 Book Two, Chapter Two of the House of Merth. Miss Bart, emerging late the next morning from her cabin, found herself alone on the deck of the Sabrina. The cushioned chairs, disposed expectantly under the wide awning, showed no signs of recent occupancy, and she presently learned from a steward that Mrs. Dorsett had not yet appeared, and that the gentlemen, separately, had gone ashore as soon as they had breakfasted. Supplied with these facts, Lily leaned awhile over the side, giving herself up to a leisurely enjoyment of the spectacle before her. Unclouded sunlight enveloped sea and shore in a bath of purest radiancy. The purpling waters drew a sharp white line of foam at the base of the shore. Against its irregular eminences, hotels and villas flashed from the grayish verger of olive and eucalyptus, and the background of bare and finely penciled mountains quivered in a pale intensity of light. How beautiful it was! And how she loved beauty! She had always felt that her sensibility in this direction made up for certain obtuseness of feeling, of which she was less proud, and during the last three months she had indulged it passionately. The Dorsett's invitation to go abroad with them had come as an almost miraculous release from crushing difficulties, and her faculty for renewing herself in new scenes, and casting off problems of conduct as easily as the surroundings in which they had arisen, made the mere change from one place to another seem, not merely a postponement, but a solution of her troubles. Moral complications existed for her only in the environment that had produced them. She did not mean to slight or ignore them, but they lost their reality when they changed their background. She could not have remained in New York without repaying the money she owed to Trenor. To acquit herself of that odious debt she might even have faced a marriage with Rosdale, but the accident of placing the Atlantic between herself and her obligations made them dwindle out of sight as if they had been milestones and she had travelled past them. Her two months on the Sabrina had been especially calculated to aid this illusion of distance. She had been plunged into new scenes, and had found in them a renewal of old hopes and ambitions. The cruise itself charmed her as a romantic adventure. She was vaguely touched by the names and scenes amid which she moved, and had listened to Ned Silverton reading Theocratis by Moonlight, as the yacht rounded the Sicilian promontories, with a thrill of the nerves that confirmed her belief in her intellectual superiority. But the weeks at Conn and Nice had really given her more pleasure. The gratification of being welcomed in high company, and of making her own ascendancy felt there, so that she found herself figuring once more as the beautiful Miss Bart in the interesting journal devoted to recording the least movements of her cosmopolitan companions. All these experiences tended to throw into the extreme background of memory the prosaic and sordid difficulties from which she had escaped. If she was faintly aware of fresh difficulties ahead, she was sure of her ability to meet them. It was characteristic of her to feel that the only problems she could not solve were those with which she was familiar. Meanwhile, she could honestly be proud of the skill with which she had adapted herself to somewhat delicate conditions. She had reason to think that she had made herself equally necessary to her host and hostess, and if only she had seen any perfectly irreproachable means of drawing a financial profit from the situation, there would have been no cloud on her horizon. The truth was that her funds, as usual, were inconveniently low, and to neither dorset nor his wife could this vulgar embarrassment be safely hinted. Still the need was not a pressing one. She could worry along, as she had so often done before, with the hope of some happy change of fortune to sustain her, and meanwhile life was gay and beautiful and easy, and she was conscious of figuring not unworthily in such a setting. She was engaged to breakfast that morning with the Duchess of Belcher, and at twelve o'clock she asked to be set ashore in the gig. Before this she had sent her maid to inquire if she might see Mrs. Dorset, but the reply came back that the latter was tired, and trying to sleep. Lily thought she understood the reason of the rebuff. Her hostess had not been included in the Duchess's invitation, though she herself had made the most loyal efforts in that direction. But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited or omitted as she chose. It was not Lily's fault if Mrs. Dorset's complicated attitudes did not fall in with the Duchess's easy gait. The Duchess, who seldom explained herself, had not formulated her objection beyond saying, "'She's rather a bore, you know. The only one of your friends I like is that little Mr. Brigh. He's funny.'" But Lily knew enough not to press the point, and was not altogether sorry to be thus distinguished at her friend's expense. Bertha certainly had grown tiresome since she had taken to poetry and Ned Silverton. On the whole, it was a relief to break away now and then from the Sabrina, and the Duchess's little breakfast, organized by Lord Hubert with all his usual virtuosity, was the pleasanter to Lily for not including her travelling companions. Dorset, of late, had grown more than usually morose and incalculable, and Ned Silverton went about with an air that seemed to challenge the universe. The freedom and lightness of the ducal intercourse made an agreeable change from these complications, and Lily was tempted, after luncheon, to adjorn in the wake of her companions to the hectic atmosphere of the casino. She did not mean to play. Her diminished pocket-money offered small scope for the adventure, but it amused her to sit on a divan under the doubtful protection of the Duchess's back, while the latter hung above her stakes at a neighbouring table. The rooms were packed with the gazing throng, which, in the afternoon hours, trickles heavily between the tables, like the Sunday crowd in a lion-house. In the stagnant flow of the mass, identities were hardly distinguishable, but Lily presently saw Mrs. Brie cleaving her determined way through the doors, and in the broad wake she left the light figure of Mrs. Fisher bobbing after her, like a rowboat at the stern of a tug. Mrs. Brie pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in the rooms, but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her towing-line and let herself float to the girl's side. "'Lose her!' she echoed the latter's query with an indifferent glance at Mrs. Brie's retreating back. "'I daresay it doesn't matter. I have lost her already.' "'And,' as Lily exclaimed, she added, "'we had an awful row this morning. You know, of course, that the Duchess chucked her at dinner last night, and she thinks it was my fault—my want of management. The worst of it is—the message—just a mere word by telephone—came so late that the dinner had to be paid for, and Becasanne had run it up—it had been so drummed into him that the Duchess was coming.' Mrs. Fisher indulged in a faint laugh at the remembrance. "'Paying for what she doesn't get' rankles so dreadfully with Louisa. I can't make her see that it's one of the preliminary steps to getting what you haven't paid for, and as I was the nearest thing to smash, she smashed me to atoms, poor dear.' Lily murmured her commiseration. Impulses of sympathy came naturally to her, and it was instinctive to proffer her help to Mrs. Fisher. "'If there's anything I can do—if it's only a question of meeting the Duchess—I heard her say she thought Mr. Brie am using.' But Mrs. Fisher interposed with a decisive gesture. "'My dear, I have my pride—the pride of my trade. I couldn't manage the Duchess, and I can't palm off your arts on Louisa Brie as mine. I've taken the final step. I go to Paris to-night with the Sam Gormers—they're still in the elementary stage. An Italian prince is a great deal more than a prince to them, and they're always on the brink of taking a courier for one. To save them from that is my present mission.' She laughed again at the picture. But before I go, I want to make my last will and testament. I want to leave you, the Brie's." "'Me?' Miss Bart joined in her amusement. It's charming of you to remember me, dear, but really! You're already so well provided for,' Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance at her. "'Are you, though, Lily, to the point of rejecting my offer?' Miss Bart colored slowly. What I really meant was that the Brie's wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of.' Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye. "'What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brie's horribly, and you know that they know.' "'Carrie?' "'Oh, on certain sides, Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd even managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina, especially when roiled he's were coming. "'But it's not too late,' she ended earnestly. "'It's not too late for either of you.'" Lily smiled. "'Stay over, and I'll get the duchess to dine with them.' "'I shan't stay over. The Gormers have paid for my salon-nie,' said Mrs. Fisher with simplicity. "'But get the duchess to dine with them all the same.'" Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh. Her friend's importunity was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "'I'm sorry I have been negligent about the Brie's,' she began. "'Oh, as to the Brie's—it's you I'm thinking of,' said Mrs. Fisher abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice. "'You know we all went on to niece last night when the duchess chucked us. It was Louisa's idea. I told her what I thought of it.' Miss Bart ascended. "'Yes, I caught sight of you on the way back at the station.' "'Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset—that hoard little dabbom who does, society notes from the Riviera—had been dining with us at niece. And he's telling everybody that you and Dorset came back alone after midnight.'" "'Alone? When he was with us?' Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's look. "'We did come back alone, if that's so very dreadful. But whose fault was it? The duchess was spending the night at Simeet with the Crown Princess. Bertha got bored with the show and went off early, promising to meet us at the station. We turned up on time, but she didn't. She didn't turn up at all." Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with careless assurance, a complete vindication. When Mrs. Fisher received it in a manner almost inconsequent, she seemed to have lost sight of her friend's part in the incident. Her inward vision had taken another slant. "'Bertha never turned up at all. Then how on earth did she get back?' "'Oh, by the next train, I suppose. There were two extra ones for the FET. At any rate, I know she's safe on the yacht, though I haven't seen her yet. But you see, it was not my fault,' Lily summed up. "'Not your fault that Bertha didn't turn up. My poor child, if only you don't have to pay for it!' Mrs. Fisher rose. She had seen Mrs. Brigh surging back in her direction. "'There's Louisa, and I must be off. Oh, we're on the best of terms externally. We're lunching together. But at heart it's me she's lunching on,' she explained, and with a last hand-clasp and a last look, she added, "'Remember, I leave her to you. She's hovering now, ready to take you in.'" Lily carried the impression of Mrs. Fisher's leave taking away with her from the casino doors. She had accomplished, before leaving, the first step toward her reinstatement in Mrs. Brigh's good graces—an affable advance, a vague murmur that they must see more of each other—an elusive glance to a near future that was felt to include the Duchess as well as the Sabrina. How easily it was all done! If one possessed the knack of doing it! She wondered at herself, as she had so often wondered, that possessing the knack, she did not more consistently exercise it. But sometimes she was forgetful. And sometimes—could it be that she was proud? Today, at any rate, she had been vaguely conscious of a reason for sinking her pride, had in fact even sunk it to the point of suggesting to Lord Hubert Dacey, whom she ran across on the casino steps, that he might really get the Duchess to dine with the Brigh's, if she undertook to have the mast on the Sabrina. Lord Hubert had promised his help, with the readiness on which she could always count. It was his only way of ever reminding her that he had once been ready to do so much more for her. Her path, in short, seemed to smooth itself before her as she advanced. Yet the faint stir of uneasiness persisted. Had it been produced, she wondered, by her chance meeting with Selden. She thought not. Time and change seemed so completely to have relegated him to his proper distance. The sudden and exquisite reaction from her anxieties had had the effect of throwing the recent past so far back, that even Selden, as part of it, retained a certain air of unreality. And he had made it so clear that they were not to meet again, that he had merely dropped down to Nice for a day or two, and had almost his foot on the next steamer. No. That part of the past had merely surged up for a moment on the fleeing surface of events, and now that it was submerged again, the uncertainty, the apprehension, persisted. They grew to sudden acuteness as she caught sight of George Dorsett descending the steps of the Hotel de Paris, and making for her across the square. She had meant to drive down to the Quay and regain the yacht, but now she had the immediate impression that something more was to happen first. "'Which way are you going? Shall we walk a bit?' he began, putting the second question before the first was answered, and not waiting for a reply to either before he directed her silently toward the comparative seclusion of the lower gardens. She detected in him at once all the signs of extreme nervous tension. The skin was puffed out under his sunken eyes, and its saloness had paled to a leaden white against which his irregular eyebrows and long reddish mustache were relieved with a Saturnine effect. His appearance, in short, presented an odd mixture of the bedraggled and the ferocious. He walked beside her in silence, with quick precipitous steps, till they reached the embowered slopes to the east of the casino. Then, pulling up abruptly, he said, "'Have you seen Bertha?' "'No. When I left the yacht, she was not yet up.' He received this with a laugh like the whirring sound in a disabled clock. Not yet up. Had she gone to bed? Do you know at what time she came on board? This morning at seven,' he exclaimed. "'At seven,' Lily started. What happened? An accident to the train.' He laughed again. They missed the train. All the trains. They had to drive back.' "'Well?' She hesitated, feeling at once how little even this necessity accounted for the fatal lapse of hours. "'Well, they couldn't get a carriage at once. At that time of night, you know.' The explanatory note made it almost seem as though he were putting the case for his wife. And when they finally did, it was only a one-horse cab, and the horse was lame. "'How tiresome! "'I see,' she affirmed, with the more earnestness because she was so nervously conscious that she did not. And after a pause, she added, "'I'm so sorry, but ought we to have waited?' "'Waited for the one-horse cab? It would scarcely have carried the four of us, do you think?' She took this in what seemed the only possible way, with a laugh intended to sink the question itself in his humorous treatment of it. Well, it would have been difficult. We should have had to walk by turns. But it would have been jolly to see the sunrise.' "'Yes, the sunrise was jolly,' he agreed. "'Was it? You saw it, then?' "'I saw it, yes, from the deck. I waited up for them.' "'Naturally, I suppose you were worried. Why didn't you call on me to share your vigil?' He stood still, dragging at his mustache with a lean, weak hand. I don't think you would have cared for its Deignu-Mont,' he said, with sudden grimness. Again she was disconcerted by the abrupt change in his tone, and as in one flash she saw the peril of the moment, and the need of keeping her sense of it out of her eyes. Deignu-Mont! Isn't that too big a word for such a small incident? The worst of it, after all, is the fatigue which Bertha has probably slept off by this time. She clung to the note bravely, though its utility was now plain to her in the glare of his miserable eyes. "'Dote! Dote!' he broke out, with the hurt cry of a child. And while she tried to merge her sympathy, and her resolve to ignore any cause for it, in one ambiguous murmur of deprecation, he dropped down on the bench near which they had paused, and poured out the wretchedness of his soul. It was a dreadful hour—an hour from which she emerged shrinking and seared, as though her lids had been scorched by its actual glare. It was not that she had never had premonitory glimpses of such an outbreak. But rather because, here and there throughout the three months, the surface of life had shown such ominous cracks and vapours, that her fears had always been on the alert for an upheaval. There had been moments when the situation had presented itself under a homelier, yet more vivid image, that of a shaky vehicle, dashed by unbroken steeds over a bumping road, while she cowered within, aware that the harness wanted mending, and wondering what would give way first. Well, everything had given way now. And the wonder was that the crazy outfit had held together so long. Her sense of being involved in the crash, instead of merely witnessing it from the road, was intensified by the way in which Dorset, through his furies of denunciation and wild reactions of self-contempt, made her feel the need he had of her, the place she had taken in his life. But for her, what ear would have been opened to his cries? And what hand but hers could drag him up again to a footing of sanity and self-respect? All through the stress of the struggle with him, she had been conscious of something faintly maternal in her efforts to guide and uplift him. But for the present, if he clung to her, it was not in order to be dragged up, but to feel someone floundering in the depths with him. He wanted her to suffer with him, not to help him to suffer less. Happily for both there was little physical strength to sustain his frenzy. It left him, collapsed and breathing heavily, to an apathy so deep and prolonged, that Lily almost feared the passer's bio would think at the result of a seizure, and stop to offer their aid. But Monte Carlo is, of all places, the one where the human bond is least close, and odd sights are the least arresting. If a glance or two lingered on the couple, no intrusive sympathy disturbed them, and it was Lily herself who broke the silence by rising from her seat. With the clearing of her vision the sweep of peril had extended, and she saw that the post of danger was no longer at Dorset's side. If you won't go back, I must. Don't make me leave you," she urged. But he remained mutely resistant, and she added, "'What are you going to do? You really can't sit here all night.' I can go to a hotel. I can telephone my lawyers.' He sat up, roused by a new thought. "'By Jove! Seldon's at Nice. I'll send for Seldon.'" Lily, at this, receded herself with a cry of alarm. "'No, no, no!' she protested. He swung round on her distrustfully. Why not, Seldon? He's a lawyer, isn't he? One will do as well as another in a case like this. As badly as another you mean, I thought you relied on me to help you. You do, by being so sweet and patient with me. If it hadn't been for you, I'd have ended the thing long ago. But now it's got to end." He rose suddenly, straightening himself for the effort. "'You can't want to see me ridiculous.'" She looked at him kindly. "'That's just it.'" Then, after a moment's pondering, almost to her own surprise, she broke out with a flash of inspiration. "'Well, go over and see Mr. Seldon. You'll have time to do it before dinner.'" "'Oh, dinner!' he mocked her. But she left him, with the smiling rejoinder. "'Dinner on board, remember. We'll put it off till nine, if you like.'" It was past four already, and when a cab had dropped her at the key, and she stood waiting for the gig to put off for her, she began to wonder what had been happening on the yacht. Of Silverton's whereabouts there had been no mention. Had he returned to the Sabrina? Or could Bertha, the dread alternative sprang on her suddenly, could Bertha, left to herself, have gone ashore to rejoin him? Lily's heart stood still at the thought. All her concern had hitherto been for young Silverton. Not only because, in such affairs, the woman's instinct is to side with the man, but because his case made a peculiar appeal to her sympathies. He was so desperately an earnest poor youth, and his earnestness was of so different equality from Bertha's, though hers, too, was desperate enough. The difference was that Bertha was an earnest only about herself, while he was an earnest about her. But now, at the actual crisis, this difference seemed to throw the weight of destitution on Bertha's side, since at least he had her to suffer for, and she had only herself. At any rate, viewed less ideally, all the disadvantages of such a situation were for the woman, and it was to Bertha that Lily's