Chapter XVI

JAMES received Mary's letter, by a happy chance, just as he was about to ring up his solicitors and ask them to send him some papers that he wanted to show her next day. When he had read its first few sentences, he asked for the messenger boy, but his clerk told him that the boy had already gone. As that was so, he told the man to get him a taxi--he could very well finish the letter on his way home. While he was waiting, he walked up and down his room. "This is nonsense!" he told himself. "This is nonsense--it must be stopped at once!" He got into his taxi without being aware of any other feeling than his determination that it must be stopped.

The light in the taxi was bad, and Mary's sloping writing seemed difficult. He realised that he was not understanding what he read, and when he had gathered the facts of the affair he put the crumpled sheets back into his pocket. Then he pulled up the window of the taxi--the early spring day was cold. Already the other, the emotional aspects of Mary's conduct were forcing themselves upon his mind, but again and again he wrenched his thoughts away--he must look at it now, he insisted, simply in the light of something that had to be stopped. Over a growing consciousness of disaster he kept his attention busy with the familiar spaces and buildings that he passed, and with the people in the streets.

As soon as he reached home he sent for Penn. "What train did Mrs. Heyham catch?" he asked her.

Penn did not know, Mrs. Heyham had left for Victoria at three. But she could ask Lang.

It would be ten minutes before the chauffeur came--James went into his study and took out the letter again. But even now he could not understand it. She was angry with him about Greta, he supposed, and to revenge herself she had determined to refuse her consent to his scheme. Then she had been afraid, she had not dared face him, so she had run away. He felt the tide of his anger rising to meet the anger he imagined in her. He could not doubt for a moment which was the stronger and the more effective. It was difficult to believe that she could have been foolish enough to provoke him like this----

At that moment he heard footsteps on the marble floor of the passage and he tried, instinctively, to resume the usual calm of his expression. But the muscles of his face, stiffly contracted, would not relax. He faced Lang, coming in at the door, with a deep frown.

"What train did Mrs. Heyham take, Lang?" he asked again.

"I don't know, sir. We got to Victoria at about 3.20 and Mrs. Heyham told the porter to take her things to the cloak-room."

With a great effort James made himself smile. "That's all right," he said; "then she is probably going by the later train, as she arranged." He thought rapidly. His letter had reached him at half-past four--she had probably handed it in soon after four. It was nearly half-past five now. After what she had said in the letter, it was unlikely that her luggage would still be there, though she might, of course, have been bluffing.

He wondered for a moment whether he would go to Victoria himself, but he was too angry. He'd be damned if he'd hang around any cloak-room for her. "What's Heyham doing--looking for his wife?" She should come back without that.

He turned to Lang. "Go to Victoria at once," he said, "and find out, if you can, what train Mrs. Heyham took. The man in the cloak-room may know at what time she came for the luggage. If it is still there, wait until she comes and tell her that I have been obliged to change my plans and cannot leave London to-night. If Mrs. Heyham decides to come back, bring her home--if not, see her comfortably into her train."

Lang looked intelligently at his master, as if he were memorising these instructions. Then, with his usual, "Yes, sir," he went.

When the door had shut, James, without seeing it, looked slowly round the room. He had become aware of a curious light, giddy sensation. His mind seemed to be inactive, open, and blank. Suddenly his blood rushed to his head and he found himself trembling under a storm of rage.

For a moment he thought of Mary as an angry peasant thinks of an animal. She was his--his possession--his woman--and she had defied him. Words came to his lips that old Clarkson, years ago, had used of the factory girls, but as he stood there with his hands clenched and his red, distorted face thrust forward, he could not even speak them coherently. Presently the inhibiting pressure of his wrath grew less, and he turned to stride rapidly up and down the room. His anger, as it became clearer, had not shrunk, but only grown more vindictive and more intense. He saw Mary now as an embodiment of greed and treachery. Was she not, after all, Julius's sister?--he had been a fool to marry into such a family! All these years he had toiled at the business, working as much for her as for himself, and now, after taking all that she could get, she was angry with him, and for her revenge she ruined him. This was her answer to his years of love and care. He had loved her--he shivered with humiliation when he thought how abject he had sometimes been, how he had respected her, hung on her moods, twisted himself into ecstasies of sentimental gallantry! He had treated himself like dirt, because he had been afraid of wounding her damned delicacy--while she, in all probability, had been laughing at him! It had amused her to see him making a fool of himself over her imaginary fine feelings! She had been so sure of him that she had dared to tell him to his face that she did not love him!

