Chapter XIV

A few days later the Gaddesdens were in town, settled in a house in Portman Square. Philip was increasingly ill, and moreover shrouded in a bitterness of spirit which wrung his mother's heart. She suspected a new cause for it in the fancy that he had lately taken for Alice Lucas, the girl in the white chiffon, who had piped to Mariette in vain. Not that he ever now wanted to see her. He had passed into a phase indeed of refusing all society--except that of George Anderson. A floor of the Portman Square house was given up to him. Various treatments were being tried, and as soon as he was strong enough his mother was to take him to the South. Meanwhile his only pleasure seemed to lie in Anderson's visits, which however could not be frequent, for the business of the Conference was heavy, and after the daily sittings were over, the interviews and correspondence connected with them took much time.

On these occasions, whether early in the morning before the business of the day began, or in the hour before dinner--sometimes even late at night--Anderson after his chat with the invalid would descend from Philip's room to the drawing-room below, only allowing himself a few minutes, and glancing always with a quickening of the pulse through the shadows of the large room, to see whether it held two persons or one. Mrs. Gaddesden was invariably there; a small, faded woman in trailing lace dresses, who would sit waiting for him, her embroidery on her knee, and when he appeared would hurry across the floor to meet him, dropping silks, scissors, handkerchief on the way. This dropping of all her incidental possessions--a performance repeated night after night, and followed always by her soft fluttering apologies--soon came to be symbolic, in Anderson's eyes. She moved on the impulse of the moment, without thinking what she might scatter by the way. Yet the impulse was always a loving impulse--and the regrets were sincere.

As to the relation to Anderson, Philip was here the pivot of the situation exactly as he had been in Canada. Just as his physical weakness, and the demands he founded upon it had bound the Canadian to their chariot wheels in the Rockies, so now--_mutatis mutandis_--in London. Mrs. Gaddesden before a week was over had become pitifully dependent upon him, simply because Philip was pleased to desire his society, and showed a flicker of cheerfulness whenever he appeared. She was torn indeed between her memory of Elizabeth's sobbing, and her hunger to give Philip the moon out of the sky, should he happen to want it. Sons must come first, daughters second; such has been the philosophy of mothers from the beginning. She feared--desperately feared--that Elizabeth had given her heart away. And as she agreed with Philip that it would not be a seemly or tolerable marriage for Elizabeth, she would, in the natural course of things, both for Elizabeth's sake and the family's, have tried to keep the unseemly suitor at a distance. But here he was, planted somehow in the very midst of their life, and she, making feeble efforts day after day to induce him to root himself there still more firmly. Sometimes indeed she would try to press alternatives on Philip. But Philip would not have them. What with the physical and moral force that seemed to radiate from Anderson, and bring stimulus with them to the weaker life--and what with the lad's sick alienation for the moment from his ordinary friends and occupations, Anderson reigned supreme, often clearly to his own trouble and embarrassment. Had it not been for Philip, Portman Square would have seen him but seldom. That Elizabeth knew with a sharp certainty, dim though it might be to her mother. But as it was, the boy's tragic clinging to his new friend governed all else, simply because at the bottom of each heart, unrecognised and unexpressed, lurked the same foreboding, the same fear of fears.

The tragic clinging was also, alack, a tragic selfishness. Philip had a substantial share of that quick perception which in Elizabeth became something exquisite and impersonal, the source of all high emotions. When Delaine had first suggested to him "an attachment" between Anderson and his sister, a hundred impressions of his own had emerged to verify the statement and aggravate his wrath; and when Anderson had said "a man of my history is not going to ask your sister to marry him," Philip perfectly understood that but for the history the attempt would have been made. Anderson was therefore--most unreasonably and presumptuously--in love with Elizabeth; and as to Elizabeth, the indications here also were not lost upon Philip. It was all very amazing, and he wished, to use his phrase to his mother, that it would "work off." But whether or no, he could not do without Anderson--if Anderson was to be had. He threw him and Elizabeth together, recklessly; trusting to Anderson's word, and unable to resist his own craving for comfort and distraction.