sympathies now went out. She was not fond of Bertha Dorsett, but neither was she without a sense of obligation, the heavier for having so little personal liking to sustain it. Bertha had been kind to her. They had lived together, during the last months, on terms of easy friendship, and the sense of friction of which Lily had recently become aware, seemed to make it the more urgent that she should work undividedly in her friend's interest. It was in Bertha's interest, certainly, that she had dispatched Dorsett to consult with Laurence Selden. Once the grotesqueness of the situation accepted, she had seen at a glance that it was the safest in which Dorsett could find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the obligation. Since he would have to pull Bertha through, she could trust him to find a way. And she put the fullness of her trust in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to the key. Thus far, then, Lily felt that she had done well, and the conviction strengthened her for the task that remained. She and Bertha had never been on confidential terms, but at such a crisis, the barriers of reserve must surely fall. Dorsett's wild illusions to the scene of the morning made Lily feel that they were down already, and that any attempt to rebuild them would be beyond Bertha's strength. She pictured the poor creature shivering behind her fallen defences, and awaiting with suspense the moment when she could take refuge in the first shelter that offered. If only that shelter had not already offered itself elsewhere. As the gig traversed the short distance between the key and the yacht, Lily grew more than ever alarmed at the possible consequences of her long absence. What if the wretched Bertha, finding in all the long hours no soul to turn to? But by this time Lily's eager foot was on the side ladder, and her first step on the Sabrina showed the worst of her apprehensions to be unfounded. For there, in the luxurious shade of the after-deck, the wretched Bertha, in full command of her usual attenuated elegance, sat dispensing tea to the Duchess of Belchere and Lord Hubert. The sight filled Lily with such surprise that she felt that Bertha, at least, must read its meaning in her look, and she was proportionately disconcerted by the blankness of the look returned. But in an instant she saw that Mrs. Dorsett had, of necessity, to look blank before the others, and that to mitigate the effect of her own surprise, she must at once produce some simple reason for it. The long habit of rapid transitions made it easy for her to exclaim to the Duchess, why, I thought, she'd gone back to the princess. And this sufficed for the lady she addressed, if it was hardly enough for Lord Hubert. At least it opened the way to a lively explanation of how the Duchess was, in fact, going back the next moment, but had first rushed out to the yacht for a word with Mrs. Dorsett on the subject of to-morrow's dinner, the dinner with the Brys, to which Lord Hubert had finally insisted on dragging them. To save my neck, you know, he explained, with a glance that appealed to Lily for some recognition of his promptness, and the Duchess added with her noble candour. Mr. Brys has promised him a tip, and he says if we go he'll pass it on to us. This led to some final pleasantries, in which, as it seemed to Lily, Mrs. Dorsett bore her part with astounding bravery, and at the close of which Lord Hubert, from half-way down the side-ladder, called back with an air of numbering heads. And of course we may count on Dorsett, too. Oh, count on him! His wife assented gaily. She was keeping up well to the last, but as she turned back from waving her adieu over the side, Lily said to herself that the mask must drop, and the soul of fear look out. Mrs. Dorsett turned back slowly. After she wanted time to steady her muscles, at any rate they were still under perfect control, when, dropping once more into her seat behind the tea-table, she remarked to Miss Bart with a faint touch of irony. I suppose I ought to say good morning. If it was a cue, Lily was ready to take it, though with only the vaguest sense of what was expected of her in return. There was something unnerving in the contemplation of Mrs. Dorsett's composure, and she had to force the light tone in which she answered. I tried to see you this morning, but you were not yet up. No, I got to bed late. After we missed you at the station, I thought we ought to wait for you to the last train. She spoke very gently, but with just the least tinge of reproach. You missed us. You waited for us at the station. Now indeed Lily was too far adrift and bewilderment to measure the other's words or keep watch on her own. But I thought you didn't get to the station till after the last train had left. Mrs. Dorsett, examining her between lowered lids, met this with the immediate query. Who told you that? George! I saw him just now in the gardens. Ha! Is that George's version? Poor George! He was in no state to remember what I told him. He had one of his worst attacks this morning, and I packed him off to see the doctor. Do you know if he found him? Lily, still lost in conjecture, made no reply, and Mrs. Dorsett settled herself indolently in her seat. He'll wait to see him. He was horribly frightened about himself. It's very bad for him to be worried, and whenever anything upsetting happens, it always brings on an attack. This time Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her, but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully. Anything upsetting? Yes, such as having you so conspicuously on his hands in the small hours. You know, my dear, you're rather a big responsibility in such a scandalous place after midnight. At that, at the complete unexpectedness at the inconceivable audacity of it, Lily could not restrain the tribute of an astonished laugh. Well, really! Considering it was you who burdened him with the responsibility— Mrs. Dorsett took this with an exquisite mildness—by not having the superhuman cleverness to discover you in that frightful rush for the train, or the imagination to believe that you'd take it without us—you and he, all alone—instead of waiting quietly in the station till we did manage to meet you. Lily's colour rose. It was growing clear to her that Bertha was pursuing an object. Following a line she had marked out for herself. Only with such a doom and pending, why waste time in these childish efforts to avert it? The puerility of the attempt to disarm Lily's indignation—did it not prove how horribly the poor creature was frightened? No, by our simply all-keeping together at Nice! She returned. Coming together—when it was you who seized the first opportunity to rush off with the Duchess and her friends—my dear Lily, you are not a child to be led by the hand. No, nor to be lectured, Bertha, really, if that's what you are doing to me now. Mrs. Dorsett smiled on her reproachfully. Lecture you! I—heaven forbid!—I was merely trying to give you a friendly hint. But it's usually the other way round, isn't it? I'm expected to take hints, not to give them. I've positively lived on them all these last months. Hints? From me to you?" Lily repeated. Oh, negative ones merely! What not to be, and to do, and to see! And I think I've taken them to admiration. Only, my dear, if you'll let me say so, I didn't understand that one of my negative duties was not to warn you when you carried your imprudence too far. A chill of fear passed over Miss Bart, a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creatures attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim, You poor soul, don't double and turn, come straight back to me, and we'll find a way out. But the words died under the impenetrable insolence of Bertha's smile. Lily sat silent, taking the brunt of it quietly, letting it spend itself on her to the last drop of its accumulated falseness. Then, without a word, she rose and went down to her cabin. CHAPTER III Miss Bart's telegram caught Lawrence Selden at the door of his hotel, and having read it, he turned back to wait for Dorset. The message necessarily left large gaps for conjecture, but all that he had recently heard and seen made these but too easy to fill in. On the whole he was surprised, for though he had perceived that the situation contained all the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity, and it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case, than from a purely professional zeal that Selden resolved to guide the pair to safety. Whether in the present instance, safety for either lay in repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider. He had only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart. There was nothing specific in this apprehension. He merely wished to spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the public washing of the Dorset linen. How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more vividly after his two-hours talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as left him after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come out, and happily for his side of the case the dirty rags, however pieced together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a homogenous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit. There were missing bits. There were disparities of size and colour, all of which it was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood, the completest demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the moment all he could do was to soothe and temperize, to offer sympathy, and to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with a sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly non-committal attitude. That, in short, his share in the game consisted for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not long keep such violences in equilibrium, and he promised to meet Dorset the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile, he counted not a little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust, that in such natures follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force, and his telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injunction, assumed that everything is as usual. On this assumption, in fact, the early part of the following day was lived through. Dorset, as if in obedience to Lily's imperative bidding, had actually returned in time for a late dinner on the yacht. The repast had been the most difficult moment of the day. Dorset was sunk in one of the abysmal silences which so commonly followed on what his wife called his attacks, that it was easy, before the servants, to refer it to this cause. But Bertha herself seemed, perversely enough, little disposed to make use