He had adored her, and she, all the time, had been leading her own life, her double life, throwing him enough affection to keep him blind when he was at home. As soon as it suited her, she left him, left him to tell his son and his daughters--to tell everyone--that his wife had run away. Left him to explain why she had seen fit to do such a thing. He shuddered again with hatred and disgust.

At last, tired of walking, he threw himself into his great arm-chair. Mary imagined, no doubt, that he would forgive her. Forgive--he struck the arm of the chair with his open hand--while there was blood in his body, he would not forgive. She should come back, and she should sign the papers, and then, after that, he would live as he liked--treacherous--treacherous and cold-blooded! She had left him to explain to Trent, her prig of a son, why she had gone----

His anger mastered him again, he could not breathe properly, he bent over the side of the chair that he had gripped with shaking hands. When he tried to rise it seemed to him, for a moment, that he could not.

At this he became alarmed. "Mustn't go on like this!" he told himself, and instantly his muscles relaxed and he fell back in the chair, while rings of light seemed to shift before his eyes. When he sat up, wiping his hand across his wet forehead, he had collected himself, his anger was finally under his control. He was able to think about what he had better do, what he should say to Trent, what Lang would have found.

He left the chair and walked slowly to his desk. His desk, broad, massive, designed and equipped solely to serve his purpose, reassured him and gave him back for a moment his sense of dignity. With its smooth leather under his arms he could not doubt of his success--he had planned so many things at that desk, and compelled so much success. There were a hundred reasons why Mary should return at once, before anyone knew, if only he could get them in order. His head was full of them already--they crowded upon him. There must be a hundred ways, too, of forcing her to come back if only he could find them. He had merely to think, to set his brain to work. Unfortunately he did not want to think. He wanted to be angry, to give full scope to his indignation, and to find that the sheer force of it had brought her back. Since his childhood James had respected his anger. It was an important weapon, dreaded and deprecated by thousands of human beings. And since it was always effective he had lost the habit of calling it in question or asking himself whether it could be unjust. Now it seemed strange to him that, angry as he was, nothing happened. If Mary had been there she would have been terrified by his anger; now, simply because she had gone, because there was a little space between them, it was nothing to her. He did not understand clearly what was the matter, but he felt an odd sensation of discomfort, of discouragement, of frustration. He sought in his mind, vaguely, for some violent thing that he could do--something that would prove his power. Then he brought himself sharply back to the matter in hand. "What's wrong with me?" he thought. "Why am I doing nothing? By this time I ought to have decided what I mean to do!"

His discouragement deepened and with it grew a fear of this strange incapacity. "I'm not usually like this," he thought--if only Mary had been there, there was so much that he could have said to her! But she was gone.

He made a last effort to think of some way of finding her immediately. He could put the screw on to the manager of the bank and make him give up her address--he could set detectives to find her. But he did not care for either of these plans. The manager would not like going back on Mary, nor did he believe in any but the acquisitive powers of detectives. Sooner or later of course Mary, being a woman, would give herself away; meanwhile he must wait.

He must wait--impotent, tortured by his own useless rage--the notion appalled him. He was not a man who was accustomed to wait, to suffer--every force that was in him struggled against the idea. Then, as he could still find no immediate solution, his alarm returned. The state of affairs was wrong, unnatural, something must be the matter. "Perhaps I was too angry," he thought, "I have upset myself!" He walked to a small mirror that hung over a side table and looked at himself in the glass. He looked tired and shaken, he decided, and with the thought came a sensation of weakness and fatigue. He turned away from the mirror and went back, mechanically, to his desk. "After all," he thought, "I am getting old--I can't stand these things as I used to!" It was a moment before he grasped the significance of the words.

Then his hatred of Mary blazed out again. That was why she had done it--he was old--she had taken advantage of his age--ten years ago she would not have dared to defy him! She had left him, as he saw it now, with the callous indifference of youth. She was younger than he--she had not borne the burden of ceaseless work! She was a woman, she worshipped strength--to her he was merely an old man, whose strength was leaving him.

