Chapter I

"Whom does love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet its impact deluges a thousand shores."--E. M. FORSTER.

"Lilamani! You're a moonbeam incarnate! I don't wonder Nevil went crazy over you; and if the rest don't follow suit--in their sober Sinclair fashion--I shall disinherit them forthwith!"

Thus Christina, appraising her sister-in-law with Nevil's own smile in her eyes. It was evening; and the new Lady Sinclair stood before her cheval glass at Bramleigh Beeches arrayed for the supreme ordeal of her marriage: a dinner-party of fourteen, all members of the clan, save two.

A special dress lately arrived from India had been set aside for the critical occasion; and the pale golden sheen of it in the light of two tall candles justified Christina's simile. Unable to mourn for her husband's father in "English fashion," she could only forswear the least touch of colour, to the secret regret of Neville the artist; though Nevil the man loved her the more. He had explained regretfully that gold was not mourning; and she that Hindu women wear silver only on the feet; with the result that they had compromised in borders and embroideries of palest gold like the new-risen moon. To-night, the shimmery under-dress was shot with it; and through the filmy _sari_ ran a network of gleaming threads, that, more closely woven, formed the narrow border. Only the vermilion caste-mark glowed, as always, between her brows. For jewellery--her father's star, Nevil's pendant, and his last flagrant extravagance, a bracelet-watch set in diamonds.

No beautiful girl so arrayed, and blessed with a wholesome share of vanity, could feel other than elate; and gratified by Christina's frank approval, she answered softly with her veiled blush:

"I shall be getting too much spoilt--if all were like you----"

"Oh, but they're _not_ like me, poor dears!" Christina's equally frank commiseration was far removed from conceit. "And none of them recognize their misfortune! Still--Jane isn't half bad really; straight and strong-minded and as common-sensible as a chest of drawers. She's fond of Nevil too--in her queer way; and probably wants to be fond of you. But the door of her heart is a bit rusty on its hinges. No doubt she'll just shake hands, and ask how you like Bramleigh; while, if she had half an ounce of real mother-feeling in her--which she hasn't in spite of two plain children--she would take you in her arms and kiss you straight away."

A faint involuntary change came over Lilamani's face.

"That I should not like at all. Though relation by marriage, I am quite stranger--with Lady Roscoe."

"Lady Roscoe! My dear, you _must_ call her Jane. You call me Christina."

"But how different! Through many letters we became like sisters before meeting; and for me, you could never be stranger. You are too like--like Nevil in a girl."

Even now, racial instinct made her shy of "taking her lord's name" before others; custom impermissible for wife or husband among her own people, as Christina had come to know.

"Does that make you love me very much, little Moonbeam?" she asked, slipping an arm round the slender shoulders; and for an answer two warm lips pressed her cheek. "It was awfully good of Nevil to give me this quiet time alone with you two before the influx of the clan," she went on, well content. "And I half wish I could put off going back to Germany. But now I must fly and dress. Are you going down? Or will you wait here for your 'lord?'"

Lilamani did not miss the gleam of amusement in her eyes.

"Why do you make fun for that?" she asked simply. "Does my husband-worship seem to all English peoples--foolishness?"

"I don't know about all English peoples! To me it seems rather beautiful. Rather enviable. And I'm quite sure Nevil's in luck to have picked up a wife who believes in that kind of foolishness. At the rate we're going, they'll soon be as extinct as the dodo."

Lilamani puckered her brows. "Extinct--gone out, is it? How pity? But who is the dodo?"

Christina laughed.

"I give it up! Ask Nevil, you angelic little anachronism. Now go down and knock the bottom out of my noble sister's condescension; and _don't_ forget to call her 'Jane'!"

Lilamani's answering smile did not imply acquiescence. But Christina was gone; and soon--far too soon--Nevil would come to take her downstairs. There she would meet face to face the woman whose poisoned shafts of speech still pricked her heart. Knowing all, she must yet appear unknowing. She must endure the touch of hands; the meeting of eyes; but the touch of lips--never! For beneath her surface gentleness throbbed the passionate, unforgiving heart of a soldier race, strong to smite, swift to revenge.