of this obvious means of protection. She simply left the brunt of the situation on her husband's hands, as if too absorbed in a grievance of her own to suspect that she might be the object of one herself. To Lily this attitude was the most ominous, because the most perplexing, element in the situation. As she tried to fan the weak flicker of talk, to build up, again and again, the crumbling structure of appearances, her own attention was perpetually distracted by the question, what on earth can she be driving at? There was something positively exasperating in Bertha's attitude of isolated defiance. If only she would have given her friend a hint, they might still have worked together successfully. But how could Lily be of use, while she was thus obstinately shut out from participation? To be of use was what she honestly wanted, and not for her own sake, but for the Dorsets. She had not thought of her own situation at all. She was simply engrossed in trying to put a little order in theirs. But the close of the short dreary evening left her with a sense of effort hopelessly wasted. She had not tried to see Dorset alone. She had positively shrunk from a renewal of his confidences. It was Bertha who's confident she sought, and who should as eagerly have invited her own. And Bertha, as if in the infatuation of self-destruction, was actually pushing away her rescuing hand. Lily, going to bed early, had left the couple to themselves, and it seemed part of the general mystery in which she moved, that more than an hour should elapse before she heard Bertha walk down the silent passage and regain her room. The morrow, rising on an apparent continuance of the same conditions, revealed nothing of what had occurred between the confronted pair. One fact alone outwardly proclaimed the change they were all conspiring to ignore, and that was the non-appearance of Ned Silverton. No one referred to it, and this tacit avoidance of the subject kept it in the immediate foreground of consciousness. But there was another change, perceptible only to Lily, and that was that Dorset now avoided her almost as pointedly as his wife. Perhaps he was repenting his rash outpourings of the previous day—perhaps only trying, in his clumsy way, to conform to Seldon's counsel to behave as usual. Such instructions no more make for easiness of attitude than the photographers behest to look natural. And in a creature as unconscious as poor Dorset of the appearance he habitually presented, the struggle to maintain a pose was sure to result in queer contortions. It resulted, at any rate, in throwing Lily strangely on her own resources. She had learned, on leaving her room, that Mrs. Dorset was still invisible, and that Dorset had left the yacht early, and, feeling too restless to remain alone, she too had herself ferried ashore. Straying toward the casino, she attached herself to a group of acquaintances from her niece, with whom she lunched, and in whose company she was returning to the rooms when she encountered Seldon crossing the square. She could not, at the moment, separate herself definitely from her party, who had hospitably assumed that she would remain with them till they took their departure. But she found time for a momentary pause of enquiry, to which she promptly returned. I've seen him again—he's just left me. She waited before him anxiously. Well, what has happened? What will happen? Nothing is yet, and nothing in the future, I think. It's over, then. It's settled. You're sure?" He smiled. Give me time. I'm not sure, but I'm a good deal sureer. And with that she had to contend herself, and hasten on to the expectant group on the steps. Seldon had, in fact, given her the utmost measure of his sureness, had even stretched it a shade to meet the anxiety in her eyes. And now, as he turned away, strolling down the hill toward the station, that anxiety remained with him as the visible justification of his own. It was not, indeed, anything specific that he feared. There had been a literal truth in his declaration that he did not think anything would happen. What troubled him was that, though Dorset's attitude had perceptibly changed, the change was not clearly to be accounted for. It had certainly not been produced by Seldon's arguments, or by the action of his own soberer reason. Five minutes' talk suffice to show that some alien influence had been at work, and that it had not so much subdued his resentment, as weakened his will, so that he moved under it in a state of apathy, like a dangerous lunatic who has been drugged. Temporarily, no doubt, however exerted, it worked for the general's safety. The question was how long it would last, and by what kind of reaction it was likely to be followed. On these points Seldon could gain no light, for he saw that one effect of the transformation had been to shut him off from free communion with Dorset. The latter, indeed, was still moved by the irresistible desire to discuss his wrong. But though he revolved about it with the same forlorn tenacity, Seldon was aware that something always restrained him from full expression. His state was one to produce first weariness, and then impatience in his hearer, and when their talk was over, Seldon began to feel that he had done his utmost, and might justifiably wash his hands of the sequel. It was in this mind that he had been making his way back to the station, when Miss Bart crossed his path. But though, after his brief word with her, he kept mechanically on his course, he was conscious of a gradual change in his purpose. The change had been produced by the look in her eyes, and in his eagerness to define the nature of that look, he dropped into a seat in the gardens, and sat brooding upon the question. It was natural enough, in all conscience, that she should appear anxious. A young woman placed in the close intimacy of a yachting-cruise between a couple on the verge of disaster, could hardly, aside from her concern for her friends, be insensible to the awkwardness of her own position. The worst of it was that, in interpreting Miss Bart's state of mind, so many alternative readings were possible. And one of these, in Selden's troubled mind, took the ugly form suggested by Mrs. Fisher. If the girl was afraid, was she afraid for herself, or for her friends? And to what degree was her dread of a catastrophe intensified by the sense of being fatally involved in it? The burden of offence lying manifestly with Mrs. Dorsett, this conjecture seemed on the face of it gratuitously unkind. But Selden knew that in the most one-sided matrimonial quarrel there are generally counter-charges to be brought, and that they are brought with the greater audacity where the original grievance is so emphatic. Mrs. Fisher had not hesitated to suggest the likelihood of Dorsett's marrying Miss Bart, if any thing happened. And though Mrs. Fisher's conclusions were notoriously rash, she was shrewd enough in reading the signs from which they were drawn. Dorsett had apparently shown marked interest in the girl. And this interest might be used to cruel advantage in his wife's struggle for rehabilitation. Selden knew that Bertha would fight to the last round of powder. The rashness of her conduct was illogically combined with a cold determination to escape its consequences. She could be as unscrupulous in fighting for herself as she was reckless in courting danger, and whatever came to her hand at such moments was likely to be used as a defensive missile. He did not, as yet, see clearly just what core she was likely to take. But his perplexity increased his apprehension, and with it the sense that, before leaving, he must speak again with Miss Bart. Whatever her share in the situation—and he had always honestly tried to resist judging her by her surroundings—however free she might be from any personal connection with it, she would be better out of the way of a possible crash. And since she had appealed to him for help, it was clearly his business to tell her so. This decision at last brought him to his feet, and carried him back to the gambling rooms, within whose doors he had seen her disappearing. But a prolonged exploration of the crowd failed to put him on her traces. He saw, instead, to his surprise, Ned Silverton loitering somewhat ostentatiously about the tables, and the discovery that this actor in the drama was not only hovering in the wings, but actually inviting the exposure of the footlights—though it might have seemed to imply that all peril was over—served rather to deepen the seldom sense of foreboding. Charged with this impression he returned to the square, hoping to see Miss Bart move across it, as everyone in Monte Carlo seemed inevitably to do at least a dozen times a day. But here again he waited vainly for a glimpse of her, and the conclusion was slowly forced on him that she had gone back to the Sabrina. It would be difficult to follow her there—and still more difficult, should he do so, to contrive the opportunity for a private word. And he had almost decided on the unsatisfactory alternative of writing, when the ceaseless diorama of the square suddenly unrolled before him the figures of Lord Hubert and Mrs. Brie. Hailing them at once with his question, he learned from Lord Hubert that Miss Bart had just returned to the Sabrina in Dorset's company—an announcement so evidently disconcerting to him that Mrs. Brie, after a glance from her companion, which seemed to act like the pressure on a spring, brought forth the prompt proposal that he should come and meet his friends at dinner that evening. At Becquessan's—a little dinner to the Duchess!