Then he made an effort to restore his own confidence. Mary was wrong--she would find out her mistake--only that morning he had felt as young as ever! But he could not deceive himself, he knew that ten years ago he would have taken action instead of wasting his time among ideas. "Here I sit," he thought; "I tell myself that I must do something, find something to do, and still I sit doing nothing!" He was seized again, as he had been seized the night before, with profound despondency. Something was wrong, but its causes lay outside the habitual action of his mind. He sat on, not attempting now to cope with the stream of thoughts that passed before him. He missed, though he did not know it, Mary's audience and her sympathy.

At twenty minutes past six Lang came back with the car. He had done his best, he said, to make the man at the cloak-room attend to him, and the man had admitted finally that he believed, though he wasn't sure, that Mrs. Heyham had fetched her luggage about an hour after she put it in.

James nodded, and Lang went. In another half-hour Trent would be back from the works. He took Mary's letter from his pocket and read it again to see if there was anything in it that he could not show to Trent. The boy, after all, was his partner. He would have to have an explanation of some sort. Plausible explanations of Mary's flight began to develop themselves in James's mind. He did not want Trent to know about Greta--Trent was such a prig. But as the clock struck half-past he decided, in a sudden access of impatience, that he would go out and leave the letter behind him for Trent to find. He would have dinner somewhere where there was a crowd of people. He couldn't face a tongue--tied meal with Trent staring at him across the table, and the servants coming in and out of the room. He couldn't face, either, Trent's surprise and his damn-fool questions. The boy was all right when he'd thought a thing over, but he wasn't quick.

He wrote on a sheet of paper, "I will talk this over with you after dinner, J. A. H.," and put it with the letter into a large envelope which he addressed to his son. Then, leaving it on the hall table, he went upstairs to dress. If he had dinner early he would be less likely to see anyone he knew.

Trent, when he came in, a little tired, picked up the envelope and tore it open on his way upstairs. He read James's note with a feeling of impatience. Some difficulty had arisen, he supposed, in the way of the new company. Trent did not share James's interest in the new company. The scheme was his father's. It did not afford him the pleasure of admiring his own ingenuity, and it seemed to him that the new arrangements tended to lessen his importance. He would be on the Board of the new Company, but only as one director among many, and he had not been able to follow his father's sudden delight in cinematographs and the building of cinema palaces. He had agreed to the scheme because it would make him, if it went well, a richer man, but he sometimes grew tired of discussing and praising it. He glanced, now, at the other envelope, and it was with a shock that he recognised his mother's writing. James had not spoken to him of Mary's attitude, and as the months went by he had forgotten his fears. Now they revived, and with them came a slight feeling of superiority. "I knew there would be trouble," he said to himself as he went into his room.

Trent's room was carefully furnished and tidy. Even his golf-clubs and his riding boots seemed evidence less of enjoyment than of the gentlemanly nature of his pursuits. Although he would have to dress in half an hour he changed his shoes, washed his hands, and brushed his hair before he sat down in a comfortable chair to read Mary's letter.

He read it through slowly, after his first start of surprise, and then, as he could not remember a word of it, he read it again. He was amazed--his mother had never seemed to him that sort of woman. He had always thought of her as a good, charming woman, a woman he was very fond of. Now she had done this astonishing thing--he realised, for the first time, that his mother and father were not merely parents, that they lived lives of their own, like his and his friends'. "My father can't," he even admitted, "be a very easy man to live with"--he could see that Mary had been very unhappy when she wrote her letter.

But there his sympathy ended. Mary was a wife, she had no right to behave as she was doing. Trent had always felt very strongly that upper-class Englishwomen, in a way, are sacred; sacred to the noble task of maintaining the ideals of English men and children. He had never doubted that any woman whom he might love would recognise the force of this obligation. He was very fond of his mother--it was most perplexing! He tried to think the matter over calmly. Whatever had happened it was absurd to suppose that she couldn't do all the thinking she liked while his father was at the office. If, as the letter seemed to indicate, there was some emotional difficulty between them, that only made matters worse. In such a case an open breach was not only wrong and foolish, it was indelicate. If what she really wanted was time to get used to the idea of selling the business then she had still no right to run away and take counsel of strangers instead of discussing the affair with her husband and son. She was hopelessly in the wrong, even when one looked at it, as he was doing, from her own point of view. When one thought of the consequences of her action----

He left his chair and began to walk, like his father, up and down the room. Walking, his thoughts came faster and less coherently. Why had she done it?--it was a terrible thing to do! And in what a false position it left them all!

