The effect was quaint and not unpleasing; a little cold, perhaps, but picturesque and graceful.

The grand piano had a case specially made for it, painted a dull sage-green and finished in a manner to give it a look of the less ma.s.sive harpsichord.

It was at this instrument that Doreen sat, making a very pretty picture in her white silk, square-necked frock, with bands of beaver fur on the bodice and sleeves and an edging of the same fur round the bottom of the skirt.

"My purpose in coming here to-night, Miss Wedmore," said Mr. Lindsay, when he had delivered an unimportant message from the vicar's wife about the church decorations, "was really to bring you my good wishes for this blessed season. I am afraid I shall have no opportunity of speaking to you to-morrow, though, of course, I shall see you in the church."

"Oh, yes, we shall all be at church," said Doreen, quickly.

She noted something rather unusual in the curate's manner--a nervous excitement which presaged danger; and she dashed into an air from "The Shop-Girl" with an energy which was meant to have the effect of checking his solemn ardor.

But the curate had the stuff of a man in him, and did not mean to be put off. This opportunity was really a good one, for the talk in the room, which his arrival had checked for an instant, was now going on merrily.

Mrs. Wedmore did her best to keep up the conversation. Nothing would have pleased her better than to see Doreen transfer her tender feeling for the discredited Dudley to such a suitable and irreproachable person as Lisle Lindsay. She kept a hopeful eye on the pair at the piano while she went on talking to her husband's old friend, Mrs. Hutchinson, who was staying with them for Christmas.

"And at the same time," went on Mr. Lindsay, as he moved his chair a little nearer, so that, under cover of the music, he could speak without being overheard, "to speak to you on a subject which is--is--in fact, very near my heart."

This was worse than Doreen had expected. She glanced round at him with rather a frightened expression. "Oh, don't let us talk about anything--anything serious now," said she. "Just when we shall be going downstairs to--to dance--in a few minutes."

It was a very inconsequent objection to make, and Mr. Lindsay simply ignored it.

"It is, in fact, about myself that I wish to speak, Miss Wedmore," he pursued relentlessly. "You cannot have failed to notice what a--what a deep interest I take in all that concerns you. And latterly I have flattered myself that--"

"But people should never flatter themselves about anything!" cried Doreen, desperately, as she suddenly laid her hands in her lap and turned from the piano to face the worst. "Now I'll give you an example.

I flattered myself a little while ago that a man cared a great deal about me--a man I cared a great deal for myself. And all the while he didn't; or, at least, I am afraid he didn't. And yet, you know, I can't help hoping that perhaps I didn't only flatter myself, after all; that perhaps he will come back some day and tell me I was right."

Mr. Lindsay heard her in silence, with his mild eyes fixed on the carpet. But when she had finished he looked up again, and she was shocked to find that the gentle obstinacy which had been in his face before was there still.

"I am, indeed, sorry for your disappointment," he said sweetly. "Or rather I should be if it were such a one that you could not hope to--to--in fact, to get over it. But--but these are trials which may be, perhaps, only sent to show that you, even you, happily placed as you are and gifted of the Almighty, are human, after all, and not beyond suffering. And--and it may give you an opportunity of seeing that there are others who can appreciate you better, and who would only be too glad to--to--to--"

"To step into his shoes!" finished Doreen for him, with a sigh. "I know what you were going to say, and if you won't be stopped, I suppose I must hear you out. But, oh, dear, I do wish you wouldn't!"

He was not to be put off like that. In fact, he was not to be put off by any available means. He sighed a little, and persisted.

"I am glad you have guessed what I was going to say, Miss Wedmore, though I should not have put it quite in that way. And why should you not want to hear it? I should have thought that even you must be not quite indifferent to any man's honest feelings of esteem and admiration toward you!"

Doreen was looking at him helplessly, with wide-open eyes. Did he really think any girl was ever moved by this sort of address, deliberately uttered, with the words well chosen, well considered? As different as possible from the abrupt, staccato method used by Dudley in the dear old days!

"Oh, I'm not indifferent at all!" said she, quickly. "I'm never indifferent to anything or anybody. But I'm sorry, very sorry that--that you should feel--"

She stopped short, looked at him for a moment curiously, and asked with great abruptness:

"_Do_ you feel anything in the matter? _Really_ feel, I mean?

I don't think you do; I don't think you can. You couldn't speak so _nicely_, if you did."

He looked at her with gentle reproach. His was not a very tempestuous feeling, perhaps, but it was genuine, honest, sincere. He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible.

Her way of receiving his advances was perplexing. He was not easily disconcerted, but he did not answer her immediately. Then he said softly:

"How could I speak in any way but what you call 'nicely' to _you_? To the lady whom I am asking to be my wife?"

Doreen looked startled.