With a last lingering glance at her own reflection, she smiled, sighed, and sank into a chintz-covered arm-chair, heartily wishing the evening well over. And not this one evening alone; but the next few days, which she must learn to call "week-end." It was her first dinner-party; and the mere crowd of strangers dismayed her, apart from the fact that all were her husband's relations and friends; curious, interested, or disapproving, even as those who had come in carriages to "inspect her" and deposit bits of pasteboard on the hall table.

Nevil had prepared her to the best of his ability; had sketched them all for her, with touches of not unkindly humour; and had much to tell her of two artist friends, Miss de Winton and Frank Norris, who would come on the Saturday, and were eager to see the pictures destined to establish the impression already made by "Dreaming," at the Goupil Gallery. Jane alone, Nevil had left to his wife's imagination; merely remarking that she was a "good woman under chain-mail," and that Lilamani must make allowances, for his sake.

And now--the time was at hand. The "blessed fortnight" all to themselves had melted like snow in a thaw. Even then, they had only been nominally alone; and she had found it hard to hide from Nevil how the great rambling house and its retinue of servants oppressed her. Mrs. Lunn, Queen-Regent of the household--grown portly and domineering in the service of her widowed master--filled Lilamani with awe unspeakable. Her scrupulously respectful bearing was tinctured with too perceptible a pinch of condescension toward this "heathen chit of a child, from goodness-knows-where," whom she, Sarah Lunn, was called upon to serve.

"Enough to make poor dear old master turn in 'is grave; _that_ it is!" she confided to Barnes over their nightly glass of wine in her sanctum. "If it wasn't but what I firmly believe he'd _feel_ it, even where he is, I'd 'a' given notice the first day I set eyes on her."

Barnes nodded in sympathetic comprehension. The discovery that his astuteness was superfluous had put a severe strain on his own loyalty.

"That's your magananimus sense o' duty all over, Mrs. Lunn! An' Sir Nevil he may be thankful. Without you the old place 'ud fall to racking ruin." He sipped meditatively and shook his head. "It's bin a quare business all along. At first I thought----" No. His thoughts on the subject would scarce bear retailing to the Queen-Regent of all the proprieties. "Well--I _had_ me qualms. Who wouldn't? But I own I _did_ give Sir Nevil credit for more good sense than this 'ere fiasker amounts to."

"Good sense, Mr. Barnes?" Mrs. Lunn's sniff expressed the quintessence of contempt. "You, with your experience, didn't ought to be looking for good sense from a master that wastes his time messin' about with dirty paints, instead of tramping or riding round the old Place natural-like, with the dogs at his heels; a master that can't even use 'is droring-room after dinner like a gentleman; 'e's so set on them heathen pictures of his, and that musked-up room in the Tower."

It was true. The great drawing-room still languished, empty and desolate, while the misguided pair spent their evenings in the studio, with its friendly litter of books and painting gear; its memory-provoking atmosphere of cigarette smoke and attar of roses. For the artist in Nevil Sinclair, having survived the barren years of discouragement, could challenge even the sacred obligations of heritage. It would not suffer the real man to be entirely overridden by the thing possessed.

As for Lilamani, that sacred hour or two of isolation in the Tower room had come to be the crowning-point of her day; a light toward which she moved, with a deep and conscious yearning that pervaded her every thought, her every act. For she of the East lives in and through the one supreme emotion with a singleness of soul scarce credible to the many-faceted woman of the West: and despite Mrs. Lunn's lamentations, "the old Place" inevitably absorbed more of Nevil's time and attention than seemed good to a young wife little used to rival interests that took him from her side. For Nevil Sinclair, temperament or no, was at core an Englishman true to his breed, as Lilamani to her own. Yet withal, they must contrive to be true to each other. There lay the pith of their problem.