Even he would suffer--why, more especially he! With a pang he remembered Lady Hester. If her family knew that his mother had done such a thing they would not let her marry him, however much money he made. For a moment the poor young man stopped, appalled, then he resumed his pacing. Hester had probably never heard of such a thing as a mother who ran away!

It was impossible that his mother could ruin his life, and ruin it for a mood--a whim--she must not do it, she must not be allowed to do it! She must be brought back and made to feel how unbecoming--how shameful--her behaviour was; he felt a slow, irresistible anger rise in his heart. His mother was disgracing herself, she could claim no mercy. She had rejected her duty to her husband and children, she had put herself outside the scope of man's generosity. He had a right to be angry with her, he said to himself; he did well to be angry!

For a few minutes he was exceedingly angry, then his thoughts began to move in a different direction. Trent, like his mother, took an interest in the processes of his own mind. After all it was no use his losing his head. Anger was foolish and undignified--he sat down again, deliberately, as if to prove to himself by controlling his muscles that he could also control his feelings. His mother had taken leave of her senses, but that was no reason why he should not show self-control. This was a crisis in his life; he must behave wisely, generously!

He tried hard as he sat there, unfortunate youth, to decide on a wise and generous line of conduct. But all that he could think of were his ruined hopes, his wounded feelings, the cruelty and treachery of what Mary had done. He did not feel generous, he felt deeply vindictive. He wanted to be wise and calm, but his resentment seemed to press on him, depriving him of the power of ordering his thoughts. He felt a desire to punish his mother, to make her suffer in return for the suffering she was causing him. He struggled against this feeling, but he was astonished by its strength. "It is extraordinary," he thought, "I am not a vindictive man; I have every wish to behave well, and yet when my whole desire is simply to be just I am prevented from thinking clearly by this primitive instinct of revenge! It is true then, after all, that civilisation is only a cloak for barbarism!" This, in its way, was satisfactory. To the end of his life Trent would treat himself with more respect as a person, under the surface, of untamably savage instincts. But even this interesting discovery did not remove the oppression of his annoyance. When he finally found relief it was in an outbreak of indignation against women in general. He was not worried by any need to be just towards women in general. This was what came--his thoughts ran easily--of women interfering in men's affairs. This was what came of women setting themselves up to be judges of life and conduct without balance or judgment or experience; they lost their heads and everyone else had to bear the consequences. His mother, doubtless--he felt less angry with her already--had been led away. She had talked things over, in the gabbling indecent fashion women have, with some of her friends, possibly with that ridiculous secretary. They had sympathised with her and persuaded her to behave like this. Possibly even Rosemary had known about it. All women nowadays were filled with the same spirit of presumption and ingratitude. His mother had merely been a little more rash, a little weaker, than the others. The whole thing came, he went on to explain to himself, of educating women and encouraging them to express their absurd opinions. His mother had been carried away by the feeling that half the business was hers--that, of course, was her father's fault. Now, although she knew nothing whatever of business, she was not prepared to let anything pass that did not meet with her approval. She had obviously got some idea of responsibility into her head--as if a woman would be responsible for an enormous modern business. There were women who mixed themselves up in business, of course, women who were thoroughly unsexed, and the others didn't understand that and were wild to imitate them. Look at Rosemary and her economics!--Laura, too, had been nearly as bad until she married. He was going on to conclude that early marriage and no education was what was right for women--a woman, to Trent's taste, was enough when she was healthy, pretty, affectionate, and tactful--when he remembered that no one had ever educated his mother and that she had indubitably married and married young. He was forced to admit that now these impossible ideas had got into the air there was no telling whom they would not attack.

He dressed, at last, without having forgiven Mary, but with his good-humour towards himself restored by this proof that he could conquer his impulses and face misfortune in a philosophical spirit.

Soon after he had left the dining-room and settled himself comfortably in the study, his father returned. James had had an excellent and encouraging dinner, and he walked into the room with the brisk, bustling air of a man who is prepared at every point both with plans of action and explanations of them. He dropped into his particular chair and selected a cigar before he spoke. Then he glanced suspiciously at his son. "You've read your mother's letter, I take it," he began.