The days passed on, days so charged with feeling for Elizabeth that they could only be met at all by a kind of resolute stillness and self-control. Philip was very dependent on the gossip his mother and sister brought him from the world outside. Elizabeth therefore, to please him, went into society as usual, and forgot her heartaches, for her brother and for herself, as best she could. Outwardly she was much occupied in doing all that could be done--socially and even politically--for Anderson and Mariette. She had power and she used it. The two friends found themselves the object of one of those sudden cordialities that open all doors, even the most difficult, and run like a warm wave through London society. Mariette remained throughout the ironic spectator--friendly on his own terms, but entirely rejecting, often, the terms offered him tacitly or openly, by his English acquaintance.

"Your ways are not mine--your ideals are not mine, God forbid they should be!"--he seemed to be constantly saying. "But we happen to be oxen bound under the same yoke, and dragging the same plough. No gush, please--but at the same time no ill-will! Loyal?--to your loyalties? Oh yes--quite sufficiently--so long as you don't ask us to let it interfere with our loyalty to our own! Don't be such fools as to expect us to take much interest in your Imperial orgies. But we're all right! Only let us alone--we're all right!"

Such seemed to be the voice of this queer, kindly, satiric personality. London generally falls into the arms of those who flout her; and Mariette, with his militant Catholicism, and his contempt for our governing ideals, became the fashion. As for Anderson, the contact with English Ministers and men of affairs had but carried on the generous process of development that Nature had designed for a strong man. Whereas in Mariette the vigorous, self-confident English world--based on the Protestant idea--produced a bitter and profound irritation, Anderson seemed to find in that world something ripening and favouring that brought out all the powers--the intellectual powers at least--of his nature. He did his work admirably; left the impression of a "coming man" on a great many leading persons interested in the relations between England and Canada; and when as often happened Elizabeth and he found themselves at the same dinner-table, she would watch the changes in him that a larger experience was bringing about, with a heart half proud, half miserable. As for his story, which was very commonly known, in general society, it only added to his attractions. Mothers who were under no anxieties lest he might want to marry their daughters, murmured the facts of his unlucky _provenance_ to each other, and then the more eagerly asked him to dinner.

Meanwhile, for Elizabeth life was one long debate, which left her often at night exhausted and spiritless. The shock of their first meeting at Martindale, when all her pent-up yearning and vague expectation had been met and crushed by the silent force of the man's unaltered will, had passed away. She understood him better. The woman who is beloved penetrates to the fact through all the disguises that a lover may attempt. Elizabeth knew well that Anderson had tones and expressions for her that no other woman could win from him; and looking back to their conversation at the Glacier House, she realised, night after night, in the silence of wakeful hours, the fulness of his confession, together with the strength of his recoil from any pretension to marry her.

Yes, he loved her, and his mere anxiety--now, and as things stood--to avoid any extension or even repetition of their short-lived intimacy, only betrayed the fact the more eloquently. Moreover, he had reason, good reason, to think, as she often passionately reminded herself, that he had touched her heart, and that had the course been clear, he might have won her.

But--the course was not clear. From many signs, she understood how deeply the humiliation of the scene at Sicamous had entered into a proud man's blood. Others might forget; he remembered. Moreover, that sense of responsibility--partial responsibility at least--for his father's guilt and degradation, of which he had spoken to her at Glacier, had, she perceived, gone deep with him. It had strengthened a stern and melancholy view of life, inclining him to turn away from personal joy, to an exclusive concern with public duties and responsibilities.

And this whole temper had no doubt been increased by his perception of the Gaddesdens' place in English society. He dared not--he would not--ask a woman so reared in the best that England had to give, now that he understood what that best might be, to renounce it all in favour of what he had to offer. He realised that there was a generous weakness in her own heart on which he might have played. But he would not play; his fixed intention was to disappear as soon as possible from her life; and it was his honest hope that she would marry in her own world and forget him. In fact he was the prey of a kind of moral terror that here also, as in the case of his father, he might make some ghastly mistake, pursuing his own will under the guise of love, as he had once pursued it under the guise of retribution--to Elizabeth's hurt and his own remorse.

