Mr. Rowl. Pemberton Max

least, I feel too wretched . . . and what will Papa and everybody say if we do not?”

      “I am going to the wood,” responded Juliana firmly. “I want to see . . . Sir Francis . . . at once. He joins us there, you remember. And you must come, Laetitia, because you must, if necessary, contrive an opportunity for me to see him alone. Do you understand? Pull your bonnet down a little, and perhaps no one will observe that you have been crying.”

      Her resolution and self-command amazed the weaker spirit, who made haste, however, to obey her. Fortunately, they were so late—Mr. Bentley was already waiting on the doorstep, and two other carriages full of laughter and expostulations were in the drive—that there was no time for any one to notice discomposure, and if the two young men who drove with the just-returned young ladies observed anything unusual, they had perforce to keep their speculations to themselves.

      The bluebells were even bluer and more numerous than had been expected, the collation was voted excellent, the weather perfect. But Sir Francis Mulholland, if no one else, noticed that his bride-to-be looked pale and distraite, and himself made the opportunity she wished for by suggesting, soon after the company had risen from their cold chicken and ham, that they should take a stroll to see more bluebells.

      Juliana assented, but almost inaudibly, and she did not take his proffered arm. Side by side they walked away from the others.

      “I am alarmed about you to-day, my love,” observed Sir Francis solicitously, as they went. “You are so pale; you tired yourself, I fear, by going into Wanfield, as I hear you did, this morning.”

      The moment had come—so soon. Speech was not easy. Juliana fixed her eyes on the stump of a tree, and the words came out slowly and heavily. “Yes, I had a great shock in Wanfield this morning. . . . I do not imagine that, however long I live, I shall ever receive a greater.”

      The colour left her lover’s face, too. “What were you doing in Wanfield?” he asked uneasily.

      “I went to Mr. Bannister’s office.” She heard him give an inarticulate exclamation. “I do not need to tell you what I learnt there—what an incredible story of deceit, of mean revenge, came out.” She turned her beautiful, accusing eyes on him. “Francis, Francis, how could you do it—how could you descend to such inexpressible baseness!”

      “Because you drove me to it!” he cried wildly. “You scorned my entreaties, my warnings! And what of your own deceit? After your meeting him like that at Fawley Bridge I had to get rid of him. And I did nothing so very blameworthy, after all; Norman Cross is the best of the war prisons . . . and he was a prisoner in any case; it cannot have done him much harm. If you had listened to me——”

      The inward cold grew and spread till Juliana’s very heart seemed frozen with disgust. “Then, if I can drive you to such an act as knowingly to take away an innocent man’s honour, and to say that you have not hurt him—and to such monstrous lies to cover it—it is my duty as well as my wish to sever our relationship!” And she slipped the ruby from her finger. “Pray take back your ring, for our engagement is at an end.”

      He would not take it, and finally it dropped between them among the croziers of the young fern. He blustered, he raved, he pleaded; he even went on his knees to her among the bracken and the bluebells. “Juliana, have mercy! It was because I loved you so . . . I’ll do anything—retract what I said, write to Norman Cross—”

      “Mr. Bannister is already doing that!”

      Sir Francis got to his feet; his face was patched and chalky. “I shall be ruined if this gets about!”

      She surveyed him with deeper contempt. “And what of the man you have ruined?”

      “It can be undone, Juliana—I swear I’ll reinstate him, whatever it costs! You don’t know how you maddened me. . . . For God’s sake, think better of it! Put that ring on again and I will never be jealous of you again in my life. . . . Where is the ring?” He stooped and began to fumble with shaking hands among the dead leaves and sand.

      “Jealous!” exclaimed Juliana. “It is the lies, the subterfuges—the chain of subterfuges! . . . Why, I should never be able to believe a word you said to me as long as I lived. And once I thought . . . Oh, Francis, Francis——” The tears came over her own lost happiness, and the ideal figure she had been rebuilding—on a foundation of mud. And for the sake of what she once had thought him she promised, before she left him, that in the rehabilitation of his victim he should be spared as much as possible, that she would ask Mr. Bannister to say locally that there had been a mistake . . . misunderstandings . . . anything to cover his disgraceful conduct. For she, too, felt humiliated to the dust.

      And finally she went away from him rather stumblingly, and a little later was found by Mr. Bentley crying at the foot of an oak tree, and that good friend, after letting her finish on his shoulder, had the carriage brought up and sent her home alone with Laetitia, on the plea of sudden illness.

      But the ruby ring, after exercising the wits of a number of ants and beetles, was found next year by Zachary Miller as he was putting a ferret down a rabbit hole, and, cautiously disposed of at a distance, contributed not a little towards his marriage and the consequent begetting of a number of assistants and successors to carry on his activities in the Mulholland woods and elsewhere.

      PART II

       THE COST OF A WHIM

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