There were mornings spent in the saddle with Thornbrook--land-agent and confidential adviser; tramps through the beech-wood with Mills, the gamekeeper; a visit from Reynolds; a call from a bachelor landowner, who must be asked to lunch, and whose talk of bags, coverts, and meets was pure gibberish to the "ripping little beauty," who sat with lids downcast, praying for his departure. Worse than all--just when she had secured Nevil to herself--were the superfluous strangers--who "came only to look what queer kind of creature Indian bride might be." This conviction--which at once hurt her sensitiveness and fired her pride of race--was proof against Nevil's most tactful denials. At this time he discovered in her a fund of quiet, unreasoning obstinacy, unsuspected hitherto; and great was her joy when, in pity, he revealed how she could frustrate "those needless ones" by the magic formula "Not at Home." Thereafter she was insatiable--when he would permit; and her childish joy in pronouncing the shibboleth made refusal seem sheer brutality.

Only one thing had failed them entirely: the one thing most like to fail home-comers in an English autumn.

In place of Italy's passionate, unfathomable blue, a shifting greyness hung low over the tree-tops; a reservoir, it seemed, for all the tears of all the earth. Most often Lilamani's great event, the coming of the sun, could only be known by a stealthy, half-hearted change from grey to a whitish pallor, through which, as daylight grew, a moon-like disc peered, ghost-like; his passing, by a gleam in the west, as it were a lifting of tired lids flushed a little with weeping. Then the slow onset of dark; renewed patter of raindrops; the unresting murmur of wind-swayed trees. Nevil Sinclair--sun-lover though he was--could not know that for Lilamani these changed conditions meant no mere deprivation of light and heat, but temporary eclipse of the reigning gods of her Pantheon. Instinctively her excommunicate soul had slipped back into the primal nature-worship of Vedantic times; satisfying thus her racial instinct for religion, and the deeper human need of worshipping, through the medium of the seen, that "Great Unfading, who unseen sees, unheard hears, unthought thinks, uncomprehended comprehends."

And now behold temple and gods alike obliterate! Only for a time, she hoped; yet this fresh deprivation added not a little to the difficulty and strangeness of the new phase of wifehood she was called upon to fulfil. She said little to Nevil; lest she seem to disparage the cradle of his birth. Only upon the fourth day of weeping skies and whirling leaves she had asked half in joke: "Do sun and moon nearly always keep purdah in your England?"

"Why, of course not!" said he, and the sympathetic note in his voice assured her that he had not taken the question amiss. "Wait till the autumn gales are over. Then you'll see!"

And the very next day, as if in ratification, behold the sun-god, smiling genially, in a clear sky, flaked with drifting cloud. She must come for a walk, Nevil decreed, through the beech-wood and up on to the moor. It was sodden underfoot; and Lilamani, who had never worn boots in her life, was chary as a cat about wetting her silver-shod feet. But Nevil--not to be gainsaid--assured her that walking in the wet was an accomplishment all who aspired to live in England must learn forthwith. A pair of Christina's goloshes had been unearthed; and for near two hours they had tramped, like a pair of happy children, through the dominion over which they were king and queen. Through the stately beech-wood, already on fire with burnt sienna and gold, with here and there the bronze gleam of a pheasant among the leaves: then out on to the open moor, where the October sun had awakened a host of midges, that danced like winged motes in his beams; and, from tip to tip of the mummied heath-bells, undiscouraged spiders had woven their gossamer snares, that swayed and lifted, changefully iridescent, in the afternoon light.

Standing silent and entranced, with the sun in her eyes, the mother-longing had stirred in the young wife afresh; conjuring up visions of a day when children's voices--her sons and his--should fill moor and wood with the divinest music on earth. And he? Did he also dream and hope? She stole a shy glance at him. But his thoughts had gone off on a journey of their own; and he did not see.

When at length his eyes sought hers, the transfigured light in them thrilled him strangely. But no word was said.

Returning, he had slipped an arm round her, secure in their vast privacy; and they had walked home like lovers, oblivious of everything in earth and heaven save themselves. Then, all too soon, the house closed over them; the house with its mute reminder of responsibilities, "needless ones," the minor tyrannies of possession--changing them into Sir Nevil and Lady Sinclair once more.