All this Elizabeth understood, more or less plainly. Then came the question--granted the situation, how was she to deal with it? Just as he surmised that he could win her if he would, she too believed that were she merely to set herself to prove her own love and evoke his, she could probably break down his resistance. A woman knows her own power. Feverishly, Elizabeth was sometimes on the point of putting it out, of so provoking and appealing to the passion she divined, as to bring him, whether he would or no, to her feet.

But she hesitated. She too felt the responsibility of his life, as of hers. Could she really do this thing--not only begin it, but carry it through without repentance, and without recoil?

She made herself look steadily at this English spectacle with its luxurious complexity, its concentration within a small space of all the delicacies of sense and soul, its command of a rich European tradition, in which art and literature are living streams springing from fathomless depths of life. Could she, whose every fibre responded so perfectly to the stimulus of this environment, who up till now--but for moments of revolt--had been so happy and at ease in it, could she wrench herself from it--put it behind her--and adapt herself to quite another, without, so to speak, losing herself, and half her value, whatever that might be, as a human being?

As we know, she had already asked herself the question in some fashion, under the shadow of the Rockies. But to handle it in London was a more pressing and poignant affair. It was partly the characteristic question of the modern woman, jealous, as women have never been before in the world's history, on behalf of her own individuality. But Elizabeth put it still more in the interests of her pure and passionate feeling for Anderson. He must not--he should not--run any risks in loving her!

On a certain night early in December, Elizabeth had been dining at one of the great houses of London. Anderson too had been there. The dinner party, held in a famous room panelled with full-length Vandycks, had been of the kind that only London can show; since only in England is society at once homogeneous enough and open enough to provide it. In this house, also, the best traditions of an older regime still prevailed, and its gatherings recalled--not without some conscious effort on the part of the hostess--the days of Holland House, and Lady Palmerston. To its smaller dinner parties, which were the object of so many social ambitions, nobody was admitted who could not bring a personal contribution. Dukes had no more claim than other people, but as most of the twenty-eight were blood-relations of the house, and some Dukes are agreeable, they took their turn. Cabinet Ministers, Viceroys, Ambassadors, mingled with the men of letters and affairs. There was indeed a certain old-fashioned measure in it all. To be merely notorious--even though you were amusing--was not passport enough. The hostess--a beautiful tall woman, with the brow of a child, a quick intellect, and an amazing experience of life--created round her an atmosphere that was really the expression of her own personality; fastidious, and yet eager; cold, and yet steeped in intellectual curiosities and passions. Under the mingled stimulus and restraint of it, men and women brought out the best that was in them. The talk was good, and nothing--neither the last violinist, nor the latest _danseuse_--was allowed to interfere with it. And while the dress and jewels of the women were generally what a luxurious capital expects and provides, you might often find some little girl in a dyed frock--with courage, charm and breeding--the centre of the scene.

Elizabeth in white, and wearing some fine jewels which had been her mother's, had found herself placed on the left of her host, with an ex-Viceroy of India on her other hand. Anderson, who was on the opposite side of the table, watched her animation, and the homage that was eagerly paid her by the men around her. Those indeed who had known her of old were of opinion that whereas she had always been an agreeable companion, Lady Merton had now for some mysterious reason blossomed into a beauty. Some kindling change had passed over the small features. Delicacy and reserve were still there, but interfused now with a shimmering and transforming brightness, as though some flame within leapt intermittently to sight.

Elizabeth more than held her own with the ex-Viceroy, who was a person of brilliant parts, accustomed to be flattered by women. She did not flatter him, and he was reduced in the end to making those efforts for himself, which he generally expected other people to make for him. Elizabeth's success with him drew the attention of several other persons at the table besides Anderson. The ex-Viceroy was a bachelor, and one of the great _partis_ of the day. What could be more fitting than that Elizabeth Merton should carry him off, to the discomfiture of innumerable intriguers?

After dinner, Elizabeth waited for Anderson in the magnificent gallery upstairs where the guests of the evening party were beginning to gather, and the musicians were arriving. When he came she played her usual fairy godmother's part; introducing him to this person and that, creating an interest in him and in his work, wherever it might be useful to him. It was understood that she had met him in Canada, and that he had been useful to the poor delicate brother. No other idea entered in. That she could have any interest in him for herself would have seemed incredible to this world looking on.

