"I shouldn't wonder," said Delavoye a little hastily, "if his next effort wasn't to subvert her religious beliefs."

"To make game of them!" a.s.sented Miss Julia in scandalised undertones.

"'The demoniacal Duke now set himself to deface and destroy the beauty of holiness, to cast away the armour of light, and to put upon him the true colours of an aristocratic atheist of the deepest dye.'"

"Exactly what he did," murmured Uvo, with another look at me. It was not a look of triumph unalloyed; it was at least as full of vivid apprehension.

"I shall cross that out," said Miss Julia decidedly. "I don't know what I was thinking of to write anything like that. It really makes me almost afraid to go on."

Uvo shot out a prompt and eager hand.

"Will you let me take it away to finish by myself, Miss Brabazon?"

"I don't think I can. I must look and see if there's anything more like that."

"But it isn't your fault if there is. You've simply been inspired to write the truth."

"But I feel almost ashamed."

And the typewritten sheets rustled more than ever as she raised them once more. But Delavoye jumped up and stood over her with a stiff lip.

"Miss Brabazon, you really must let me read the rest of it to myself!"

"I must see first whether I can let anybody."

"Let me see instead!"

Heaven knows how she construed his wheedling eagerness! There was a moment when they both had hold of the MS., when I felt that my friend was going too far, that his obstinate persistence could not fail to be resented as a liberty. But it was just at such moments that there was a smack of greatness about Uvo Delavoye; given the stimulus, he could carry a thing off with a high hand and the light touch of a born leader; and so it must have been that he had Miss Julia coyly giggling when I fully expected her to stamp her foot.

"You talk about our curiosity," she rallied him. "You men are just as bad!"

"I have a right to be curious," returned Uvo, in a tone that surprised me as much as hers. "You forget that your villain was once the head of our clan, and that so far the fact is quite unmistakable."

"But that's just what I can't understand!"

"Yet the fact remains, Miss Brabazon, and I think it ought to count."

"My dear young man, that's my only excuse for this very infliction!"

cried Miss Julia, with invincible jocosity. "If you'd rather it were destroyed, I shall be quite ready to destroy it, as Mr. Gillon knows.

But I should like you to hear the whole of it first."

"And I could judge so much better if I read the rest to myself!"

And still he held his corner of the MS., and she hers with an equal tenacity, which I believe to have been partly reflex and instinctive, but otherwise due to the discovery that she had written quite serenely about a blasphemer and an atheist, and not for a moment to any other qualm or apprehension whatsoever. And then as I watched them their eyes looked past me with one accord; the sheaf of fastened sheets fluttered to the ground between them; and I turned to behold the Vicar standing grim and gaunt upon the threshold, with a much younger and still more scandalised face peeping over his shoulder.

"I didn't know that you were entertaining company," observed the Vicar, bowing coldly to us youths. "Are you aware that it's nearly midnight?"

Miss Julia said she never could have believed it, but that she must have lost all sense of time, as she had been reading something to us.

"I'm sure that was very kind, and has been much appreciated," said the Vicar, with his polar smile. "I suppose this was what you were reading?"

And he was swooping down on the MS., but Delavoye was quicker; and quicker yet than either hand was the foot interposed like lightning by the Vicar.

"You'll allow me?" he said, and so picked the crumpled sheets from under it. Uvo bowed, and the other returned the courtesy with ironic interest.

In quivering tones Miss Julia began, "It's only something I've been----"

"Considering for the _Parish Magazine_," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Uvo. "Miss Brabazon did me the honour of consulting me about it."

"And may I ask your responsibility for the _Parish Magazine_, Mr.

Delavoye?"

"It's a story," continued Uvo, ignoring the question and looking hard at Miss Julia--"a local story, evidently written for local publication, the scene being laid here at Witching Hill House. The princ.i.p.al character is the very black sheep of my family who once lived there."

"I'm aware of the relationship," said the Vicar, dryly unimpressed.

"It's not one that we boast about; hence Miss Brabazon's kindness in trying to ascertain whether my people or I were likely to object to its publication."

"Well," said the Vicar, "I'm quite sure that neither you nor your people would have any objection to Miss Brabazon's getting to bed by midnight."

He returned to the door, which he held wide open with urbane frigidity.

"Now, Julia, if you'll set us an example."

And at the door he remained when the bewildered lady, delivered from an embarra.s.sment that she could not appreciate, and committed to a subterfuge in which she could see no point, had flown none the less readily, with a hectic simper and a whistle of silk.

"Now, gentlemen," continued the Vicar, "it's nearly midnight, as I've said more than once."

"I was to take the story with me, to finish it by myself," explained Uvo, with the smile of a budding amba.s.sador.

"Oh, very well," rejoined the Vicar, shutting the door. "Then we must keep each other a minute longer. I happen myself to const.i.tute the final court of appeal in all matters connected with the _Parish Magazine_.

Moreover, Mr. Delavoye, I'm a little curious to see the kind of composition that merits a midnight discussion between my sister and two young men whose acquaintance I myself have had so little opportunity of cultivating."

He dropped into a chair, merely waving to us to do the same; and Delavoye did; but I remained standing, with my eyes on the reader's face, and I saw him begin where Miss Julia had left off and the MS. had fallen open. I could not be mistaken about that; there was the mark of his own boot upon the page; but the Vicar read it without wincing at the pa.s.sage which his sister had declared her intention of crossing out. His brows took a supercilious lift; his cold eyes may have grown a little harder as they read; and yet once or twice they lightened with a human relish--an icy twinkle--a gleam at least of something I had not thought to see in Mr. Brabazon. Perhaps I did not really see it now. If you look long enough at the Sphinx itself, in the end it will yield some semblance of an answering look. And I never took my eyes from the Vicar's granite features, as typewritten sheet after sheet was turned so softly by his iron hand, that it might have been some doctrinal pamphleteer who claimed his cool attention.

When he had finished he rose very quietly and put the whole MS. behind the grate. Then I remembered that Delavoye also was in the room, and I signalled to him because the Vicar was stooping over the well-laid grate and striking matches. But Delavoye only shook his head, and sat where he was when Mr. Brabazon turned and surveyed us both, with the firewood crackling behind his clerical tails.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Delavoye," said he; "but I think you will agree that this is a case for the exercise of my powers in connection with our little magazine. The stupendous production now perishing in the flames was of course intended as a practical joke at our expense."

"And I never saw it!" cried Uvo, scrambling to his feet. "Of course, if you come to think of it, that's the whole and only explanation--isn't it, Gillon? A little dig at the Delavoyes as well, by the way!"

"Chiefly at us, I imagine," said the Vicar dryly. "I rather suspect that the very style of writing is an attempt at personal caricature. The taste is execrable all through. But that is only to be expected of the anonymous lampooner."

"Was there really no name to it, Mr. Brabazon?"

The question was asked for information, but Uvo's tone was that of righteous disgust.

"No name at all. And one sheet of type-writing is exactly like another.

My sister had not read it all herself, I gather?"