On the second clear day he drove with her to return the visit of a "needless one" who plagued her with the two reiterate, unanswerable questions that seemed a part of this particular ritual: What did she think of England, and how did she like Bramleigh? Then on to tea with Helen Despard, in the rambling black and white oak-panelled bungalow, that Lilamani loved at sight, like its mistress, and secretly preferred to the spacious desolation of her own ancestral home. There was endlessly much to be said, when the men left them alone: but alas, the adopted mother, on whose sympathy and help Lilamani had reckoned, would not be long at hand. The Despards rarely spent a winter in England; and, like Christina, they would not be back till early spring. In this double deprivation, Lilamani saw the malice of her outraged gods. Yet how propitiate them without offering or penance? For her the problem was a serious one, beyond her power to solve.

Thus, between work and play, between driven clouds and fitful sunshine, their fortnight had evaporated. In spite of interruptions, the Token scene had progressed near to completion; and no longer, in Nevil's opinion, could the crucial "week-end" party be postponed.

On Wednesday had come Christina--true spirit-sister, flower of purely Western culture though she was. This afternoon had brought Sir Robert and his wife, with "Aunt Julia," who had kissed her, a little nervously, and called her dear child, but had failed to set her at her ease. Then, before the arrival of the later train--bringing George and "Phil," the Roscoes and Broome--she had pleaded headache and fled to the solitude of her shrine, above the studio, arranged exactly as in Italy.

Here, in one of her Yoga moods of receptive quiet, she had striven to still the flutter of anxiety, lest in word or bearing she should not satisfy her lord and those he loved: excepting only "That Terrible," whose secret antagonism, she felt convinced, would equal her own. Nevil, divining her need, had not only refrained from seeking her out; but had checked Christina's mistaken impulse of sisterly kindness.

So, for an hour or more, there had been respite; the indefinable refreshment of solitude and silence, and, by a merciful oversight of the gods--a blazing sunset that fired all the west. Slipping a shawl round her shoulders, she had flung the window wide, and sat there in a carven stillness, till eyes and brain and spirit were saturate with the molten brilliance; till all sense of self was lost in that miracle of fusion which only intense gazers know; till living light faded to a dull orange-crimson that glowed beneath the curtain of cloud like the heart of a forge seen through an open door.

Even now, so long after, the ethereal fire seemed to glow in her veins. But imagination makes cowards of the bravest--before action; and detachment was hard to maintain when Nevil's footstep was at her very door.

She rose as he entered and stood before him; breath suspended, eyes veiled. He had not been allowed to see the dress till now; and he stood a moment, appraising her with a long look, felt even through her sheltering lids. Then he came quickly forward, took her in his arms and kissed her with a lover's fervour on lips and eyes and brow.

"You are satisfied with your Lilamani?" she whispered, craving, woman-like, the full meed of praise.

"More than satisfied. She is inimitable. Come."

Laughingly, he offered her his arm, and led her thus down the broad shallow staircase.

Just outside the drawing-room door he felt her hand tremble, and pressed it against his side. "Be a plucky little wife, for my sake," he pleaded; and they went in.

Lilamani had an impression of a graceless figure, uncompromisingly black, that turned as they entered, and stood still. She heard Nevil's voice say: "Well, Jane, here she is--the new Lady Sinclair!" She felt a hand, harder than Audrey's, close upon her own; while Nevil, fearing that his presence would only multiply embarrassment, passed on to where the three elders were discussing the latest evening paper, brought by George.

There was a moment's dead weight of silence between the two he left behind. Opposite as the black and white they wore, they had yet one trait in common. Both were too innately honest for surface insincerities. Lilamani--startled by the fierce flame of hate that had leaped in her at the touch of hands--was smitten dumb; leaving Jane, woman of the world, to hit the happy mean between rank hypocrisy and truth.

"I'm so glad you're both really home at last," said she. "We were beginning to think we should never see you in the flesh!" Her attempt at lightness rang false; and the new Lady Sinclair's small, polite smile was a little disconcerting. But Jane Roscoe was not the woman to be lightly put out of countenance.

"I suppose Nevil has shown you all round the dear old Place by this time?" she asked conversationally.

"Yes; so much as possible in such uncomfortable kind of weather. With sunshine it is beautiful."

