After that first meeting, the precursor of many others, the affair progressed briskly. Pomfret made love with great ardour, Norah received his advances with a shy sort of acquiescence that inflamed him the more.

He was sure, oh very sure, he was the first who had touched that innocent heart.

From these delightful confidences Murchison was shut out. It would not be wise to ignore him altogether, for such a course of action would have intensified his suspicions. But the invitations to Rosemount from either host or hostess were few and far between.

He was not, however, so easily gulled as the three conspirators thought.

Pomfret's preoccupied mood, the air of a man who had much on his mind, his frequent and unexplained absences, gave to his friend much food for thought. He felt certain that the easy-going, irresponsible young man was entangling himself. But in such a state of affairs he felt powerless. Short of invoking the influence of the Colonel, or writing to the elderly aunt, he could do nothing.

It cannot be said that the course of true love was running very smoothly, even from the point of view of the ardent and enamoured suitor himself. In spite of his impulsive temperament, his disinclination to look hard facts squarely in the face, there was in him a slight leaven of common-sense.

Save for the bounty and goodwill of this generous, if somewhat narrow-minded, aunt he was an absolute pauper. There was no hope of marrying without her consent. And he was quite sure that in a case like this her consent would never be given. A _fiancee_, to be received by her with approval, must present some sort of credentials.

And there was the difficulty. Poor Jack had exhausted all his simple cunning to extract from them some convincing details of their antecedents. But even he, infatuated as he was, had to admit that they had parried inquiries with great adroitness. They maintained a persistent reticence as to names and places. Even he was forced to conclude that, for some reason or another, they did not choose to be frank about their past.

These obvious facts, however, did not lessen his infatuation. To marry her was the one dominating object of his life, in spite of all that his few remaining remnants of common-sense could urge against such a step.

More than once the rash idea occurred to him that he would marry her in secret, and when the marriage was an accomplished fact, throw himself upon his aunt's forgiveness.

He mooted the idea to Norah, to whom, of course, he had already made a frank statement of his position, as befitted the honourable gentleman he was. But she did not receive the suggestion with enthusiasm, although she professed to fully reciprocate his ardent affection.

"If I were a selfish girl, and only thought of my immediate happiness, I should say `Yes,'" she said with a little tremulous smile, that made her look more desirable than ever in her lover's eyes. "But I could not allow _you_ to run such a terrible risk. Old people are very strange and very touchy when they think they have been slighted. Suppose she cast you off."

"I suppose I could work, as thousands have to do," replied Jack, with a touch of his old doggedness.

She shook her head. "My poor Jack! It is easy to talk of working, but you have got to find an employer. And you have been brought up to an idle life. What could you turn your hand to?" She paused a moment, and then added as an after-thought: "And besides, my brother would never sanction it."

Even to Pomfret's slow revolving mind, the worldly taint in her just peeped forth in those sensible remarks.

"If I am prepared to risk my aunt's displeasure, you can surely afford to risk your brother's?" he queried angrily.

But Norah disarmed him with one of her sweetest smiles.

"Be reasonable, dearest; we must not behave like a pair of silly children. And besides, there is a certain moral obligation on both sides. You owe everything to your aunt. I owe everything to my brother. It would be very base to ignore them."

Jack was touched by the n.o.bility of these last sentiments. "You are much better than I am, Norah, much less selfish."

She caressed his curly head with her hand. "We must have patience, Jack. You have told me as plainly as your dear, kind heart would allow you to tell me that, for reasons which I don't want you to explain, your aunt would never give her consent to your marriage with me. Well, we must wait."

In plain English her meaning was that they must possess their souls in patience till such time as this excellent old lady had departed this life. The suggestion was certainly a coldblooded one, but in his present infatuated mood Jack did not take any notice of that. Norah made a feeble attempt to gloss over the callousness of her remarks by adding that, although it was a very horrible thing to have to wait for the shoes of dead people, a person of Miss Harding's great age must expect to very shortly pay the debt of nature.

Two days later, Jack received a telegram which seemed to give a certain air of prophecy to the young woman's forebodings. It was dispatched to him from his aunt's home in Cheshire by the local doctor, who had attended her for years. It informed him that she was seriously ill and requested his immediate attendance.

He sought the Colonel at once and obtained leave. There was no time to call at Rosemount, but he scribbled a hasty note to Miss Burton explaining matters. On his arrival, he found his aged relative very bad indeed. She had had a severe stroke, the second in two years, and Doctor Jephson was very doubtful as to whether her vitality would enable her to recover. He added that she had a marvellous const.i.tution, and in such a case one could not absolutely say there was no hope. Of a feebler woman he would have said at once a few hours would see the end.

