Chapter III

The town house of Lord Fordingbridge stands in Belgrave Square, guarded by pillars devised from cannon captured at Waterloo. Periodically their dumb muzzles gape upward to an awning of red and white stripes and a crimson carpet splashes the white steps between, and runs, like the lilting blood of youth, across the drab pavement to the white-washed curb. Gilded coach and stately barouche drew up, in their day, to set down the loveliest girls of all time, in panniered skirts and crinolines, patched and powdered and jeweled; a dozen generations of satin slippers have kissed the great staircase, and the tiniest proudest feet have starred the ballroom floor.

So also, one perfect post-war Georgian night, limousine after limousine sighed to the white strand between the somber cannon, and from their soft depths curved maidens in strait and narrow gowns, with little proud bobbed heads and piquant painted faces. They came of a guest list hedged in and thrice refined; Lord Fordingbridge, Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was giving a dance for Charles William Albert Victor, Duke of Sussex.

Vingie had ceased for a moment her inspired movements to the strains of London's smartest dance band; she stood chatting light-heartedly to Sir Charles. He passed a hand thoughtfully over his gray hair, and glanced with affection at his trim figure and neat feet. Then he said, shaping his words with clean-cut lips under a mustache no barbarian hand had ever shaved:

"Thank God, I grew up when I did! I've had sixty very good years, and I'm spared being a young man in this horrible period."

Vingie smiled straight into his eyes.

"You'll never be old, Charles, darling," she drawled in her clear modern voice. "You've got the heart of a child and the experience of a life-time. That's the beauty of being a man. At your age I shall have the greed of a flapper and the face of a hag. You mustn't grumble at the period; little Vingie's having an awf'ly good time."

"Ah, Virginia, you forget your advantages. Remember, I brought you up from the age of sixteen, and trained you in the pursuit of your natural prey--men. It's been such a beautiful relationship; not being your father I never had to pose as a moral freak, and not being my daughter you've never had to lie to me. Perhaps you even respect me a little."

"I do, Charles, darling. You're so delightful to women and they must have nearly killed you teaching you how."

"Remember there's no use trying to stand alone; acting for the films, swimming the Channel, and playing lawn tennis like a professional are simply vanity and vexation of spirit. They pass with youth but a husband remains, because he can't get away."

Virginia sighed very faintly.

"I shall never love any one like you, Charles. I adore gray hair; it means so much; think of all the experience that turned it gray. The wild oats of one's youth are the comfort of one's old age; you dream about them, cuddling your three hot-water bottles beneath your five eiderdowns after your nurse has brought you your cup of peptonized milk and left you for the night. I insist on wrecking at least several lives while I'm still pretty enough."

"Who is that young person dancing with the duke? She moves exactly like a camel," interrupted Sir Charles.

"That's Betty Keswick. Rather a sporting kid; she's flown over the German lines in an aeroplane and driven from New York to Seattle in a Ford car. I'm awf'ly glad he's got her; he's been dancing a lot with me, and I don't move like a camel. It all helps."

A tall lank figure moved awkwardly through the crowd of dancers in the general direction of Vingie and Sir Charles. His face wore a strained, unearthly smile, and he exchanged a difficult word of greeting with this and that person; there seemed about him a spiritual angularity that matched his gaunt ungraceful limbs. An observant stranger would have accused him of a high purpose and a low co-efficient of sociability.

"There's poor Rupert," murmured Sir Charles dreamily. "Not exactly a _beau sabreur_ and Heaven help him in the drawing-room, but he'll have the premiership and a peerage some day. Perfectly ruthless over work; people may loathe him, but they won't be able to do without him; some other girl will have him if you don't."

Vingie's straight little nose wrinkled delicately.

"Rupert will always appear a little better than he should be and I shall never seem quite so good as I am. Poppaea, or Ninon de l'Enclos or Queen Elizabeth is more my style."

"My dear, there are always Guardsmen and _aides-de-camp_ and _attachés_ and things for sentimental distraction, but the wind bloweth over them and they are gone."

Rupert approached and smiled with slight bitterness at Vingie, and his uncle, Sir Charles.