Lady Roscoe nodded. "Autumn's a bad time, of course. Nevil should have brought you home long ago."

"There was too much work in Italy."

"Was there? I'm sure he could have done it just as well here. Some artist's fad about 'atmosphere.' Simply an excuse. He's incorrigible over the Continent. But now we've got him into his proper place at last, we must keep him there. We shall expect you to use your influence!"

The soft mouth hardened ever so little.

"Best surely for--husband to do what he thinks right."

Her instinctive avoidance of Nevil's name gave an air of stiffness, of sententiousness to her small remark; and Jane flashed out with a touch of ungovernable asperity: "A good deal depends upon the husband. Some men have a convenient knack of thinking 'right' any mortal thing they feel inclined to do at the moment."

Lilamani's brows went up a fraction of an inch.

"Have they?" she murmured with a laming indifference that effectively tripped up the subject.

Another dead weight of silence. Her eyes had wandered to the slim figure on the hearth-rug, and Jane's chill antagonism was pricked to active irritation. What an insipid little fool the girl was! And why on earth had not Nevil insisted on a more decent show of mourning? She herself still abjured white, except at throat and wrists. By way of broaching the subject, she lightly fingered the gossamer _sari_; and Lilamani needed all her self-control not to shrink visibly from her touch.

"Very beautiful, indeed," she said, not without a shade of condescension. "You never wear black in India?"

"No. Not custom. It is too sad, and too ugly with dark skin. So I could only leave off from colour, though for me almost like breath of life."

It was Lady Roscoe's turn to lift her brows. She stigmatized all such phrases as "artist's jargon," and supposed the child had caught up, parrot-wise, scraps of her husband's tall talk. She merely said: "H'm! I suppose you can live without it for a time--out of respect for Nevil's loss?"

"But naturally. What else?" Lilamani made answer with such transparent simplicity that again Lady Roscoe had an annoying sense of disconcertion, of being politely set at arm's length by this mere child, who, but for Nevil's madness, had no business to be reigning at Bramleigh Beeches at all.

"I was suggesting thin line of black along this border," the soft voice went on; "but--_he_ did not wish."

"H'm!" Jane remarked afresh, and on her lips that ungracious monosyllable had an eloquence of its own. "I can quite believe it! He always _does_----"

But what he always did his wife never learnt; for at this point the door opened to admit Cuthbert Broome, who came eagerly forward, his sailor eyes agleam.

"Ah--there you are, my runaway bride of Antibes!" said he, enclosing her hand in his great friendly grasp, while Lady Roscoe, to their mutual relief, passed on. "And here's my girl, Morna, dying to make your acquaintance."

Morna Broome--tawny-haired and blue-eyed like her father--flushed up to her eyebrows. "It's all father's doing," said she. "He's a great admirer! And his enthusiasms are so infectious."

"Yes. That I remember well!" Lilamani answered, the morsel of ice at her heart dissolving like magic in the geniality that breathed from both. "I cannot ever be thankful enough to your father for this most beautiful summer in my first home."

She bestowed on the big man a look of melting tenderness, through which laughter gleamed; and Broome nodded down at her, well content. Jane, watching covertly from the hearth-rug, saw that look through the distorting glass of prejudice; and misread it altogether.

"The harem type all over," was her thought. "Shamming shyness with _me_--her husband's sister. But all smiles and sugar for a man--though he's not one of US."

For Jane, like Aunt Julia, spoke the sacred pronoun in capitals. To-night it was Lilamani's patent duty to ingratiate herself with Nevil's People; and she would probably spend half the evening talking Antibes with Broome! Nevil should have coached her in advance. Just like his casual ways!

The three near the piano, joined by Christina, were soon engrossed in easy, happy talk, the real Lilamani flashing out spontaneously, at moments, in low laughter, and shy, playful sallies, to the further confounding of Jane. Nevil--after praiseworthy efforts to discuss Egyptian unrest with Lord Roscoe--drifted irresistibly back to the piano, leaving the five elders regnant on the hearth-rug: immemorial throne of the British home.

Sir Robert had twice consulted his watch, a trifle ostentatiously, when George and Phillippa sauntered in, serenely unhurried; and there was only time for a brief introduction before Lord Roscoe offered Lady Sinclair his arm.