"I must slip away," said Anderson, presently, in her ear; "I promised to look in on Philip if possible. And to-morrow I fear I shall be too busy."

And he went on to tell her his own news of the day--that the Conference would be over sooner than he supposed, and that he must get back to Ottawa without delay to report to the Canadian Ministry. That afternoon he had written to take his passage for the following week.

It seemed to her that he faltered in telling her; and, as for her, the crowd of uniformed or jewelled figures around them became to her, as he spoke, a mere meaningless confusion. She was only conscious of him, and of the emotion which at last he could not hide.

She quietly said that she would soon follow him to Portman Square, and he went away. A few minutes afterwards, Elizabeth said good-night to her hostess, and emerged upon the gallery running round the fine Italianate hall which occupied the centre of the house. Hundreds of people were hanging over the balustrading of the gallery, watching the guests coming and going on the marble staircase which occupied the centre of the hall.

Elizabeth's slight figure slowly descended.

"Pretty creature!" said one old General, looking down upon her. "You remember--she was a Gaddesden of Martindale. She has been a widow a long time now. Why doesn't someone carry her off?"

Meanwhile Elizabeth, as she went down, dreamily, from step to step, her eyes bent apparrently upon the crowd which filled all the spaces of the great pictorial house, was conscious of one of those transforming impressions which represent the sudden uprush and consummation in the mind of some obscure and long-continued process.

One moment, she saw the restless scene below her, the diamonds, the uniforms, the blaze of electric light, the tapestries on the walls, the handsome faces of men and women; the next, it had been wiped out; the prairies unrolled before her; she beheld a green, boundless land invaded by a mirage of sunny water; scattered through it, the white farms; above it, a vast dome of sky, with summer clouds in glistening ranks climbing the steep of blue; and at the horizon's edge, a line of snow-peaks. Her soul leapt within her. It was as though she felt the freshness of the prairie wind upon her cheek, while the call of that distant land--Anderson's country--its simpler life, its undetermined fates, beat through her heart.

And as she answered to it, there was no sense of renunciation. She was denying no old affection, deserting no ancient loyalty. Old and new; she seemed to be the child of both--gathering them both to her breast.

Yet, practically, what was going to happen to her, she did not know. She did not say to herself, "It is all clear, and I am going to marry George Anderson!" But what she knew at last was that there was no dull hindrance in herself, no cowardice in her own will; she was ready, when life and Anderson should call her.

At the foot of the stairs Mariette's gaunt and spectacled face broke in upon her trance. He had just arrived as she was departing.

"You are off--so early?" he asked her, reproachfully.

"I want to see Philip before he settles for the night."

"Anderson, too, meant to look in upon your brother."

"Yes?" said Elizabeth vaguely, conscious of her own reddening, and of Mariette's glance.

"You have heard his news?" He drew her a little apart into the shelter of a stand of flowers. "We both go next week. You--Lady Merton--have been our good angel--our providence. Has he been saying that to you? All the same--_ma collégue_--I am disappointed in you!"

Elizabeth's eye wavered under his.

"We agreed, did we not--at Glacier--on what was to be done next to our friend? Oh! don't dispute! I laid it down--and you accepted it. As for me, I have done nothing but pursue that object ever since--in my own way. And you, Madam?"

As he stood over her, a lean Don Quixotish figure, his long arms akimbo, Elizabeth's fluttering laugh broke out.

"Inquisitor! Good night!"

"Good night--but--just a word! Anderson has done well here. Your public men say agreeable things of him. He will play your English game--your English Imperialist game--which I can't play. But only, if he is happy--if the fire in him is fed. Consider! Is it not a patriotic duty to feed it?"

And grasping her hand, he looked at her with a gentle mockery that passed immediately into that sudden seriousness--that unconscious air of command--of which the man of interior life holds the secret. In his jests even, he is still, by natural gift, the confessor, the director, since he sees everything as the mystic sees it, _sub specie æternitatis_.

Elizabeth's soft colour came and went. But she made no reply--except it were through an imperceptible pressure of the hand holding her own.