"The duke is leaving," he announced, much as he might have said, "the world is coming to an end."

Sir Charles raised his eyebrows. "So early? It's only half past eleven. Has Fordingbridge annoyed him, or is it fatigue? Or perhaps he has to lay a foundation stone very early in the morning. The cares of state are most exacting."

"Fordingbridge is at his wits' ends," answered Rupert calmly, although he did not seem calm. "So am I; so is everybody who knows anything. It isn't the fact that he's leaving, but what lies under the surface. It means that we haven't finished with the old trouble; there's more to come. I could very nearly weep."

Vingie looked at him with gentle eyes.

"My poor Rupert, they aren't going to be cross with you, are they? It can't be your fault. Tell us about it! I think you suppress things too much; it's bad for you, and besides we'd love to help."

"I'd rather die," declared Rupert simply, "than breathe a word of anything that matters in this place." He looked round scornfully. "All this froth--this butterfly mob--selfish, pleasure-loving, insincere. Candidly, Virginia, I merely came as a matter of duty, to help the chief. There's a month's work on my desk at the Foreign Office."

"Tut, tut," soothed Sir Charles. "My dear fellow, you mustn't get upset. Nothing's so bad that it couldn't be worse. Let's go home and talk the matter over if it worries you. I dare say Virginia will excuse us. There are a dozen people who'd chaperon her--if it's necessary nowadays."

Vingie yawned attractively behind a pink palm.

"I've danced with the duke. I don't want to dance with anybody else. I hate second best. Come along, Charles, and let's take the poor boy away."

As they turned to go, Lord Fordingbridge passed. His rubicund, genial face seemed less gay than of old.

"Well, well," he said with a fine effort, "youth will be served. He was deuced nice about it, but I suppose our troubles have begun again, Rupert, my boy. The devil take all women--if you'll forgive me, Virginia."

"Ah!" commented Sir Charles, with complete understanding.

"Exactly. Tell you about it in the morning. Ask me to lunch, Charles--thanks, my dear fellow. Rupert, you have my permission to give them a bare outline--the barest possible. Good night, my dear."

He raised Vingie's fingers to his lips, and sauntered away keeping a brave face. A powdered footman called Sir Charles' car. Vingie, he and Rupert entered the vehicle and whirred silently through the darkness to Sir Charles' town house in Park Street. Only Vingie hummed faintly a seductive fox-trot, the last she had danced with the duke. She thrived, like all women, on trouble and the clash of fates.

The somber dignity of the library woke at the click of a switch to subdued radiance. Vingie, shrugging back her cloak, poised her imponderable young beauty in a deep armchair, to sip hot milk reflectively. Sir Charles sat opposite, savoring his whisky-and-soda; Rupert Frack stood with his back to the fireplace like a figure of doom.

"Well, Rupert?" hinted Sir Charles at last.

"Shall I go to bed?" inquired Vingie, without the faintest intention of doing any such thing.

Rupert Frack dragged at his tie, making it even more crooked than usual.

"The difficulty concerns a certain personage in whose honor a ball was given by a secretary of state. The personage should have stayed till the end, or almost the end. Only a most pressing engagement could have called him away. He had no official engagement whatever."

"Inconsiderate young monkey," murmured Sir Charles politely.

"No," objected Rupert Frack, "the personage is most kind and considerate. That makes matters worse. Only a tremendous influence could have caused him to show neglect toward his host. It has been arranged that this personage is to marry in the near future. The name of the lady is absolutely secret, but I may say she was present at the ball. There were two hundred ladies invited so I am not giving anything away. This fact intensifies the danger of the situation. What, I ask you, could have induced the personage to behave as he did?"

Vingie stretched out her hand to a cigarette box. Sir Charles rose and struck a match for her. Rupert stared gloomily before him.

"Obviously," murmured Vingie through a little cloud of scented smoke, "there's another attraction. I'm not surprised. The--er--personage is very young. He's like me; he wants to sow a wild oat or two before settling down."

"I quite agree. Most human--in his case at any rate," observed Sir Charles. "It's rather stupid of him to neglect George Fordingbridge----"

"Sh! sh! No names, I beg of you!" besought Rupert.