Phillippa's first thought was an unconscious echo of Jane's: "The harem type all over." It is the brand wherewith the essential woman is branded by an emergent minority; to which Phillippa Weston pre-eminently belonged. A good shot, a straight rider, and mistress of a clear five thousand a year--she was, as Jane had written, a "sound and satisfactory" family asset. And if Jane's conviction plus the thousands were, in a measure, responsible for George's fervour, Phillippa had no inkling of the fact. She had the modern girl's tendency to admire her own sex; and Lady Roscoe stood scarcely second to George in her esteem. On one point alone were they at variance. Jane was a passive advocate of women's right to vote; Phillippa an active one. But it was quite understood that the martyr's crown must be foregone if she desired to become Mrs. George Sinclair: the which she did as heartily as any unit of the unenlightened mass. She was woman enough also to note and resent the fact that George's glance lingered unduly on his new sister-in-law, even while he gave his arm to Morna Broome, who looked a trifle overgrown and rough-cut by contrast.

As for Lilamani, bringing up the solemn procession on Lord Roscoe's arm, she had thoughts for nothing but the lean, grave-eyed man, whose over-punctilious politeness reduced her to monosyllables and murmured platitudes; the more so because Jane, given over to Broome, walked just ahead.

The hour that followed was one of undiluted misery for the zenana-bred hostess of eighteen, condemned to sit through a six-course dinner with a mixed party of strangers, who talked and laughed incessantly while eating, and--worse still--had all of them a covertly curious eye to their kinsman's bride.

Alone with Lord Roscoe, the veil of shyness might have been lifted. But the noise and lights bewildered her, while Jane's proximity froze all spontaneous speech upon her lips. Broome--who had not the clue to her discomfiture--did his utmost to dispel it, with small success. Once or twice Nevil caught her eye and smiled encouragement across leagues of chrysanthemum-decked table-cloth. But he was so far off, and That Terrible, with eyes that probed like gimlets, so perturbingly near! Lord Roscoe, scholarly and unprejudiced, had to own himself disappointed; and Miss Sinclair, who found dear Edward's conversation so stimulating, reaped the benefit accordingly.

It seemed as if dessert would never arrive! But it did. And with it came the alarming recollection that it would be hers to make the move, to catch Lady Margaret's eye. From the moment the wine began to circulate her mind became so concentrated on this achievement that she could hardly hear what Cuthbert Broome was saying.

In the end it was Nevil who saw, and came to her rescue; and the thing was done. They were all filing out, the black-robed figures, in the midst of which she gleamed like a ray of light; and Christina, hanging back, slipped a sheltering arm round her as they went out.

George, holding the door open, smiled genially upon her; and, returning, sat down by his brother.

"By Jove, Nevil, you've my hearty congrats!" he said under his breath.

"Thanks, old chap."

Nevil spoke without enthusiasm and glanced toward the other end of the table. But the elder men were discussing Sir George's cellar--an engrossing topic; and George the younger went on, still in the same confidential undertone: "Hindu or no, she's a jewel of the first water. You don't get a sight of her sort in India. And perhaps it's as well, for the peace of the community! Alluring. That's the word. A woman all through as they still make 'em in the East; though we're losing the art this side, worse luck."

Nevil--listening with amused indifference to the sort of comments one expected from George--sipped his port and thought of Phillippa Weston, who was none of these things.

But his brother's next words put indifference to flight.

"All the same, old man," he went on with a twinkle of jocose sagacity, "when it comes to that type, the purdah has its advantages, eh? No risk of complications----"

Nevil straightened himself with a jerk.

"Damn your impertinence! What the deuce do you mean?" he asked sharply under his breath, and was grateful for a shout of laughter from Broome.

"Oh, nothing, my dear chap, nothing." George's tone was a metaphorical pat on the shoulder. "Can't you take a bit of chaff in the right spirit? You seem to have grown almighty touchy since your marriage. I'm a plain practical chap with a shrewd pair of eyes in my head--that's all."