—she flashed out before Lord Hubert had time to remove the pressure. Selden's sense of the privilege of being included in such company brought him early in the evening to the door of the restaurant, where he paused to scan the ranks of diners approaching down the brightly lit terrace. There, while the Brie's hovered within over the last agitating alternatives of the menu, he kept watch for the guests from the Sabrina, who at length rose on the horizon in company with the Duchess, Lord and Lady Skidaw, and the Stepneys. From this group it was easy for him to detach Miss Bart on the pretext of a moment's glance at one of the brilliant shops along the terrace, and to say to her, while they lingered together in the white dazzle of a jeweler's window, I stopped over to see you, to beg of you to leave the yacht. The eyes she turned on him showed a quick gleam of her former fear. To leave? What do you mean? What has happened? Nothing. But if any thing should, why be in the way of it? The glare from the jeweler's window, deepening the pallor of her face, gave to its delicate lines the sharpness of a tragic mask. Nothing will, I am sure, but while there's even a doubt left, how can you think I would leave Bertha? The words rang out on a note of contempt. Was it possibly of contempt for himself? Well, he was willing to risk its renewal to the extent of insisting, with an undeniable throb of added interest. You have yourself to think of, you know. To which, with a strange fall of sadness at her voice, she answered, meeting his eyes. If you knew how little difference that makes. Oh, well, nothing will happen, he said, more for his own reassurance than for hers. And—nothing, nothing, of course! she valiantly assented, as they turned to overtake their companions. In the thronged restaurant, taking their places about Mrs. Brie's illuminated board, their confidence seemed to gain support from the familiarity of their surroundings. Here were Dorset and his wife, once more presenting their customary faces to the world. She engrossed in establishing her relation with an intensely new gown, he shrinking with dispeptic dread from the multiplied solicitations of the menu. The mere fact that they thus showed themselves together, with the utmost openness the place afforded, seemed to declare beyond a doubt that their differences were composed. How this end had been attained was still matter for wonder, but it was clear that for the moment Miss Bart rested confidently in the result, and Selden tried to achieve the same view, by telling himself that her opportunities for observation had been ampler than his own. Meanwhile as the dinner advanced through a labyrinth of courses, in which it became clear that Mrs. Brie had occasionally broken away from Lord Hubert's restraining hand, Selden's general watchfulness began to lose itself in a particular study of Miss Bart. It was one of the days when she was so handsome, that to be handsome was enough, and all the rest—her grace, her quickness, her social felicities—seemed the overflow of a bounteous nature. But what especially struck him was the way in which she detached herself by a hundred undefinable shades from the persons who most abounded in her own style. It was in just such company, the fine flower and complete expression of the state she aspired to, that the differences came out with special poignancy, her grace cheapening the other women's smartness, as her finely discriminated silences made their chatter dull. The strain of the last hours had restored to her face the deeper eloquence which Selden had lately missed in it, and the bravery of her words to him still fluttered in her voice and eyes. Yes, she was matchless. It was the one word for her, and he could give his admiration the freer play, because so little personal feeling remained in it. His real detachment from her had taken place, not at the lured moment of disenchantment, but now, in the sober after-light of discrimination, where he saw her definitely divided from him by the crudeness of a choice which seemed to deny the very differences he felt in her. It was before him again in its completeness, the choice in which she was content to rest, in the stupid costliness of the food, and the showy dullness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit, and the freedom of act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their tables seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little dabble of the Riviera notes, emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become the role of fame. It was as the immortalizer of such occasions that little dabble wedged in modest watchfulness between two brilliant neighbors, suddenly became the centre of Selden's scrutiny. How much did he know of what was going on? And how much, for his purpose, was still worth finding out? His little eyes were like tentacles thrown out to catch the floating intimations with which, to Selden, the air at moments seemed thick. Then again it cleared to its normal emptiness, and he could see nothing in it for the journalist but leisure to note the elegance of the lady's gowns. Mrs. Dorsett's, in particular, challenged all the wealth of Mr. Selden's vocabulary. It had surprises and subtleties worthy of what he would have called the literary style. At first, as Selden had noticed, it had been almost too preoccupying to its wearer, but she was now in full command of it, and was even producing her effect with unwonted freedom. Was she not, indeed, too free, too fluent for perfect naturalness, and was not Dorsett, to whom his glance had passed by a natural transition, too jerkily wavering between the same extremes? Dorsett, indeed, was always jerky, but it seemed to Selden that tonight each vibration swung him farther from his centre. The dinner, meanwhile, was moving to its triumphant close, to the evident satisfaction of Mrs. Brie, who, throned in apoplectic majesty between Lord Skidal and Lord Hubert, seemed in spirit to be calling on Mrs. Fisher to witness her achievement. Part of Mrs. Fisher, her audience might have been called complete, for the restaurant was crowded with persons mainly gathered there for the purpose of spectatorship, and accurately posted as to the names and faces of the celebrities they had come to see. Mrs. Brie, conscious that all her feminine guests came under that heading, and that each one looked her part to admiration, shown on Lily with all the pent-up gratitude that Mrs. Fisher had failed to deserve. Selden, catching the glance, wondered what part Miss Bart had played in organizing the entertainment. She did at least a great deal to adorn it, and as he watched the bright security with which she bore herself, he smiled to think that he should have fancied her in need of help. Never had she appeared more serenely mistress of the situation, than when, at the moment of dispersal, detaching herself a little from the group about the table, she turned with a smile and a graceful slant of the shoulders, to receive her cloak from Dorset. The dinner had been protracted over Mr. Brie's exceptional cigars and a bewildering array of liqueurs, and many of the other tables were empty, but a sufficient number of diners still lingered to give relief to the leave-taking of Mrs. Brie's distinguished guests. This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the duchess and Lady Skidaw, in it farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The quality of Mrs. Brie's hospitality, and of the tips her husband had presumably imparted, lent to the manner of the English ladies a general effusiveness which shed the rosiest light over their hostess's future. In its glow Mrs. Dorset and the steppanese were also visibly included, and the whole scene had touches of intimacy worth their weight in gold to the watchful pen of Mr. Dabham. A glance at her watch caused the duchess to exclaim to her sister that they had just time to dash for their train, and the flurry of this departure over, the steppanese, who had their motor at the door, offered to convey the dorsets and Miss Bart to the key. The offer was accepted, and Mrs. Dorset moved away with her husband in attendance. Miss Bart had lingered for a last word with Lord Hubert, and Stepney, on whom Mr. Brie was pressing a final and still more expensive cigar, called out, "'Come on, Lily, if you're going back to the yacht.'" Lily turned to obey, but as she did so, Mrs. Dorset, who had paused on her way out, moved a few steps back toward the table. "'Miss Bart is not going back to the yacht,' she said in a voice of singular distinctness. A startled look ran from eye to eye. Miss Brie crimsoned to the verge of congestion. Mrs. Stepney slipped nervously behind her husband, and Selden, in the general turmoil of his sensations, was mainly conscious of longing to grip Dabham by the collar and fling him out into the street. Dorset, meanwhile, had stepped back to his wife's side. His face was white, and he looked about him with cowed, angry eyes. "'Bertha, Miss Bart—this is some misunderstanding—some mistake.' "'Miss Bart remains here,' his wife rejoined incisively, and I think George we had better not detain Mrs. Stepney any longer. "'Miss Bart, during this brief exchange of words, remained in admirable erectness, slightly isolated from the embarrassed group about her. She had paled a little under the shock of the insult, but the discomposure of the surrounding faces was not reflected in her own. The faint disdain of her smile seemed to lift her high above her antagonist's reach, and it was not till she had given Mrs. Dorset the full measure of the distance between them that she turned and extended her hand to her hostess. "'I am joining the duchess to-morrow,' she explained, and it seemed easier for me to remain on shore for the night.' She held firmly to Mrs. Brie's wavering eye while she gave this explanation. But when it was over, Selden saw her send a tentative glance from one to another of the women's faces. She read their incredulity in their averted looks, and in the mute wretchedness of the men behind them, and for a miserable half-second he thought she quivered on the brink of failure. Then, turning to him with an easy gesture, and the pale bravery of her recovered smile, "'Dear Mr. Selden,' she said, "'you promised to see me to my cab.'" Outside the sky was gusty and overcast, and as Lily and Selden moved toward the deserted gardens below the restaurant, spurts of warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. The fiction of the cab had been tacitly abandoned. They walked on in silence, her hand on his arm, till the deeper shade of the gardens received them, and pausing beside a bench, he said, "'Sit down a moment.'" She dropped to the seat without answering, but the electric lamp at the bend of the path shed a gleam on the struggling misery of her face. Selden sat down beside her, waiting for her to speak, fearful lest any word he chose should touch too roughly on her wound, and kept also from free utterance by the wretched doubt which had slowly renewed itself within him. What had brought her to this pass? What weakness had placed her so abominably at her enemy's mercy? And why should Bertha Dorsett have turned into an enemy at the very moment when she so obviously needed the support of her sex? Even while his nerves raged at the subjection of husbands to their wives, and at the cruelty of women to their kind, reason obstinately harped on the proverbial relation between smoke and fire. The memory of Mrs. Fisher's hints, and the corroboration of his own impressions, while they deepened his pity also increased his constraint, since, whichever way he sought of free outlet for sympathy, it was blocked by the fear of committing a blunder. Suddenly it struck him that his silence must seem almost as accusatory as that of the men he had despised for turning from her, but before he could find the fitting word she had cut him short with a question. Do you know of a quiet hotel? I can send for my maid in the morning. And hotel, here, that you can go to alone! It's not possible. She met this with a pale gleam of her old playfulness. What is, then? It's too wet to sleep in the gardens. But there must be some one, some one to whom I can go. Of course, any number, but at this hour, you see my change of plan was rather sudden. Good God, if you'd listened to me! he cried, venting his helplessness in a burst of anger. She still held him off with the gentle mockery of her smile. But haven't I, she rejoined, you advised me to leave the yacht, and I'm leaving it. He saw, then, with a pang of self-approach, that she meant neither to explain nor to defend herself, that by his miserable silence he had forfeited all chance of helping her, and that the decisive hour was passed. She had risen, and stood before him in a kind of clouded majesty, like some deposed princess moving tranquilly to exile. Lillie, he exclaimed, with a note of despairing appeal, but—how not now?