"----but there's nothing to worry about. And I don't see what on earth it has to do with the Foreign Office."

"The appalling fact is that he insists on marrying the attraction. The Foreign Office is concerned because the attraction is of alien nationality," said Rupert bitterly, and drained his glass with the air of a man swallowing poison.

"Not a Ger----" began Vingie.

"As the personage served throughout the war in the Royal Horse Artillery I should imagine not. Otherwise, the situation hasn't a redeeming feature."

"Well," commented Sir Charles at last, smiling the tolerant smile of many fruitful years, "he can't marry her so it won't last. Either he'll get tired of it or she will. I should suggest giving him plenty of rope and folding your hands. 'Tisn't as if he were a private individual and could run off and be married on the quiet."

"There have been morganatic marriages. They could elope to the lady's own country and then who's to stop them? I disagree with you, Uncle Charles."

"Who is the girl?"

Rupert's jaw set like a trap.

"I regret that it is absolutely impossible for me to tell you. Perhaps the chief when he lunches here to-morrow--that's a matter for his discretion. I couldn't take the responsibility."

"Oh, poof!" scoffed Vingie, rising lightly to her feet. "You're the most fearful old grannie, Rupert; I've simply been sitting up to hear who she is. I might have been asleep by now. Night-night, Charles, darling!"

She kissed him gently on the cheek, gave Rupert Frack the mere tips of her fingers, and Sir Charles held the door for her. He closed it firmly and went back to his armchair.

"I'm very sorry for you, but in this poisonous age even young men don't know how to manage their love-affairs, or p'r'aps it's the young women. Anyway you've all my good wishes," he observed. "Would you mind handing me the volume of Shakespear from the table as you go out?"

Rupert complied, hesitating.

"I should like to run over with you the historic precedent of the situation--that of the Austrian archduke and others," he began, but Sir Charles shook his head.

"You'd better go along and get some sleep. I always read for an hour to compose my mind," he replied politely but very firmly. "Good night, Rupert! See you in the morning."

Reluctantly Rupert went his way. Sir Charles sat with his book on his knee, deep in reflection. Finally, he shook his head.

"Marriage--always marriage," he said at last. "I wonder what attraction they see in it. I could never find any, and I am a fairly intelligent man."

Vingie awoke to perceive one baby sunbeam stealing through her chintz curtains, and stretched two white arms adorable with little blue veins, made happy cooing noises and glanced at a gold and enamel traveling clock by her bedside. It indicated the hour of seven thirty-five. At eight precisely Mary came bringing tea and letters. As she slit envelope after envelope a frown creased Vingie's velvet brow. The contents of the envelopes displayed a miserable monotony, alike of matter and style. For the most part they read:

"Madam:

"We beg to draw your attention to your account, now long overdue, and would be greatly obliged by a check at your earliest convenience.

"Thanking you for your esteemed patronage in the past, trusting to receive a continuance of your favors in the future, and assuring you of our best attention at all times,

"We remain,
"Your obedient servants,
"for Dash & Blank Limited.
"Henry Blank."

"What a curse poverty is!" snarled Vingie malevolently. "How can I keep bodice and skirt together on a mere pittance of a thousand a year? It's hopeless to ask Charles for anything; the darling's just as hard up as I am. Mary, what do you do when your debts positively suffocate you?"

Mary shook her attractive head and smiled.

"I can see anybody trusting me, miss!" she answered. "When you've got no money you have to pay cash. It's only rich people who can afford to owe."

"Well, put out the _tête de negre marocain_ frock with cerise piping. Lord Fordingbridge is coming to lunch. I may be able to sell him my brains if they're done up in an attractive wrapping. I want my very thinnest silk stockings, and a decent hanky in case I have to cry. It's rather fatal to cry over a man, but beggars can't be choosers."

She flung back the blankets, sat on the edge of the bed and considered her little pink feet gloomily.

"You won't have any soles between you and the pavement one day if you're not clever," she ended. "Make the most of those silk stockings, my dears. His lordship still has an eye for a decent ankle, they tell me."

