exaggerated this story in relating it to Mrs. Ogle, that the latter, and her husband, had declared that Casti should not as much as put foot in their shop again.

"If you only knew what they've been told!" sobbed the girl, still clinging to Julian. "They wouldn't listen to a word you said. As if I could have thought of such a thing happening, and that woman to say all the bad things of us she can turn her tongue to! I sha'n't never get another place; I'm thrown out on the wide world!"

It was a phrase she had got out of her penny fiction; and very remarkable indeed was the mixture of acting and real sentiment which marked her utterances throughout.

Julian's shame and anger began to turn to compa.s.sion. A woman in tears was a sight which always caused him the keenest distress.

"But," he cried, with tears in his own eyes, "it is impossible that you should suffer all this through me, and I not even make an attempt to clear you of such vile charges!"

"It was my own fault. I was thoughtless. I ought to have known that people's always ready to think harm. But I think of nothing when I'm with you, Julian!"

He had disengaged himself from her hands, and was holding one of them in his own. But, as she made this last confession, she threw her arms about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.

"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.

No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a woman's lips that she loves him. Harriet was the only girl whom Julian had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival to fear amongst living women; the one rival to be dreaded was altogether out of the sphere of her conceptions,--the ideal love of a poet's heart and brain. But the ideal is often least present to us when most needed.

Here was love; offer but love to a poet, and does he pause to gauge its quality? The sudden whirl of conflicting emotions left Julian at the mercy of the instant's impulse. She was weak; she was suffering through him; she loved him.

"Be my wife, then," he whispered, returning her embrace, "and let me guard you from all who would do you harm."

She uttered a cry of delight, and the cry was a true one.

CHAPTER XIV

NEAR AND FAR

Osmond Waymark was light-hearted; and with him such a state meant something not at all to be understood by those with whom lightness of heart is a chronic affection. The man who dwells for long periods face to face with the bitter truths of life learns so to distrust a fleeting moment of joy, gives habitually so cold a reception to the tardy messenger of delight, that, when the bright guest outdares his churlishness and perforce tarries with him, there ensues a pa.s.sionate revulsion unknown to hearts which open readily to every fluttering illusive bliss. Illusion it of course remains; is ever recognised as that; but illusion so sweet and powerful that he thanks the G.o.d that blinds him, and counts off with sighs of joy the hours thus brightly winged.

He awaited with extreme impatience the evening on which he would again see Ida. Distrustful always, he could not entirely dismiss the fear that his first impressions might prove mistaken in the second interview; yet he tried his best to do so, and amused himself with imagining for Ida a romantic past, for her and himself together a yet more romantic future. In spite of the strange nature of their relations, he did not delude himself with the notion that the girl had fallen in love with him at first sight, and that she stood before him to take or reject as he chose. He had a certain awe of her. He divined in her a strength of character which made her his equal; it might well be, his superior. Take, for instance, the question of the life she was at present leading. In the case of an ordinary pretty and good-natured girl falling in his way as Ida Starr had done, he would have exerted whatever influence he might acquire over her to persuade her into better paths. Any such direct guidance was, he felt, out of the question here. The girl had independence of judgment; she would resent anything said by him on the a.s.sumption of her moral inferiority, and, for aught he knew, with justice. The chances were at least as great that he might prove unworthy of her, as that she should prove unworthy of him.

When he presented himself at the house in the little court by Temple Bar, it was the girl Sally who opened the door to him. She beckoned him to follow, and ran before him upstairs. The sitting-room presented the same comfortable appearance, and Grim, rising lazily from the hearthrug, came forward purring a welcome, but Ida was not there.

"She was obliged to go out," said Sally, in answer to his look of inquiry. "She won't be long, and she said you was to make yourself comfortable till she came back."

On a little side-table stood cups and saucers, and a box of cigars. The latter Sally brought forward.

"I was to ask you to smoke, and whether you'd like a cup of coffee with it?" she asked, with the curious _naivete_ which marked her mode of speech.

"The kettle's boiling on the side," she added, seeing that Waymark hesitated. "I can make it in a minute."

"In that case, I will."

"You don't mind me having one as well?"

"Of course not."

"Shall I talk, or shall I keep quiet? I'm not a servant here, you know," she added, with an amusing desire to make her position clear.

"Ida and me's friends, and she'd do just as much for I."

"Talk by all means," said Waymark, smiling, as he lit his cigar. The result was that, in a quarter of an hour Sally had related her whole history. As Ida had said, she came from Weymouth, where her father was a fisherman, and owner of b.u.m-boats. Her mother kept a laundry, and the family had all lived together in easy circ.u.mstances. She herself had come to London--well, just for a change. And what was she doing? Oh, getting her living as best she could. In the day-time she worked in a city workroom.

"And how much do you think I earn a week?" she asked.

"Fifteen shillings or so, I suppose?"

"Ah, that's all you know about it! Now, last week was the best I've had yet, and I made seven shillings."

"What do you do?"

"Machine work; makin' ulsters. How much do you think we get, now, for makin' a ulster--one like this?" pointing to one which hung behind the door.

"Have no idea."

"Well,--_fourpence_: there now!"

"And how many can you make in a day?"

"I can't make no more than two. Some make three, but it's blessed hard work. But I get a little job now and then to do at home."

"But you can't live on seven shillings a week?"

"I sh'd think not, indeed. We have to make up the rest as best we can, s'nough."

"But your employers must know that?"

"In course. What's the odds? All us girls are the same; we have to keep on the two jobs at the same time. But I'll give up the day-work before long, s'nough. I come home at night that tired out I ain't fit for nothing. I feel all eyes, as the sayin' is. And it's hard to have to go out into the Strand, when you're like that."

"But do they know about all this at home?"

"No fear! If our father knew, he'd be down here precious soon, and the house wouldn't hold him. But I shall go back some day, when I've got a good fit-out."

The door opened quietly, and Ida came in.

"Well, young people, so you are making yourselves at home."

The sweet face, the eyes and lips with their contained mirth, the light, perfect form, the graceful carriage,--Waymark felt his pulses throb at the sound of her voice and the touch of her hand.