—she gently admonished him. And then, in all the sweetness of her recovered composure—since I must find shelter somewhere, and since you are so kindly here to help me—he gathered himself up at the challenge. You will do as I tell you. There's but one thing, then. You must go straight to your cousins, the steppnees. Oh! broke from her with a movement of instinctive resistance, but he insisted. Come! It's late, and you must appear to have gone there directly. He had drawn her hand into his arm, but she held him back with the last jester of protest. I can't. I can't. Not that. You don't know when. You mustn't ask me. I must ask you. You must obey me," he persisted, though infected at heart by her own fear. Her voice sank to a whisper, and if she refuses—but—oh, trust me! Trust me! She could only insist in return. And yielding to his touch, she let him lead her back in silence to the edge of the square. In the cab they continued to remain silent through the brief drive which carried them to the illuminated portals of the steppnees' hotel. Here he left her outside, in the darkness of the raised hood, while his name was sent up to steppne, and he paced the showy hall, awaiting the latter's descent. Ten minutes later the two men passed out together between the gold-laced custodians of the threshold, but in the vestibule Steppne drew up with the last flair of reluctance. It's understood, then, he stipulated nervously with his hand on Seldon's arm. She leaves to-morrow by the early train, and my wife's asleep, and can't be disturbed. End of CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV The blinds of Mrs. Peniston's drawing-room were drawn down against the oppressive June Sun, and in the sultry twilight the faces of her assembled relatives took on a fitting shadow of bereavement. They were all there—van Allsteins, steppnees, and melsons—even a stray Peniston or two—indicating by a greater latitude in dress and manner the fact of remota relationship and more settled hopes. The Peniston side was, in fact, secure in the knowledge that the bulk of Mr. Peniston's authority went back, while the direct connection hung suspended on the disposal of his wife's private fortune, and on the uncertainty of its extent. Jack Steppne, in his new character as the richest nephew, tacitly took the lead, emphasizing his importance by the deeper gloss of his mourning, and the subdued authority of his manner, while his wife's bored attitude and frivolous gown proclaimed the heiress's disregard of the insignificant interests at stake. Old Ned Van Allstein, seated next to her in a coat that made affliction dapper, twirled his white moustache to conceal the eager twitch of his lips, and Grace Steppne, red-nosed and smelling of crepe, whispered emotionally to Mrs. Herbert Melson. I couldn't bear to see the Niagara anywhere else. A rustle of weeds and quick turning of heads hailed the opening of the door, and Lily Bart appeared, tall and noble in her black dress, with dirty fairs at her side. The women's faces, as she paused interrogatively on the threshold, were a study in hesitation. One or two made faint motions of recognition, which might have been subdued either by the solemnity of the scene, or by the doubt as to how far the others meant to go. Mrs. Jack Steppne gave a careless nod, and Grace Steppne, with a sepulchral gesture, waited to seat at her side. But Lily, ignoring the invitation, as well as Jack Steppne's official attempt to direct her, moved across the room with her smooth free gate, and seated herself in a chair which seemed to have been purposely placed apart from the others. It was the first time that she had faced her family since her return from Europe two weeks earlier. But if she perceived any uncertainty in their welcome, it served only to add a tinge of irony to the usual composure of her bearing. The shock of dismay with which, on the dock, she had heard from dirty ferris of Mrs. Peniston's sudden death, had been mitigated almost at once by the irrepressible thought that now, at least, she would be able to pay her debts. She had looked forward with considerable uneasiness to her first encounter with her aunt. Mrs. Peniston had vehemently opposed her niece's departure with the Dorsets, and had marked her continual disapproval by not writing during Lily's absence. The certainty that she had heard of the rupture with the Dorsets made the prospect of the meeting more formidable. And how should Lily have repressed a quick sense of relief at the thought that, instead of undergoing the anticipated ordeal, she had only to enter gracefully on a long assured inheritance? It had been, in the consecrated phrase, always understood that Mrs. Peniston was to provide handsomely of her niece, and in the latter's mind the understanding had long since crystallized into fact. She gets everything, of course. I don't see what we're here for! Mrs. Jack Stepney remarked with careless loudness to Ned Van Allstein, and the latter's deprecating murmur—Julia was always a just woman—might have been interpreted as signifying either acquiescence or doubt. Well, it's only about four hundred thousand, Mrs. Stepney rejoined with a yawn, and Grace Stepney in the silence produced by the lawyer's preliminary cough was heard to sob out. They won't find a towel missing. I went over them with her the very day. Lily, oppressed by the close atmosphere, and the stifling odor of fresh mourning, felt her attention straying as Mrs. Peniston's lawyer, solemnly erect behind the buule table at the end of the room, began to rattle through the preamble of the will. It's like being in church, she reflected, wondering vaguely where Gwen Stepney had got such an awful hat. Then she noticed how stout Jack had grown. He would soon be almost as plethoric as Herbert Melson, who sat a few feet off, breathing puffily as he leaned his black-gloved hands on his stick. I wonder why rich people always grow fat. I suppose it's because there's nothing to worry them. If I inherit, I shall have to be careful of my figure," she mused, while the lawyer droned on through labyrinth of legacies. The servants came first, then a few charitable institutions, then several remotor Melson's and Stepney's, who stirred consciously as their names rang out, and then subsided into a state of impassiveness befitting the solemnity of the occasion. Ned Van Allstein, Jack Stepney, and a cousin or two followed, each coupled with the mention of a few thousands. Lily wondered that Grace Stepney was not among them. Then she heard her own name. To my niece Lily Bart, ten thousand dollars. And after that the lawyer again lost himself in a coil of unintelligible periods, from which the concluding phrase flashed out with startling distinctness, and the residue of my estate to my dear cousin and namesake, Grace Julia Stepney. There was a subdued gasp of surprise, a rapid turning of heads, and a surging of sable figures toward the corner in which Miss Stepney wailed out her sense of unworthiness through the crumpled ball of a black-edged handkerchief. Lily stood apart from the general movement, feeling herself for the first time utterly alone. No one looked at her. No one seemed aware of her presence. She was probing the very depths of insignificance. And under her sense of the collective indifference came the acuter pang of hopes deceived. Disinherited. She had been disinherited. And for Grace Stepney. She met Girdy's lamentable eyes, fixed on her in a despairing effort at consolation, and the look brought her to herself. There was something to be done before she left the house, to be done with all the nobility she knew how to put into such a gesture. She advanced to the group about Miss Stepney, and holding out her hand said simply, "'Dear Grace, I am so glad.'" The other ladies had fallen back at her approach, and a space created itself about her. She widened as she turned to go, and no one advanced to fill it up. She paused a moment, glancing about her, calmly taking the measure of her situation. She heard someone ask a question about the date of the will. She caught a fragment of the lawyer's answer, something about a sudden summons and an earlier instrument. Then the tide of dispersal began to drift past her. Mrs. Jack Stepney and Mrs. Herbert Melson stood on the doorstep awaiting their motor. A sympathizing group escorted Grace Stepney to the cab it was felt to be fitting she should take, though she lived but a street or two away, and Miss Bart and Gertie found themselves almost alone in the purple drawing-room, which more than ever, in its stuffy dimness, resembled a well-kept family vault, in which the last corpse had just been decently deposited. In Gertie Farsh's sitting-room, whither a handsome had carried the two friends, Lily dropped into a chair with a faint sound of laughter. It struck her as a humorous coincidence that her aunt's legacy should so nearly represent the amount of her debt to Trenor. The need of discharging that debt had reasserted itself with increased urgency since her return to America, and she spoke her first thought and saying to the anxiously hovering Gertie, I wonder when the legacies will be paid. But Miss Farsh could not pause over the legacies. She broke into a larger indignation. Oh, Lily, it's unjust! It's cruel! Grace Stepney must feel she has no right to all that money. Anyone who knew how to please Aunt Julia has a right to her money. Miss Bart rejoined philosophically. But she was devoted to you. She led everyone to think. Gertie checked herself in evident embarrassment, and Miss Bart turned to her with a direct look. Gertie, be honest, this will was made only six weeks ago. She had heard of my break with the