"Keep your shrewdness for your own affairs then." Nevil's cooler tone had a touch of incision, and leaving his chair he sat down near Broome.

George, scowling across at him over the top of a lighted match, reflected sagely that a few years with the Regiment would have done old Nevil a power of good. As it was, he half suspected his brother of turning prig--most heartily hated word in the British language. But Nevil Sinclair was neither prig nor Bayard. He had the fastidiousness of his temperament--and its susceptibility. Did he err, his heart must be involved. It must be the woman, however transitory. For George the indefinite article sufficed: a radical distinction.

Yet, in a sense, the younger brother's puzzlement was justified. Six months of marriage and steady work had wrought imperceptible changes in Nevil Sinclair, as he himself was aware; though he scarcely realized yet how much was due to the girl-wife who swayed him by the very completeness of her submission, as only the true woman-spirit can. At this moment he was merely angry, and glad to be quit of George, who--being deserted--took his own small revenge.

The opening flourish of a Chopin polonaise suggested the possibility of quiet talk under cover of "Kit's fireworks"; and deliberately extinguishing his cigar he went in search of amusement more congenial than the dining-room could offer.

Phillippa, deep in shooting prospects with Jane, started and flushed a little at her lover's entrance. But George, incapable of finesse, had eyes only for the thing he sought.

"Jove! I'm in luck!" was his mental comment. For his sister-in-law sat alone on a settee near the grand-piano, over which Morna Broome leaned, absorbed and envious. Jane and Phillippa sat by the fire, and Aunt Julia had taken Lady Margaret to her own room.

George made straight for the sofa, where Lilamani lay back with eyes half closed, thankful for a brief respite from the need to "make talk." At his approach she looked up and smiled.

"I'm not disturbing you, am I?" he asked perfunctorily as he sat down. "And you don't mind talking a little while Kit makes that unholy noise?"

"No," she answered untruthfully, as in duty bound; and he was content.

For a space he talked platitudes, one arm laid along the sofa-back in casual brotherly fashion; while she murmured polite responses, seldom raising her eyes. Once during a softer passage in the music her lifted hand pleaded for silence; and he sat watching her, wondering whether, after all, he would have had Nevil's pluck when it came to the point. He began to believe he would. The longer he looked at her, the more firmly he believed it. The conviction did not disturb his placid affection for Phil. It enhanced the pleasure of sitting so close to this delicately alluring bit of femininity--that was all. It made him want to bring a light into her eyes, colour into her cheeks, to enforce some sort of recognition that she was talking to a man.

Renewed crashing of chords gave him his chance. He leaned nearer.

"Am I allowed to speak now--Lilamani?"

He paused before the name and pronounced it "Lilamarny." She winced and shook her head.

"Not say it that way, please."

"What way, then? Teach me."

"Lilamani." She spoke the word with a dainty crispness; the first syllable slightly stressed, the second "a" almost a "u."

"It's a thundering pretty name, the way you say it," was his masculine comment. "And the meaning's prettier still. Nevil told us. If I can't pronounce it to please you, let me call you Jewel instead. Comes more natural to an Englishman, and they couldn't possibly have picked anything more appropriate."

Something in the tone, rather than the words, called up the slow, veiled blush that had so charmed Nevil in early days. He entered at the moment with Broome; saw the blush, and noting his brother's attitude, made straight for the settee.

George greeted him with imperturbable complaisance.

"We've been making friends--Lilamani and I."

"That's all right," quoth Nevil dryly; and drawing up a chair, sat down beside his wife.

Talk languished; Christina's Polonaise crashed to its conclusion; and George, seeing that no more blushes would be his, sauntered over to the fire-place for consolation. But Phillippa, on his approach, became the more ostentatiously engrossed in Jane; and he, with a resigned movement of the shoulders, returned to the dining-room, to enjoy the smoke he had sacrificed, and await a probable game of Bridge.

His last glance was not toward the fire-place but toward Nevil's wife, whose eyes were upon her husband's face, mutely demanding was he satisfied with his Lilamani--now?

His answering smile reassured her; though, in his heart, he felt she had been over-successful in the wrong direction, and hoped for better results on the morrow.