His said lordship, who had never officially recognized the existence of the internal combustion engine, though condescending to use a car for long journeys, arrived to luncheon driving himself in a pair-horse phaeton, his gray tall hat slightly on one side, a specimen of the obsolete buttonhole in the lapel of his coat. It was observed that he patted both horses a trifle absently, and crossed the pavement with anxiety in his slow gait. Within doors he rallied, bowed gracefully over Vingie's little hand, chatted genially across the luncheon table, teased Rupert with kindly toleration, exchanged anecdotes with Sir Charles.

Vingie, more by virtue of her eyes than any word of mouth, gathered him to her as a hen gathers her chickens. His sorrows half drowned in their calm depths, he observed at length, deliberately:

"Excellent bit of Stilton this, Charles. If Virginia will allow it perhaps we might all take coffee together in the library. I feel like making a clean breast of something."

There is no better background for beige silk stockings of the most diaphanous weave than a Morocco leather armchair. Lord Fordingbridge eyed them wistfully, cigar poised half-way to his mouth. Sir Charles gazed absently at his liqueur; he had weathered so many crises. Rupert's glance ranged round the room like the questing of a hungry lion.

"I s'pose," said Lord Fordingbridge at last, "Rupert put the whole thing in a nutshell like the clever fellow he is."

"In a cocoanutshell perhaps," murmured Vingie. "He left out names and dates and descriptions and facts. Otherwise we know everything."

"Well, I'm only a stupid old man," apologized his lordship, "but the gist of it is the duke's quite mad about a very charming young woman, Mademoiselle Diane de Blanchefôret, wants to marry her in fact. It's been arranged that he shall marry Lady Celia Pytchley, old Loamshire's girl, and between ourselves he won't hear of it. Mademoiselle Diane's French, of course, and that's where Rupert and I come in."

Sir Charles' lip curled.

"May I suggest that--ah!--it should be made worth her while to be a little--er--accommodating toward the duke? Probably that would meet the situation," he suggested with delicate irony.

"You're a clever fellow, Charles," murmured Lord Fordingbridge admiringly. "Unfortunately she's a lady. She comes of a very old family; she's very highly educated, bit of a musical genius, and so on. She plays leading parts in those romantic sort of musical shows where you've really got to be able to sing, but only because she's poor. She lifts up the stage to her own level, she doesn't sink to meet it. If you sent her a pearl necklace with your love she'd drop it in the dustbin and tell you to come round and fetch it."

"Oh, my dear, how you do make me laugh," sighed Vingie in spite of herself.

"Well, you know what I mean. But there's worse to come, Virginia. She's very domesticated. She has a little place in Hall Street with just a man and his wife and her maid. She goes back after the theater and cooks omelettes on a tiny electric grill, and the duke goes there and beats the eggs and makes the toast. You see, he's rather overworked opening exhibitions and unveiling war-memorials, and attending banquets, and to see Mademoiselle Diane in an overall breaking eggs into a basin completely knocks him over. She won't let him make love to her; she just reads Victor Hugo to him and then tells him to go home. The poor boy described it all to me with tears in his eyes. He says if she won't marry him as he is he'll retire into private life and dog her footsteps till she gives way."

"Dogging reluctant footsteps becomes a little tedious after a time," observed Sir Charles.

Vingie took him up scornfully.

"No man ever does. If she didn't want him he'd never get inside her front door, let alone help with the cooking. He's just a nice unspoiled boy and it's a shame."

"Perhaps Lady Celia also makes omelettes?" suggested Rupert.

Lord Fordingbridge made an overwhelming gesture.

"I may be a very foolish old man, but I can't see her doing it. To me she rather suggests a band and a captain's escort of Life Guards. They're a ceremonious lot, the Loamshires. Between ourselves I can't stand 'em at any price."

His weary old eyes, with just the remains of a certain something in them, turned pathetically on Vingie. He was so obviously out of his depth. She, who felt the _crêpe marocain_ and the translucent stockings doing their fell work, smiled back half maternally and prepared to launch the attack.