At that moment the ex-Viceroy, resplendent in his ribbon of the Garter, who was passing through the hall, perceived her, pounced upon her, and insisted on seeing her to her carriage. Mariette, as he mounted the staircase, watched the two figures disappear--smiling to himself.

But on the way home the cloud of sisterly grief descended on Elizabeth. How could she think of herself--when Philip was ill--suffering--threatened? And how would he bear the news of Anderson's hastened departure?

As soon as she reached home, she was told by the sleepy butler that Mrs. Gaddesden was in the drawing-room, and that Mr. Anderson was still upstairs with Philip.

As she entered the drawing-room, her mother came running towards her with a stifled cry:

"Oh, Lisa, Lisa!"

In terror, Elizabeth caught her mother in her arms.

"Mother--is he worse?"

"No! At least Barnett declares to me there is no real change. But he has made up his mind, to-day, that he will never get better. He told me so this evening, just after you had gone; and Barnett could not satisfy him. He has sent for Mr. Robson." Robson was the family lawyer.

The two women looked at one another in a pale despair. They had reached the moment when, in dealing with a sick man, the fictions of love drop away, and the inexorable appears.

"And now he'll break his heart over Mr. Anderson's going!" murmured the mother, in an anguish. "I didn't want him to see Philip to-night--but Philip heard his ring--and sent down for him."

They sat looking at each other, hand in hand--waiting--and listening. Mrs. Gaddesden murmured a broken report of the few words of conversation which rose now, like a blank wall, between all the past, and this present; and Elizabeth listened, the diamonds in her hair and the folds of her satin dress glistening among the shadows of the half-lit room, the slow tears on her cheeks.

At last a step descended. Anderson entered the room.

"He wants you," he said, to Elizabeth, as the two women rose. "I am afraid you must go to him."

The electric light immediately above him showed his frowning, shaken look.

"He is so distressed by your going?" asked Elizabeth, trembling.

Anderson did not answer, except to repeat insistently--

"You must go to him. I don't myself think he is any worse--but--"

Elizabeth hurried away. Anderson sat down beside Mrs. Gaddesden, and began to talk to her.

When his sister entered his room, Philip was sitting up in an arm-chair near the fire; looking so hectic, so death-doomed, so young, that his sister ran to him in an agony--"Darling Philip--my precious Philip--why did you want me? Why aren't you asleep?"

She bent over him and kissed his forehead, and then taking his hand she laid it against her cheek, caressing it tenderly.

"I'm not asleep--because I've had to think of a great many things," said the boy in a firm tone. "Sit down, please, Elizabeth. For a few days past, I've been pretty certain about myself--and to-night I screwed it out of Barnett. I haven't said anything to you and mother, but--well, the long and short of it is, Lisa, I'm not going to recover--that's all nonsense--my heart's too dicky--I'm going to die."

She protested with tears, but he impatiently asked her to be calm. "I've got to say something--something important--and don't you make it harder, Elizabeth! I'm not going to get well, I tell you--and though I'm not of age--legally--yet I do represent father--I am the head of the family--and I have a right to think for you and mother. Haven't I?"

The contrast between the authoritative voice, the echo of things in him, ancestral and instinctive, and the poor lad's tremulous fragility, was moving indeed. But he would not let her caress him.

"Well, these last weeks, I've been thinking a great deal, I can tell you, and I wasn't going to say anything to you and mother till I'd got it straight. But now, all of a sudden, Anderson comes and says that he's going back. Look here, Elizabeth--I've just been speaking to Anderson. You know that he's in love with you--of course you do!"

With a great effort, Elizabeth controlled herself. She lifted her face to her brother's as she sat on a low chair beside him. "Yes, dear Philip, I know."

"And did you know too that he had promised me not to ask you to marry him?"

Elizabeth started.

"No--not exactly. But perhaps--I guessed."

"He did then!" said Philip, wearily. "Of course I told him what I thought of his wanting to marry you, in the Rockies; and he behaved awfully decently. He'd never have said a word, I think, without my leave. Well--now I've changed my mind!"

Elizabeth could not help smiling through her tears. With what merry scorn would she have met this assertion of the _patria potestas_ from the mouth of a sound brother! Her poor Philip!