Trent replied that he had.

"Well, what do you think about it?"

Trent waited a moment before he answered. He could see that his father was uneasy--probably, then, there had been some sentimental dispute between his parents, and James was afraid that he would question him about it. He chose his words carefully. "I don't think my mother can quite realise what she is doing," he said.

James was greatly relieved. He nodded. "We must remember," he conceded, "that your mother hasn't been at all well lately, and the excitement of the wedding was probably too much for her!"

Trent agreed with him. They looked at one another, and then James turned to the ash-tray on the table by his side. There was not yet, however, any ash upon the tip of his cigar. "In a way, of course, my dear fellow," he said, "if this gets about you are the greatest sufferer."

Trent moved uncomfortably. He did not care to be reminded of his possible sufferings.

"Of course," his father was saying, "the position, if it becomes public property, makes me look very foolish. And it is extremely inconvenient to have the arrangements for the reconstruction hung up like this for want of your mother's consent. Only yesterday Mansfield and Sir Ezra Swiney agreed to be on the Board of the new Company. But in the long run that hits you as hard as it hits me, and in other ways your prospects are affected in a way that mine can't be." He leaned forward towards his son in a solicitous, fatherly manner. Trent's answering, "Yes," was stiff.

"Now just for the present," James went on, "I haven't got your mother's address. I've thought of a way by which we shall probably be able to get it in a day or two, say a week, but meanwhile there's no time to be lost. Your mother says that the bank will forward letters--I think on the whole, if you agree with me, that you'd better write at once and point out to her what she's doing. It is no good at all my writing or I would. But if she gets a letter from you explaining that this attitude of hers makes your marriage impossible, I think it's ten chances to one that she'll change her mind. She's fond of you, Trent, and when she's in her right mind she's a good mother. Besides, I expect she's feeling a bit scared now that the thing is done. If I were you I would write to-night."

Trent leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling to avoid the compelling affection of his father's eye. He rejected an impulse to refuse indignantly, and considered the matter as thoroughly as he could. Consideration did not make James's plan seem more attractive. It was undignified, it was beastly--Trent had never written such a letter in his life, and he could not imagine himself writing it. A letter is a thing that one can keep--he thought of Mary reading his entreaties over again afterwards, when the urgency of the affair had died away--perhaps showing them to Lady Hester--"This, my dear, was what brought me back!" Trent, in defence of his own dignity, was capable of a certain amount of imagination; moreover, in the depths of his heart he felt that emotional pressure of this sort was unfair. Before dinner he had been prepared, so he thought, to use any possible means of bringing Mary back. Now that he was asked to dirty his own fingers he felt a little sorry for his mother. James was talking very calmly now and in a very kind and reasonable way, but Trent had worked with his father for some years, and he would not have cared, himself, to face such a home-coming. After all, Mary had gone away because she thought she was acting right, and James had not given any clear account of what it was that he had done to make her go.

Meanwhile James stared at his son. "Damn the boy!" he thought, "I wonder what it is that makes me always rub him up the wrong way. Well--" he said, as Trent did not seem inclined to speak.

Trent sat up and looked at him. "Do you know, sir," was the most tactful way he could put his objection, "I doubt whether my writing would be very much good? My mother has gone away, as far as I can see, because she wants to think business matters over--she must have considered the effect it would have on my plans before she went. To bring her back we must persuade her that what she is doing isn't right."

"She can hardly imagine that it is right to ruin your prospects." James's tone was becoming less smooth.

"I think," his son went on, "that we ought to write a letter, either from you or from both of us, as you prefer, to say that for her own sake as well as for ours we must ask her to come back, but if she comes we will guarantee her reasonable time and opportunities for satisfying herself about the reconstruction." That seemed to Trent a very handsome offer.

To James, already in conflict with his temper, it seemed merely aggravating. "Nonsense!" he said, "you don't realise, my dear fellow, that the thing is practically arranged. I can't keep eminent business men like Sir Ezra hanging about from day to day while your mother makes up her mind!"

"I had no idea that my mother took up that point of view," Trent suggested. "It seems very sudden!"

James had no answer to this. He knew perfectly well that he had run into the affair with his eyes open. He had known that Mary might very well object, and he had disregarded this knowledge. "I'm afraid she must have been reading Socialistic stuff," he conceded. "It gets hold of women." He fidgeted a little in his chair.