Dorsets. Everyone heard, of course, that there had been some disagreement, some misunderstanding. Did she hear that Bertha turned me off the yacht? Lily! That was what happened, you know. She said I was trying to marry George Dorset. She did it to make him think she was jealous. Isn't that what she told Gwen Stepney? I don't know. I don't listen to such horrors. I must listen to them. I must know where I stand. She paused, and again sounded a faint note of derision. Did you notice the women? They were afraid to snub me while they thought I was going to get the money. Afterward they scuttled off as if I had the plague. Gertie remained silent, and she continued, I stayed on to see what would happen. They took their cue from Gwen Stepney and Lulu Melson. I saw them watching to see what Gwen would do. Gertie, I must know just what is being said of me. I tell you, I don't listen. One hears such things without listening. She rose and laid her resolute hands on Miss Verish's shoulders. Gertie, are people going to cut me? You're friends, Lily! How can you think it? Who are one's friends at such a time? Who but you, you poor, trustful darling, and heaven knows what you suspect me of? She kissed Gertie with a whimsical murmur. You'd never let it make any difference. But then you're fond of criminals, Gertie. How about the irreclaimable ones, though? For I'm absolutely impenitent, you know. She drew herself up to the full height of her slender majesty, towering like some dark angel of defiance above the troubled Gertie, who could only fault her out. Lily! Lily! How can you laugh about such things? So as not to weep, perhaps. But no, I'm not of the tearful order. I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes. She took a restless turn about the room, and then, receding herself, lifted the bright mockery of her eyes to Gertie's anxious countenance. I shouldn't have minded you, now, if I'd got the money. And at misfarishest protesting, oh! She repeated calmly, not a straw, my dear, for in the first place they wouldn't have quite dared to ignore me, and if they had it wouldn't have mattered, because I should have been independent of them. But now—the irony faded from her eyes, and she bent a clouded face upon her friend. How can you talk so, Lily? Of course the money ought to have been yours, but after all, that makes no difference. The important thing—Gertie paused, and then continued firmly—the important thing is that you should clear yourself, should tell your friends the whole truth. The whole truth—Miss Bart laughed—what is truth? Where a woman is concerned, the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorsett's story than mine, because she has a big house, and an opera-box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her. Miss Farish still fixed her with an anxious gaze. But what is your story, Lily? I don't believe any one knows it yet. My story—I don't believe I know it myself. You see, I never thought of preparing a version in advance, as Bertha did, and if I had I don't think I should take the trouble to use it now. But Gertie continued with her quiet reasonableness. I don't want a version prepared in advance, but I want you to tell me exactly what happened from the beginning. From the beginning? Miss Bart gently mimicked her. Dear Gertie, how little imagination you good people have! Why the beginning was in my cradle, I suppose, in the way I was brought up, and the things I was taught to care for. Or no. I won't blame anybody for my faults. I'll say it was in my blood that I got it from some wicked, pleasure-loving ancestralist who reacted against the homely virtues of New Amsterdam, and wanted to be back at the court of the Charleses. And as Miss Farish continued to press her with troubled eyes, she went on impatiently. You asked me just now for the truth. Well the truth about any girl is that once she's talked about, she's done for, and the more she explains her case, the worse it looks. My good Gertie, you don't happen to have a cigarette about you. In her stuffy room in the hotel to which she had gone on landing, Lily Bart that evening reviewed her situation. It was the last week in June, and none of her friends were in town. The few relatives who had stayed on, or returned, for the reading of Mrs. Peniston's will, had taken flight again that afternoon to Newport or Long Island, and not one of them had made any proffer of hospitality to Lily. For the first time in her life she found herself utterly alone except for Gertie Farish. Even at the actual moment of her break with the Dorsets, she had not so keen a sense of its consequences. For the Duchess of Belchere, hearing of the catastrophe from Lord Hubert, had instantly offered her protection, and under her sheltering wing Lily had made an almost triumphant progress to London. There she had been sorely tempted to linger on in a society which asked of her only to amuse and charm it, without inquiring too curiously how she had acquired her gift for doing so. But Selden, before they parted, had pressed on her the urgent need of returning it once to her aunt, and Lord Hubert, when he presently reappeared in London, abounded in the same council. Lily did not need to be told that the Duchess's companionship was not the best road to social rehabilitation, and as she was besides aware that her noble defender might at any moment drop her, in favour of a new protégé. She reluctantly decided to return to America. But she had not been ten minutes on her native shore before she realised that she had delayed too long to regain it. The Dorsets, the Stepneys, the Brise, all the actors and witnesses in the miserable drama had preceded her with their version of the case, and even had she seen the least chance of gaining a hearing for her own, some obscure disdain and reluctance would have restrained her. She knew it was not by explanations and countercharges that she could ever hope to recover her lost standing. But even had she felt the least trust in their efficacy, she would still have been held back by the feeling which had kept her from defending herself to Gertie Farrish, a feeling that was half pride and half humiliation. For though she knew she had been ruthlessly sacrificed to Bertha Dorset's determination to win back her husband, and though her own relation to Dorset had been that of the merest good fellowship, yet she had been perfectly aware from the outset that her part in the affair was, as Carrie Fisher had brutally put it, to distract Dorset's attention from his wife. That was what she was there for—it was the price she had chosen to pay for three months of luxury and freedom from care. Her habit of resolutely facing the facts, in her rare moments of introspection, did not now allow her to put any false gloss on the situation. She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure. She saw, too, in the same uncompromising light, the train of consequences resulting from that failure, and these became clearer to her with every day of her weary lingering in town. She stayed on partly for the comfort of Gertie Farrish's nearness, and partly for lack of knowing where to go. She understood well enough the nature of the task before her. She must set out to regain, little by little, the position she had lost, and the first step in the tedious task was to find out, as soon as possible, on how many of her friends she could count. Her hopes were mainly centred on Mrs. Trenner, who had treasures of easy-going tolerance for those who were amusing or useful to her, and in the noisy rush of whose existence the still small voice of detraction was slow to make itself heard. But Judy, though she must have been apprised of Miss Bart's return, had not even recognized it by the formal note of condolence which her friend's bereavement demanded. Any advance on Lily's side might have been perilous. There was nothing to do but to trust to the happy chance of an accidental meeting, and Lily knew that, even so late in the season, there was always a hope of running across her friends in their frequent passages through town. To this end she assiduously showed herself at the restaurants they frequented, where, extended by the troubled Gertie, she lunched luxuriously, as she said, on her expectations. "'My dear Gertie, you wouldn't have me let the head-waiters see that I have nothing to live on but Aunt Julia's legacy. Think of Grace Stepney's satisfaction if she came in and found us lunching on cold mutton and tea. What sweet shall we have to-day, dear? Coupe Jacques or Peche à la Melba?' She dropped the menu abruptly, with a quick heightening of color, and Gertie, following her glance, was aware of the advance from an inner room of a party headed by Mrs. Trenner and Carrie Fisher. It was impossible for these ladies and their companions, among whom Lily had at once distinguished both Trenner and Rosdale, not to pass, in going out, the table at which the two girls were seated, and Gertie's sense of the fact betrayed itself in the helpless trepidation of her manner. Miss Bart, on the contrary, borne forward on the wave of her buoyant grace, and neither shrinking from her friends nor appearing to lie and wait for them, gave to the encounter the touch of naturalness which she could impart to the most strained situations. Such embarrassment as was shown on Mrs. Trenner's side, and manifested itself in the mingling of exaggerated warmth with imperceptible reservations. Her loudly affirmed pleasure at seeing Miss Bart took the form of a nebulous generalization, which included neither enquiries as to her future, nor the expression of a definite wish to see her again. Lily, well versed in the language of these emissions, knew that they were equally intelligible to the other members of the party. Even Rosdale, flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenner's cordiality, and reflected it in his offhand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenner, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext of a word to say to the head waiter, and the rest of the group soon melted away in Mrs. Trenner's wake. It was over in a moment, the waiter, menu in hand, still hung on the result of the choice between Kupchak and Pechalamelba, but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy Trenner led, all the world would follow, and Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sales. In a flash she remembered Mrs. Trenner's complaints of Carrie Fisher's rapacity, and saw that they denoted an unexpected acquaintance with her husband's private affairs. In the large tumultuous disorder of the life at Bellamont, where no one seemed to have time to observe anyone else, and private aims and personal interests were swept along unheeded in the rush of