"Dear old boy!--what have you been saying to Mr. Anderson?"

"Well!"--the boy choked a little--"I've been telling him that--well, never mind!--he knows what I think about him. Perhaps if I'd known him years ago--I'd have been different. That don't matter. But I want to settle things up for you and him. Because you know, Elizabeth, you're pretty gone on him, too!"

Elizabeth hid her face against his knee--without speaking. The boy resumed:

"And so I've been telling him that now I thought differently--I hoped he would ask you to marry him--and I knew that you cared for him--but that he mustn't dream of taking you to Canada. That was all nonsense--couldn't be thought of! He must settle here. You've lots of money--and--well, when I'm gone--you'll have more. Of course Martindale will go away from us, and I know he will look after mother as well as you."

There was silence--till Elizabeth murmured--"And what did he say?"

The lad drew himself away from her with an angry movement.

"He refused!"

Elizabeth lifted herself, a gleam of something splendid and passionate lighting up her small face.

"And what else, dear Philip, did you expect?"

"I expected him to look at it reasonably!" cried the boy. "How can he ask a woman like you to go and live with him on the prairies? It's ridiculous! He can go into English politics, if he wants politics. Why shouldn't he live on your money? Everybody does it!"

"Did you really understand what you were asking him to do, Philip?"

"Of course I did! Why, what's Canada compared to England? Jolly good thing for him. Why he might be anything here! And as if I wouldn't rather be a dustman in England than a--"

"Philip, my dear boy! do rest--do go to bed," cried his mother imploringly, coming into the room with her soft hurrying step. "It's going on for one o'clock. Elizabeth mustn't keep you talking like this!"

She smiled at him with uplifted finger, trying to hide from him all traces of emotion.

But her son looked at her steadily.

"Mother, is Anderson gone?"

"No," said Mrs. Gaddesden, with hesitation. "But he doesn't want you to talk any more to-night--he begs you not. Please--Philip!"

"Ask him to come here!" said Philip, peremptorily. "I want to talk to him and Elizabeth."

Mrs. Gaddesden protested in vain. The mother and daughter looked at each other with flushed faces, holding a kind of mute dialogue. Then Elizabeth rose from her seat by the fire.

"I will call Mr. Anderson, Philip. But if we convince you that what you ask is quite impossible, will you promise to go quietly to bed and try to sleep? It breaks mother's heart, you know, to see you straining yourself like this."

Philip nodded--a crimson spot in each cheek, his frail hands twining and untwining as he tried to compose himself.

Elizabeth went half-way down the stairs and called. Anderson hurried out of the drawing-room, and saw her bending to him from the shadows, very white and calm.

"Will you come back to Philip a moment?" she said, gently. "Philip has told me what he proposed to you."

Anderson could not find a word to say. In a blind tumult of feeling he caught her hand, and pressed his lips to it, as though appealing to her dumbly to understand him.

She smiled at him.

"It will be all right," she whispered. "My poor Philip!" and she led him back to the sick room.

"George--I wanted you to come back, to talk this thing out," said Philip, turning to him as he entered, with the tyranny of weakness. "There's no time to waste. You know--everybody knows--I may get worse--and there'll be nothing settled. It's my duty to settle--"

Elizabeth interrupted him.

"Philip darling!--"

She was hanging over his chair, while Anderson stood a few feet away, leaning against the mantelpiece, his face turned from the brother and sister. The intimacy--solemnity almost--of the sick-room, the midnight hour, seemed to strike through Elizabeth's being, deepening and yet liberating emotion.

"Dear Philip! It is not for Mr. Anderson to answer you--it is for me. If he could give up his country--for happiness--even for love--I should never marry him--for--I should not love him any more."

Anderson turned to look at her. She had moved, and was now standing in front of Philip, her head thrown back a little, her hands lightly clasped in front of her. Her youth, her dress, her diamonds, combined strangely with the touch of high passion in her shining eyes, her resolute voice.

"You see, dear Philip, I love George Anderson--"

Anderson gave a low cry--and, moving to her side, he grasped her hand. She gave it to him, smiling--and went on:

"I love him--partly--because he is so true to his own people--because I saw him first--and knew him first--among them. No! dear Philip, he has his work to do in Canada--in that great, great nation that is to be. He has been trained for it--no one else can do it but he--and neither you nor I must tempt him from it."