Trent threw himself back again. Then his father was to blame! He had seen this coming and he had taken no steps to meet it. He had not even consulted his able son. "Arranged or not, I don't see how we can get on without my mother's concurrence," he threw out. "It seems to me that we are in a thorough mess."

James glared at him. "I have suggested a plan by which I think your mother's concurrence can be obtained!"

Trent did not answer. He did not mind issuing his commands to women, but whining to them and badgering them was another matter. It did not fulfil Trent's idea of decency. But he knew that this obscure feeling which he could not name even to himself was the last thing in the world to appeal to his father.

"Well," James urged him, in tones of growing impatience, "I should really like to know why you don't think my scheme would be very much good."

Trent's own judicial calm gave way before this insistence. All right then, his father must have it! "I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of the affair," he said slowly; "you haven't told me, and I don't ask any questions, but it does seem dear to me that the issue lies between my mother and you. So far as it affects me as a partner, I am willing that my mother should have time to make such a serious decision, otherwise I prefer, if you don't mind, to keep out of it as far as I can; certainly I would rather not involve other people."

James, since his dinner and the birth of his ingenious plan, had forgotten the general aspect of the affair and concentrated his mind on the task of persuading Trent. At this defiance, however, the thought of his plight and his grievances broke through the surface of his immediate intentions. This was what Mary had exposed him to--this sort of snub from his son! James cared more for Trent than he let himself admit, and the young man's attitude wounded his vanity. Trent would prefer to keep himself out of his father's and mother's affairs!

"Certainly you may keep out, my dear boy," he began disagreeably, while he felt his way towards something really scathing. "Whether you'll save your skin by keeping out is another matter. You will agree," he added in default of a better phrase, "that if you don't think your own interests are worth looking after there can be no earthly reason why I should bother about them!"

Trent broke in on him, "Oh, certainly." The last thing he wanted was that James should make emotional capital out of his unfortunate affections.

For some time they both sat there covering their silence by activity in attending to their tobacco. James was feeling sore and disappointed. He had expected Trent in this matter at least to see eye to eye with him. He had looked to Trent for comfort and moral support--two things which he had become accustomed to finding at home in seasons of stress and confusion. He could not understand now why Trent was hostile. It wasn't that Trent approved of his mother's action--Trent, the young puppy, took a far more high and mighty line about women than James had ever done. His mind moved wearily amid the tangle of Trent's possible motives. The boy might be acting from laziness, priggishness, cowardice, mere pig-headedness. In any case he was a damned young fool who didn't care a rap for his father. James leaned heavily back in his chair and cursed the man who had sold him his cigars.

Trent, too, was puzzled and upset. He had hoped to impress his father with his courage and common-sense, he had hoped to cheer him up. Actually, on the contrary, they had got no nearer to friendly sympathy than ill-tempered bickering. "Am I in the wrong?" he asked himself. "Ought I to write the letter?" Every instinct told him that he was right. His mother was wrong to go away as she had gone, but if they were to plead with her at all it must be by reasoning with her, by pointing out her duty, not by working on her feelings. Trent didn't want her return made a favour to him that he would have to carry for the rest of his life. Nor was he going to drag Lady Hester, even by remote allusions, into such an affair. He was right, and his motives in refusing his father were of the noblest, but, even so, things were unsatisfactory. He did not want to fence with his father, using his brains to wound the old man instead of to encourage him. It occurred to Trent, dimly and for an instant, that in all probability the old man did not want to wound him either. What was it then that irritated them and made them quarrel?

At this moment the door opened and the parlour-maid announced Mr. Julius Trent.

Julius came in with a smiling face. He had come to see Mary eventually, since the evening was a time when she might be found alone in her drawing-room, but as his purpose was to borrow money--Mary had been very kind the day before, and an old creditor whom Julius had forgotten had sent in his bill that morning--he thought it more politic to say a few cheerful words to her husband first.

"Evening!" he said; "evening, Trent my boy! How are you all? Settling down again, I suppose. Any news of the young couple?" He included them both in the benevolence of his greeting.

The last person James wished to see was Mary's brother Julius. "Good evening," he said, without shaking hands. "No, we've heard nothing yet."

