Down went the paper, and Dudley looked into the face of Mr. Wedmore.

"Interesting myself in it! Have I? How do you mean?"

"Well, you've asked a good many questions about this Jacobs, and wondered what had become of him. I fancy you have the answer in that paragraph."

There was a pause, and Dudley seemed to recollect something. Then he said:

"Oh, yes, I think I have. The man has fallen upon bad times, evidently.

I--I--I'm sorry for his wife."

"And the man himself--haven't you forgiven him yet?"

Dudley started, and glanced quickly round, as if the simple words had been an accusation.

"Forgiven him? Oh, yes, long ago. At least--" He paused a moment, and then added, inquiringly: "What had I to forgive?"

"Well, to tell the truth, Horne, that's just what I have often asked myself, when you have insisted upon raking up all the details of poor Jacobs's misdeeds! Why, your poor father, who was ruined by his dishonesty, never showed half the animosity you do. I could have understood it if you had suffered by his frauds. But have you? You have been well educated; you have started well in life. And on the whole, no man who has arrived at your age can honestly say that it would have been better for him to start life with a fortune at his back, eh?"

"No."

Dudley got up from his chair. He seemed agitated and uneasy, and soon took advantage of Mr. Wedmore's suggestion, somewhat dryly made, that he was tired after his journey and would like to go to bed.

When he had left the room, Mr. Wedmore turned angrily to his daughter.

"Now, Doreen, I will have no more of this nonsense. Dudley is beginning all the old tricks over again--absence of mind, indifference to you--did he even look at you as he said good night?--and morbid interest in this old, forgotten business of Jacobs and his misdoings. I won't have any more of it, and I shall tell him plainly that we don't care to have him down here until he can bring a livelier face and manner with him!"

Doreen had risen from her humble seat on the floor and had crawled on her knees to the side of his chair, where she slid a coaxing, caressing hand under his arm and put her pretty head gently down on his shoulder.

"No, you won't, papa dear. You won't do anything of the kind," she whispered in his ear very softly, very humbly. "You would not do anything to give pain to your old friend's son if you could help it, and you would not do anything to hurt your own child, your little Doreen, for a hundred thousand pounds, now would you?"

"Yes, I would, if it was for her good," replied Mr. Wedmore, in a very loud and determined voice, which was supposed to have the effect of frightening her into submission. "And it's all rubbish to think to get around me by calling yourself 'little Doreen,' when you're a great, big, overgrown lamp-post of a girl, who can take her own part against the whole county."

Doreen laughed, but still clung persistently to the arm which he pretended to try to release from her clutches.

"Well, I don't know about the county, but I think I can persuade my old father into doing what I want," she purred into his ear with gentle conviction. "You see, papa, it isn't as if Dudley and I were engaged.

We--"

"Why, what else have you been but engaged ever since last Christmas?"

said her father, irritably. "Everybody has looked upon it as an engagement, and Dudley was devoted enough until a couple of months ago; but now something has gone wrong with the lad, I'm certain, and it would be much better for you both to make an end of this."

"Why, there's nothing to make an end of," pleaded Doreen. "Just 'let things slide,' as Max says, and let Dudley come down or stay away as he likes, and the matter will come quite right one way or the other, and you will find there was really nothing for you to trouble your dear old head about, after all."

There was really some excellence in the girl's suggestion; and her father, after much grumbling, gave a half consent to it. He was forced to admit to himself that there was some grounds for Dudley's agitation on reading the paragraph concerning the disappearance of Edward Jacobs, since he had been interesting himself of late in that person's history.

But it was the degree of the young man's agitation which had seemed morbid. Mr. Wedmore found it difficult to understand why a mere suggestion of the man's disappearance--if it were indeed _the_ man--should affect Dudley so deeply. And the idea of incipient insanity in young Horne grew stronger than ever in Mr. Wedmore's mind.

Now, Doreen was by no means so sanguine as she pretended to be. She was one of those high-spirited, lively girls who find it easy to hide from others any troubles which may be gnawing at their heart. Such a nature has an elasticity which enables it to throw off its cares for a time, when in the society of others, only to brood over them in hours of loneliness.

n.o.body in the house knew--what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on account of the change in Dudley's manner toward her. The brilliant, proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody suspected. If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative rarity of the young barrister's visits during the past two months, it was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be long in consoling herself.

And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was hungering to step into Dudley's shoes.

He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this "snowy-banded, dilettant, delicate-handed priest." In the first place, he was a really nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a pedantically correct p.r.o.nunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from his mother, and "expectations" on a very grand scale indeed. Miss Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the wife of a bishop some day. And what could woman wish for more?

He was no laggard in love either. On the very morning after the arrival of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas was taking place.

Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.

Max was a hopeless failure as an a.s.sistant. He was always possessed with a pa.s.sionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.

"It's always the way with a man!" was Queenie's scornful comment on her brother's failing.

Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of useless frivolity unworthy the time and attention of grown-up people.

And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil the enjoyment of the rest.

Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with Doreen. There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time the curate entered.

Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually bright, was extremely gracious. She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the grounds to interview the gardener, so that they might come to an understanding about the evergreens to be used. She glanced at Dudley as she made this proposal. He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.

For a moment she hesitated. Standing still in the middle of the room, not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.

But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to notice the pause. Then the tears sprang to the girl's eyes, and she ran quickly to the door.

"Come, Mr. Lindsay," said she, "we must make haste. At this stage of things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I a.s.sure you."

She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with alacrity. Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.

Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window, uttered a short laugh. Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew nearer, and asked what she was laughing at.

"Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!"

"Misguided?"

"Yes," said Queenie, shortly. "If he hadn't been misguided, he would have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen. By all the laws of society, curates' wives should be plain. They should also be simple in their dress, and devoted to good works. Doreen says so herself. Why, then, didn't he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?"

"Don't you think she will have him, then?" asked Dudley, very stiffly, after a short pause. "She seems to like him. There was no need, surely, for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds, if she had felt no particular pleasure in his society."

Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes. She was distressed on account of her sister's trouble about this apparently vacillating lover, and irritated herself by his strange conduct. But at the bottom of her heart she believed in him and in his affection for Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe intended by nature for each other.

"I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes better," she said at last, below her breath.

The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and n.o.body heard her but Dudley. He flushed slightly and looked as if he understood. But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.

"Would you have liked that sleek curate yourself, really?"

"Sleek? What do you mean by sleek? You wouldn't have a minister of the church go about with long hair and a velveteen coat and a pipe in his mouth, would you?"

"Not for worlds, I a.s.sure you. He is a most beautiful creature, and I admire him very much, though he is perhaps hardly the sort of man I should have expected both you girls to rave about. And as for you, I thought you were too good to rave about anybody! You are unlike yourself this morning, and more like Doreen."