"Charles, darling," she began at last, "I think Rupert looks dreadfully pale and overdone. Do take him for a stroll in the park. George and I will just talk. I've got one or two things I'd like to say. Please?"

Sir Charles rose obediently. "Come along, Rupert," he commanded. "You lead far too flabby a life. We will go and look at the ducks on the Round Pond."

Once they were alone ten years fell from the shoulders of Lord Fordingbridge. Instead of hostess and guest they became girl and man, pretty girl and admiring man.

"How old is Diane?" asked Vingie after a little pause.

"Twenty-four I understand, but you know what these French women are--the wisdom of ninety and the lure of nineteen."

"I'm only twenty," murmured Vingie. Without a word or a movement she invited his inspection of her young loveliness. "I'm not a bit afraid of Diane. As a matter of fact it isn't Diane at all; he just thinks it is. It's what she represents--simplicity, rest, sympathy, peace. He's nauseated with pomp, poor kid. It just happens to be Diane. He's like a child who's been let loose in a sweetshop. She knows, and gives him the exact opposite. Don't you see?"

"I do, but I'm no wiser. It takes a woman to defeat a woman. I drown in an ocean of mystery. I wish you'd throw me a lifebuoy," he replied, paying her the distracting homage of age to youth.

"If you leave it to me I think I can save you," said Vingie thoughtfully. "Unfortunately, I'm so miserably poor I can't afford to do it for nothing. Besides, I may have to take risks, to play with fire, and a girl's reputation is a very delicate thing. Suppose it were a case for a doctor or a lawyer, his fee would be enormous. Pretend I'm an expert in heart disease. What is it worth if I cure the duke? I'm simply frightened to count the bills on my desk at this moment."

Lord Fordingbridge sighed resignedly.

"There is no one more beautiful or more discreet," he said, as one thinking aloud. "If you can avert a first-class scandal undoubtedly it is worth a certain amount. There are always means. Exactly how much do you suggest?"

"Taking everything into consideration, shall we say five thousand pounds?" murmured Vingie in her clear caressing voice.

"Well, one can always starve the Secret Service. Have you a plan? Is there anything you want me to do?"

She rose without effort and stood before him, hands clasped behind her back, a little smile playing round her mouth.

"You're a perfect dear. Can you arrange for me to meet him? Could you ask us both to your country place? We mustn't be seen running about town together."

"You shall both be my guests at Diss. He ought to have a holiday and he owes me too much to refuse. It shall be a very small house-party. Will that give you an opportunity?"

He rose also, and bent over her hand. He managed to convey admiration not only for her beauty but her brain, not only for her brain but her beauty. Lord Fordingbridge, a widower, a diplomat, an ex-cavalryman, did this thing, and it took him all his time. For a lesser man it would have been quite impossible.

At the ninth tee on Lord Fordingbridge's private golf course, one of the features of Diss Hall in the county of Hampshire, William Albert, Duke of Sussex, laid down his golf bag and offered Vingie a cigarette from a crested gold case. He lighted it with a match out of a crested gold match-box, held the match to his own cigarette, paused and smiled down at her from a height of five feet eleven and a half inches. A certain fraction of his heart reposed at her small brogued feet beside the abandoned clubs.

Vingie raised her eyes to those of William Albert and saw a very pleasing young man of twenty-three, garbed in tweed jacket and "plus fours." He had the well-kept appearance that goes with perfect valeting--the exactly knotted tie, the deftly pinned soft collar. From his St. James Street shoes to his Jermyn Street cap she approved of him. He had a clean-run look, a dependable face and a certain tempered liveliness of eye.

"I think," said William Albert, "you and I get on most awfully well, don't you?"

The ninth tee and the ninth green are separated by a disused chalk pit. To the sophisticated it is but an iron shot, yet requiring a certain amount of nerve. Vingie and William Albert paused to contrive nerve.

She glanced up simply, under a simple old-rose pull-on hat, and smiled back. She looked almost childish in her little silk sweater and pleated skirt.

"I'm ever so glad you think so," she answered, "because that means you're quite happy. Now when you came down here you looked perfectly miserable."