"Oh, don't, please! You don't know what a mistake you're making. I'm not at all the sort of wife for you, really! Indeed, I couldn't recommend myself as a wife to anybody, but especially to you."

"Why--especially to me?"

"Well, I'm not good enough."

"That sounds rather flattering. And yet, somehow, I don't fancy you mean it to be so."

"Well, no, I don't," said Doreen, frankly; "for I mean by 'good' a lot of qualities that I don't think highly of myself, such as getting up in the middle of the night to go to early service, and being civil to people I hate, and--and a lot of things like that. Don't you know that I'm eminently deficient in all the Christian virtues?"

This was a question the curate had never asked himself; but it came upon him at this moment with disconcerting force that she was right. Luckily for his self-esteem, it did not occur to him at the same time that it was this very lack of the conventional virtues, a certain freshness and originality born of her defiant neglect of them, which formed the stronger part of her attractiveness in his eyes.

After a short pause he answered, with his usual deliberation:

"Indeed, I am quite sure that you do yourself injustice."

"Oh, but I'm equally sure that I don't. I not only leave undone the things which you would say I ought to do, and do the things which I ought not to do, but I'm rather proud of it."

Still, Mr. Lindsay would not accept the repulse. He persisted in making excuses for her and in believing them.

"Well, you fulfill your most important duty; you are the happiness and the brightness of the house. Your father's face softens whenever you come near him. Now, as that is your chief duty, and you fulfill it so well, I am quite sure that if you entered another state of life where your duties would be different, you would accommodate yourself, you would fulfill your new duties as well as you did the old."

Doreen rewarded him for this speech with a humorous look, in which there was something of grat.i.tude, but more of rebellion.

"Accommodate myself? No, I couldn't. I think, do you know, that if I were ever foolish enough to marry--and it would be foolishness in a spoiled creature like me--I should want a husband who could accommodate himself to me. Now, you couldn't. Clergymen never accommodate themselves to anything or anybody."

The Reverend Lisle Lindsay did at last look rather disconcerted.

Mischievous Doreen saw her triumph and made the most of it.

"So that settles the matter, doesn't it? I can't accommodate myself; you can't either. What could possibly come of a union like that?"

"The greatest happiness this world is capable of affording, and the hope of a happiness more abiding hereafter," said he; "all the happiness that a true woman can bring to the man she loves."

Doreen threw up her head quickly.

"Ah! that's just it," cried she. "'To the man she loves!' But you are not the man I love, Mr. Lindsay. I suppose it's one of the things I ought not to do--one of the unconventional and so unchristian things--to own that I love a man who doesn't love me. But I do. Now, you know who it is, and everybody knows; but, for all that, you mustn't tell; you must keep it as a secret that Doreen Wedmore--proud, stuck-up Doreen--is breaking her heart for the sake of a man who--who--" Her voice broke and she paused for a moment to recover herself; then she said, in a lighter tone: "Ah, well, we mustn't be hard upon him, either, for we don't know--it's so difficult to know."

She sprang up from her seat; and the curate rose too. By her tactful mention of her own unlucky love she had softened the blow of her rejection of him. She had been rather too kind indeed, considering the tenacity of the person she had to deal with; for the curate considered his case by no means so hopeless as it was; and instead of taking himself off forlornly, as she would have wished, he stayed on until the young men swarmed up from the billiard-room and bore the whole party down to the hall.

Mr. Wedmore, in great glee at having carried his point in the face of the family resistance, led Mrs. Hutchinson down stairs, and then handed her over to Max, while he himself threw open the door leading to the servants' quarters, and invited the group of neat maids and stalwart young men from the garden and stable to enter.

But here there was a hitch in the arrangements. The cook, in a bad temper, smarting with disapproval of the whole business, had refused to join the others, and, as nothing could be done without her, Mr. Wedmore had to penetrate into the servants' hall, where he found her sitting in state, and, luckily, dressed for the occasion.

Never in his life had Mr. Wedmore exerted himself so much to please any woman as he now did to soften the outraged feelings of the cook, who was a stout, red-faced woman, whose days of comeliness and charm were long since gone by. He at last succeeded in inducing her to accompany him to the hall, where he arrived in triumph, with a flushed face and nervous manner, after an interval which had been put to great advantage by the younger gentlemen of the party, who were all anxious to dance with the prettiest housemaid.

Their eagerness had the effect of annoying the rest of the maids, and effectually spoiling whatever enjoyment they might have got out of the dance in the circ.u.mstances, while it by no means pleased the ladies of the family and their friends, who stood a little apart and whispered to each other that this sort of thing was bound to be a failure, and why couldn't papa, dear old, stupid papa, leave _them_ out of the affair, and let the boys have a romp in the servants' hall without their a.s.sistance?