"And how's poor little Mary?" her tactless brother went on. "Didn't seem very well when I saw her yesterday--upsetting things, these weddings." A joke--a mild enough joke--was on his lips, but he checked himself. A dull straight-laced lot, Mary's family. Even as a boy, James had been one of the plodding sort. He helped himself to one of James's cigars.

"She wants to see me, I think," he went on, as nobody answered. "Is she in?"

James was thinking as quickly as he could, so quickly that he forgot to be annoyed with "poor little Mary." In spite of their old friendship James had never grown used to this reprobate who spoke of his wife in familiar terms. Yesterday,--Julius, annoyed at not being made a director, had been saying things to Mary about the sale! "No," he said slowly, "I'm afraid she's not in."

Julius stared at him. Mary out alone at this time of night! "Oh, I suppose she's gone round to Laura's," he suggested. "Women never grow tired of talking things over. Will she be very late?"

If it really had been Julius who had been making mischief, James was thinking, Mary's brother or not, he would smash him! He stared heavily at his guest, but did not speak, and after a minute Trent felt obliged to say that they did not know.

Julius pulled out his watch. It wasn't yet half-past nine. He was not going to waste an evening with people like James and Trent. "Oh, very well," he said. "I expect to-morrow will suit her just as well. You might tell her from me, that I'll look in to-morrow morning." He smiled brightly again as he took another cigar.

But at this smile James's fretted self-control gave way. "No, I will not!" he said. "Mary will not be here to-morrow morning. Your sister, my good Julius, acting in a manner which you probably think very natural, has run away!"

"Run away! Mary! Mary!" said Julius, putting the cigar into his pocket, and automatically helping himself to another. "Well, I'm damned!"

Neither of the others spoke. Trent was annoyed with his father, and James was annoyed with himself. "What on earth did she want to run away for?" Julius went on. "She seemed quite happy yesterday!" His indignation grew. "Well, I must say that's a pretty thing! A woman of her age running away from her husband!" Where was he to get his money from now? "It's disgraceful, a shameful way to behave, never heard of such a thing-- You needn't think I approve of her, James, I can tell you I'm damned sorry for you!" All the same, he told himself, it was almost worth losing the money. James left by his wife! Jaw-your-head-off cock-a-doodle James! Not that that excused Mary. "Perfectly disgraceful!" he went on, with enthusiasm. "I wonder if she's joined the Suffragettes? There's no saying what the fair sex won't do nowadays. Mary, too, of all women. Well, I'm disappointed in her. And if I see her I shall tell her so-- If I were you I should put my foot down. If once you give in to this sort of thing----"

James crossed the room and took his brother-in-law by the arm. "The best thing you can do," he said to Julius, "is to clear out and keep quiet."

Julius looked at him and then at Trent. "I'll keep quiet enough," he assured them, "for my own sake. It's not the sort of thing I should care to have Esther know." Then, rubbing his arm, he made for the door. "Of course I can quite understand you're a bit annoyed," he said when he reached it, "I should be angry myself."

James turned his back to the door's closing.

Trent returned to the chair he had left when his uncle came into the room, and James, after a minute, followed his example. There was nothing that either of them cared to say. They would have to see Julius next morning and find out how much it would cost to keep him quiet, otherwise matters were much as they had been.

For nearly an hour they sat there, busy with unprofitable thoughts.

James was wishing that he had kicked Julius. To kick Mary's only brother would, in some small measure, have relieved his feelings. It would, at any rate, have been something that he could do. Of all Mary's offences this was the worst--that she had left him with no one and nothing on which to wreak his anger. She would go, heaven knows where, carrying his name at her mercy, while he must remain at home, baffled, thwarted, pestered by busy-bodies----

This was his mood when his idea came.

To Trent's surprise a joyful light appeared on his father's face. James left his chair and went over to his desk. "I've got her," he said. "It's worth it! I don't care what it costs. It's not for nothing I've subscribed so long to the party funds! When she comes back she shall find herself Lady Heyham! She's my wife still even if she has run away! And if she makes a fuss about it I'll call myself Sir Archibald!"

Just then the maid brought in some letters, among them a picture post-card for Mary from Rosemary. Five minutes before James would have considered that Mary didn't deserve to have letters sent on; now he was so pleased with the thought that he could alter her life whether she had gone or not that he handed it over to Trent to re-address.