"Nobody could be miserable with you. I don't know what it is--it's something about you. You make me feel as if I couldn't do the wrong thing if I tried. Now when a man feels he's always doing the right thing it bucks him up no end," explained William Albert in his naïve masculine way.

Vingie nodded imperceptibly. She felt rather like Foch, Napoleon and Stonewall Jackson rolled into one. On the third day of her campaign they had tacitly agreed to play without caddies. Captain Hamish Duncan, Scots Guards, the duke's equerry, partner of Lady Betty Keswick invited at Vingie's special request, worked out his golfing destiny far ahead, far too far off for thought or any prayer. They four comprised the house-party, save only Lord Fordingbridge and his sister, one of Queen Victoria's earlier god-children. Here on the ninth green on the third day the duke cast down his golf clubs at her feet, offering cigarettes and homage.

"Why were you so miserable?" went on Vingie in her most crooning voice, moving her head two inches to let the sunlight play on her hair.

He stared thoughtfully across the chalk pit, and sighed.

"I'd nearly forgotten," he said at last. "Don't remind me, there's a dear. I'm having such a good time. It's very like something I said in my speech at luncheon when I was made a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Bow-and-Arrow Makers." He raised his head and went on in one of those voices usually reported as audible in the remotest parts of the building:

"'It is only when we get away from our daily work and come under the sane and sound influence of healthy outdoor exercise that we realize the debt which we owe to our forefathers who set us an example in field sports that I for one am proud to follow.' In other words, we come out here and whack golf balls and I get on frightfully well with you and push all my troubles into the back of my mind. Otherwise I sometimes wonder why I don't go crazy."

Vingie glanced covertly at her wrist-watch. It registered eleven-thirty A.M. She subsided on a sand-box, crossed one knee over the other and smoked reflectively. The duke thrust his hands into his pockets and surveyed her in deep thought. Evidently conflicting emotions boiled in his brain, for he sighed heavily once or twice, threw away the cigarette, produced a pipe, blew through it, filled it, lighted it, and clamped his teeth on the stem with vise-like grip.

Vingie looked up straight into his eyes and said with the feinted catch in her voice:

"Of course it's obvious you're in love. Tell me. It--doesn't matter."

"Love?" echoed the duke bitterly, "what's love? And besides, one doesn't talk about one girl to another. It isn't done."

"Love's the nice cake with which Providence rewards us occasionally for enduring the stodge of every-day life. It's a layer cake, made with slices of heaven and hell alternately, decorated on the top with kisses all positively different. Go on; you needn't mention any names."

He stretched himself on the grass and looked steadfastly at nothing.

"If you were in my shoes," he began, "and every woman you met ran after you, not for yourself but for what she might hope to get either socially or some other way, and if every day you weren't opening an exhibition you were inspecting a regiment or presiding over the annual meeting of a charity, and if your picture were in the papers every day, and you had hundreds of uniforms, and were supposed to marry whom you were told, sooner or later, you'd get desperate and fall in love on your own account. That's what I've done, and as far as I can see I might as well have murdered the prime minister or floated a company on the Stock Exchange. People who matter have simply given me hell ever since. They wouldn't mind if it were just a grubby little amour, a brief blind in return for a bracelet, and then finish. But I do love the girl and I want to marry her, and she isn't the type who's--kind don't they call it?--in return for a bracelet. Don't laugh. If she were like that I'd run a mile next time I met her. She's the only woman who's ever been really decent to me, and I adore her, and if people knew what we did they'd snigger, in the clever way people do snigger who judge every one else by their own filthy minds, and jump to only one conclusion, and they'd be wrong, damn them."

"Give me another cigarette, and don't get cross. Tell me what you do and what she's like."

"Very graceful, with a creamy white skin, and wonderful eyes I can never understand. Her hair's dark and bobbed in a sort of way, only different from the way everybody else's is bobbed."

"It would be," murmured Vingie to her soul. "It always is. Like everybody else's and yet quite, quite different. Quaint things, men!"