The eyes of the brother and sister met. Elizabeth tried for a lighter tone.

"But as neither of us _could_ tempt him from it--it is no use talking--is it?"

Philip looked from her to Anderson in a frowning silence. No one spoke for a little while. Then it seemed to them as though the young man recognised that his effort had failed, and his physical weakness shrank from renewing it. But he still resisted his mother's attempt to put an end to the scene.

"That's all very well, Lisa," he said at last, "but what are you going to do?"

Elizabeth withdrew her hand from Anderson's.

"What am I going to do? _Wait_--just that!"

But her lip trembled. And to hide it she sank down again in the low chair in front of her brother, propping her face in both hands.

"Wait?" repeated Philip, scornfully--"and what for?"

"Till you and mother--come to my way of thinking--and"--she faltered--"till Mr. Anderson--"

Her voice failed her a moment. Anderson stood motionless, bending towards her, hanging upon her every gesture and tone.

"Till Mr. Anderson--" she resumed, "is--well!--is brave enough to--trust a woman! and--oh! good Heavens!"--she dashed the tears from her eyes, half laughing, as her self-control broke down--"clever enough to save her from proposing to him in this abominable way!"

She sprang to her feet impatiently. Anderson would have caught her in his arms; but with a flashing look, she put him aside. A wail broke from Mrs. Gaddesden:

"Lisa--you won't leave us!"

"Never, darling--unless you send me!--or come with me! And now, don't you think, Philip dearest, you might let us all go to bed? You are really not worse, you know; and Mother and I are going to carry you off south--very, very soon."

She bent to him and kissed his brow. Philip's face gradually changed beneath her look, from the tension and gloom with which he had begun the scene to a kind of boyish relief--a touch of pleasure--of mischief even. His high, majestical pretensions vanished away; a light and volatile mind thought no more of them; and he turned eagerly to another idea.

"Elizabeth, do you know that you have proposed to Anderson?"

"If I have, it was your fault."

"He hasn't said Yes?"

Elizabeth was silent. Anderson came forward--but Philip stopped him with a gesture.

"He can't say Yes--till I give him back his promise," said the boy, triumphantly. "Well, George, I do give it you back--on one condition--that you put off going for a week, and that you come back as soon as you can. By Jove, I think you owe me that!"

Anderson's difficult smile answered him.

"And now you've got rid of your beastly Conference, you can come in, and talk business with me to-morrow--next day--every day!" Philip resumed, "can't he, Elizabeth? If you're going to be my brother, I'll jolly well get you to tackle the lawyers instead of me--boring old idiots! I say--I'm going to take it easy now!"

He settled himself in his chair with a long breath, and his eyelids fell. He was speaking, as they all knew, of the making of his will. Mrs. Gaddesden stooped piteously and kissed him. Elizabeth's face quivered. She put her arm round her mother and led her away. Anderson went to summon Philip's servant.

A little later Anderson again descended the dark staircase, leaving Philip in high spirits and apparently much better.

In the doorway of the drawing-room, stood a white form. Then the man's passion, so long dyked and barriered, had its way. He sprang towards her. She retreated, catching her breath; and in the shadows of the empty room she sank into his arms. In the crucible of that embrace all things melted and changed. His hesitations and doubts, all that hampered his free will and purpose, whether it were the sorrows and humiliations of the past--or the compunctions and demurs of the present--dropped away from him, as unworthy not of himself, but of Elizabeth. She had made him master of herself, and her fate; and he boldly and loyally took up the part. He had refused to become the mere appanage of her life, because he was already pledged to that great idea he called his country. She loved him the more for it; and now he had only to abound in the same sense, in order to hold and keep the nature which had answered so finely to his own. He had so borne himself as to wipe out all the social and external inequalities between them. What she had given him, she had had to sue him to take. But now that he had taken it, she knew herself a weak woman on his breast, and she realised with a happy tremor that he would make her no more apologies for his love, or for his story. Rather, he stood upon that dignity she herself had given him--her lover, and the captain of her life!