Pomfret stayed there as long as the result was in doubt. At the end of three days the brave old lady rallied in the most wonderful way, and was able to hold a little conversation with her beloved nephew. He did not leave till the doctor a.s.sured him that she was out of danger.

"It's a wonderful recovery," said Doctor Jephson as he shook hands at parting with the young man. "But it's the beginning of the end. I don't give her very long now, a few months at the most. Well, she has had a wonderful life, hardly an ache or a pain till the last few years, and then nothing very severe. But, of course, the machinery is worn out."

All the way back to Blankfield those words kept repeating themselves in his ears: "I don't give her very long now, a few months at the most."

And then an idea began to form in his mind. He was not so callous that he wanted his poor old aunt to die quickly, but it was obvious the time could not be long delayed when he would find himself possessed of her fortune, the master of his own destinies. Was there any reason why he should not forestall that period by the rather daring expedient of a secret marriage? They were both young. Even if the doctor was wrong, and they had to wait four or five years, it was not a great sacrifice of their youth. At least that was his way of looking at it. Of course he did not know how she would take the suggestion.

She appeared to listen to him with deep interest and attention when he unfolded his plans.

He explained that he had a very handsome allowance, which up to the present he had generally exceeded. Now that could all be altered. He would declare that he was sick of the army, and send in his papers.

Through his family influence, he would get some Government appointment which necessitated his living in London. He would take inexpensive chambers for himself, rent a small house for her in some pleasant and not too remote suburb, and spend as much of his time as possible with her.

"You don't think your aunt would reduce your allowance if you left the army?" was the one pertinent question she put to him when he had finished.

"On the contrary, she would be more likely to increase it," was the confident rejoinder. "She would always have preferred that I should go in for something that meant real work. She thinks the army is an idle life."

Miss Burton, no doubt, rapidly calculated the pros and cons of such a daring step. Jack had named a very handsome sum for her maintenance.

If she could put up with the clandestine nature of the connection, till such time as a certain event happened, she would be better off than at Rosemount. She begged for time to think it over, and of course she would have to consult her brother before taking such an unusual step.

That was only natural; it was impossible for Jack to insist that she should settle the matter herself without reference to the one person who, whatever his social defects, had behaved to her with unexampled kindness and generosity.

Brother and sister no doubt talked it over very thoroughly, for it was three days before she told her lover that, although George would have preferred a longer period of waiting, he trusted him sufficiently to entrust Norah to his keeping, on the terms proposed.

She did suggest that they should wait till Jack had left the army and settled himself in London. But he fought this idea stubbornly. He was mad to tie her to himself, for fear that somebody else with more immediate prospects might step in and carry her off. A little common-sense, of course, might have told him that if she was as fatally attractive to others as to himself, she would have been carried off before this.

He was so terribly jealous of her, that he had never made the slightest effort to bring any of his brother officers round to Rosemount. He even kept Hugh away as much as he could.

The lovers worked out their little plot very nicely. Miss Burton would leave Blankfield for a couple of weeks, ostensibly to pay a visit to a relative. Her destination would be London. Jack would take a few days'

leave of absence in due course, and procure a special licence. They would return on separate days and resume their normal life, until such time as they perfected their after arrangements.

CHAPTER SIX.

Miss Burton arrived home on a Monday by a mid-day train; her attentive brother met her at the station. She was one of those girls who look smart and neat under the most trying circ.u.mstances. Although it was a long journey, she bore no signs or stains of travel.

"When does Jack arrive, not too soon, I hope?" commented George, as he a.s.sisted her into a cab, and sat down beside her.

"He wanted to come down to-night, but I vetoed that," responded the girl. "I told him people might put two and two together. He will get here mid-day to-morrow. I shall meet him casually in the High Street.

He is going to bring Murchison along with him. And I shall give them an impromptu invitation to dinner."

"I don't know that I am very keen on having Murchison to dinner,"

remarked Mr Burton in rather a growling tone.

Miss Burton shrugged her shoulders. "And, perhaps, of the two, I am less keen than you are. But we have got to play it pretty quiet down here, till the whole lot of us clear out. Better to let Murchison come.

He is pretty suspicious, as it is, but if we shut him out, he'll be more suspicious still."

Mr Burton chuckled in a grim fashion.

"Well, our inquisitive friend, the whole lot of them as a matter of fact, can't do you much harm now. You've got him tight enough. And I'll say this for him, he's a bit soft and all that sort of thing, but he'll always play the game."

The girl did not reply for a moment, then she spoke in a voice that was low and soft:

"Yes, he's a dear little chap, he'll always play the game."

"He can afford to," was the rather ungracious comment. Clearly Mr Burton was not in one of his best moods to-day.