"Her hands are slender and seem to caress the things she touches. She moves like no one I ever knew. But it's her mind that's so wonderful. She understands even before one's spoken; she's frightfully clever, and has read everything, and she's a genius at music. Yet, do you know she leads the simplest life and cooks amazing food with her own fingers. I go to see her after she's finished work, because she works for her living, and help her make an omelette or something, and we have supper together and she plays to me, and sings perhaps one of those enchanting old songs like _If I Give You the Keys of Heaven_, and sometimes she'll stroke my hair and always she's so sympathetic--that's the most wonderful thing about her; sympathy--and then I kiss her hands and go home and feel utterly happy, and Hamish Duncan's waiting for me with a list of the next day's good works."

Vingie nodded dreamily. A little tune lilted in her brain--nothing articulate, but an impassioned pæan in honor of frocks dreamed of and frocks to come. A golden symbol seemed to hang in the clear blue sky shaped like the figures 5000 followed by the word pounds.

"Surely the gods have delivered him into my hand this day," she thought. "If he had fallen in love with her body I could have done nothing, but her mind--oh, poof! Who cares for an intellectual vamp? Mere suggestion with a suitable background. The others grab at him, therefore she doesn't. Reaction of the mother-complex; he's tired and fed up and she leaves his senses alone and soothes his nerves. Presently, no doubt--but there shan't be any presently."

She clasped one knee, gazed at him kindly and asked: "How old is she?"

William Albert came out of a reverie with obvious reluctance.

"Twenty-four--just one year older than I am. But then she hasn't any age. She's the spirit of all the Dryads that ever were; she's all youth and yet she has the wisdom of eternity, if you understand."

Mentally Vingie added the last item to her list, drew a line and added them up. The total seemed not too formidable.

"I think I do understand, though you won't believe it. I think she's being most frightfully nice, and she loves helping you, but are you quite sure she's as much in love with you as you are with her?" With a magnificent effort Vingie prevented her chiseled lip from curling and kept even the faintest trace of sarcasm out of her voice. "You see," she went on, "in your present mood you want to scrap everything, chuck duty to the winds, marry this girl--and then what? What will people say about her? They mayn't be very kind. At the best they'll say she oughtn't to have let you."

"If you were I," said the duke patiently, "and saw the gate open and Paradise before you, would you walk in or would you turn your back and proceed in the opposite direction?"

"Any girl," flung back Vingie, with a lash in her young voice, "can lead you into Paradise if she wants to badly enough. We all carry the key, but we use it when and for whom we choose. Get that fixed in your mind, my young friend. It's a piece of truth not every girl will tell you."

"Any girl?" he repeated vaguely. "_Any_ girl? Why--that is--you for instance?"

She looked away. He sat up and gazed very earnestly at a young fair girl whose perfect profile even a man said to be in love might not despise, her delicately lovely body posed in careless grace, her slender ankles and slim hands irresistible in their appeal. He saw, or thought he saw, a tinge of color ebb slowly into one oval cheek.

"You mean you could--if you wanted----" he stumbled on.

She turned, smiling at him half-tenderly.

"I mean, I'd like to try, p'r'aps, before you go and get yourself into the most awful mess. I'm not in love with you--not yet, at all events, but I do think you're rather a dear, and you seem to know so little about girls. You need to discover just a shade more before you can be quite fair to the official one you don't want to marry. But I'd have to choose my own setting, like your wonderful friend. If you've a few days to spare, and don't mind, and won't think me horrid, and won't tell any one, it might be a bit of a revelation to you. Only you must realize this isn't the beginning of a flirtation. You'll have to play straight. Is it a bargain?"

He got up and held out his hand. He was very young, rather a nice boy, and he flushed vivid scarlet under the sun-tanned skin, but his eyes were very steady.

"I think you're a perfect brick," he said.

The golden symbol of five thousand pounds faded utterly from Vingie's sky. She felt suddenly a contemptible little beast and tears smarted at the back of her eyes. She set her teeth and repeated to herself over and over again: "I needn't take a farthing of it--I _needn't_! And I'm only saving him from that bobbed haired cat who doesn't care what sort of fool he makes of himself as long as she satisfies her beastly vanity. God, how I loathe some women!"