collective activities, Lily had fancied herself sheltered from inconvenient scrutiny. But if Judy knew when Mrs. Fisher borrowed money of her husband, was she likely to ignore the same transaction on Lily's part? She was careless of his affections, she was plainly jealous of his pocket, and in that fact Lily read the explanation of her rebuff. The immediate result of these conclusions was the passionate resolve to pay back her debt to Trenner. That obligation discharged, she would have but a thousand dollars of Mrs. Penison's legacy left, and nothing to live on but her own small income, which was considerably less than Gertie Farsh's wretched pittance, but this consideration gave way to the imperative claim of her wounded pride. She must be quits with the Trenner's first. After that she would take thought for the future. In her ignorance of legal procrastinations, she had supposed that her legacy would be paid over within a few days of the reading of her aunt's will, and after an interval of anxious suspense, she wrote to inquire the cause of the delay. There was another interval before Mrs. Penison's lawyer, who was also one of the executors, replied to the effect that, some questions having arisen relative to the interpretation of the will, he and his associates might not be in a position to pay the legacies to the close of the twelve months legally allotted for their settlement. Bewildered and indignant, Lily resolved to try the effect of a personal appeal, but she returned from her expedition with a sense of the powerlessness of beauty and charm against the unfeeling processes of the law. It seemed intolerable to live on for another year under the weight of her debt, and in her extremity she decided to turn to Miss Stepney, who still lingered in town, immersed in the delectable duty of going over her benefactress's effects. It was bitter enough, furloughly, to ask a favour of Grace Stepney, but the alternative was bitterer still, and one morning she presented herself at Mrs. Penison's, where Grace, for the facilitation of her pious task, had taken up a provisional abode. The strangeness of entering as a suppliant the house where she had so long commanded, increased Lily's desire to shorten the ordeal, and when Miss Stepney entered the darkened drawing-room, rustling with the best quality of crepe, her visitor went straight to the point, would she be willing to advance the amount of the expected legacy? Grace, in reply, wept and wondered at the request, bemoaned the inexorableness of the law, and was astonished that Lily had not realised the exact similarity of their positions. Did she think that only the payment of the legacies had been delayed? Why Miss Stepney herself had not received a penny of her inheritance, and was paying rent? Yes, actually, for the privilege of living in a house that belonged to her. She was sure it was not what poor dear cousin Julia would have wished. She had told the executors so to their faces, but they were inaccessible to reason, and there was nothing to do but wait. Let Lily take an example by her, and be patient. Let them both remember how beautifully patient cousin Julia had always been. Lily made a movement which showed her imperfect assimilation of this example. But you will have everything, Grace. It would be easy for you to borrow ten times the amount I am asking for. Borrow. Easy for me to borrow. Grace Stepney rose up before her in sable wrath. Do you imagine for a moment that I would raise money on my expectations from cousin Julia, when I know so well her unspeakable horror of every transaction of the sort? Why, Lily, if you must know the truth, it was the idea of your being in debt that brought on her illness. You remember she had a slight attack before you sailed. Oh, I don't know the particulars, of course. I don't want to know them. But there were rumours about your affairs that made her most unhappy. No one could be with her without seeing that. I can't help it if you are offended by my telling you this now. If I can do anything to make you realize the folly of your course, and how deeply she disapproved of it, I shall feel it is the truest way of making up to you for her loss. End of Chapter 4. Book 2, Chapter 5 of the House of Merth. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elizabeth Clett. The House of Merth by Edith Wharton. Book 2, Chapter 5. It seemed to Lily, as Mrs. Peniston's door closed on her, that she was taking a final leave of her old life. The future stretched before her dull and bare as the deserted length of Fifth Avenue, and opportunities showed as meagerly as the few cabs trailing in quest of fares that did not come. The completeness of the analogy was, however, disturbed as she reached the sidewalk by the rapid approach of a handsome which pulled up at sight of her. From beneath its luggage laid on top she caught the wave of a signalling hand, and the next moment Mrs. Fisher, springing to the street, had folded her in a demonstrative embrace. "'My dear, you don't mean to say you're still in town. When I saw you the other day at Sherry's I didn't have time to ask.' She broke off, and added with a burst of frankness. The truth is, I was horrid, Lily, and I've wanted to tell you so ever since.' "'Oh,' Miss Bart protested, drawing back from her penitent clasp, but Mrs. Fisher went on with her usual directness. "'Look here, Lily, don't let speed about the bush. Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any. That's not my way, and I can only say I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself for following the other woman's lead. But we'll talk of that by and by. Tell me now where you're staying, and what your plans are. I don't suppose you're keeping house in there with Grace Stepnie, eh? And it struck me you might be rather at loose ends.' In Lily's present mood there was no resisting the honest friendliness of this appeal, and she said with a smile. "'I am at loose ends for the moment, but Gertie Fairish is still in town, and she's good enough to let me be with her whenever she can spare the time.' Mrs. Fisher made a slight grimace. "'Hm. That's a temperate joy. Oh, I know, Gertie's a trump, and worth all the rest of us put together. But all along you're used to a little higher seasoning, aren't you, dear? And besides, I suppose she'll be off herself before long. The first of August, you say. Well, look here, you can't spend your summer in town. We'll talk of that later, too. But meanwhile, what do you say to putting a few things in a trunk and coming down with me to the Sam Gormers to-night?' And as Lily stared at the breathless suddenness in the suggestion, she continued with her easy laugh. "'You don't know them, and they don't know you, but that don't make a wrap of difference. They've taken the Van Allstine place at Roslyn, and I've got carte blanche to bring my friends down there, the more the merrier. They do things awfully well, and there's to be rather a jolly party there this week.' She broke off, checked by an undefinable change in Miss Bart's expression. "'Oh, I don't mean your particular set, you know—rather a different crowd, but very good fun. The fact is, the Gormers have struck out on a line of their own. What they want is to have a good time, and to have it in their own way. They gave the other thing a few months' trial, under my distinguished auspices, and they were really doing extremely well, getting on a good deal faster than the Brise, just because they didn't care as much. But suddenly they decided the whole business bored them, and that what they wanted was a crowd they could really feel at home with. Rather original of them, don't you think so? Lady Gormer has got aspirations still—women always have—but she's awfully easy-going, and Sam won't be bothered, and they both like to be the most important people in sight, so they've started a sort of continuous performance of their own, a kind of social coney-island, where everybody is welcome who can make noise enough and doesn't put on airs. I think it's awfully good fun myself—some of the artistic set, you know, any pretty actress that's going, and so on. This week, for instance, they have Audrey Anstell, who made such a hit last spring in the winning of Winnie, and Paul Morpeth—he's painting Maddie Gormer—and the Dick Bellingers, and Kate Corby—well, everyone you can think of who's jolly and makes a row. Now don't stand there with your nose in the air, my dear—it will be a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town, and you'll find clever people as well as noisy ones—Morpeth, who admires Maddie enormously, always brings one or two of his set. Mrs. Fisher drew Lily toward the handsome with friendly authority. Jump in now, there's a deer, and we'll drive round to your hotel and have your things packed, and then we'll have tea, and the two maids can meet us at the train. It was a good deal better than a broiling Sunday in town. Of that, no doubt remained to Lily, as reclining in the shade of a leafy veranda, she looked seaward across a stretch of greensward, picturesquely dotted with groups of ladies in lace raiment, and men in tennis flannels. The huge Van Allstein house, and its rambling dependencies, were packed to their fullest capacity with the Gormer's weekend guests, who now, in the radiance of the Sunday forenoon, were dispersing themselves over the grounds in quest of the various distractions the place afforded—distractions ranging from tennis courts to shooting galleries, from bridge and whiskey within doors, to motors and steam-launches without. Lily had the odd sense of having been caught up into the crowd as carelessly as a passenger is gathered in by an express train. The blonde and genial Mrs. Gormer might, indeed, have figured the conductor, calmly assigning seats to the rush of travellers, while Carrie Fisher represented the porter pushing their bags into place, giving them their numbers for the dining-car, and warning them when their station was at hand. The train, meanwhile, had scarcely slackened speed. Life whizzed on with a deafening rattle and roar, in which one traveller at least found a welcome refuge from the sound of her own thoughts. The Gormer milieu represented a social outskirt which Lily had always fastidiously avoided. But it struck her, now that she was in it, as only a flamboyant copy of her own world, a caricature approximating the real thing as the society play approaches the manners of the drawing-room. The people about her were doing the same things as the Trenners, the Van Osbergs and the Dorsets. The difference lay in a hundred shades of aspect and manner, from the pattern of the men's waist-coats to the inflection of the women's voices. Everything was pitched the higher key, and there was more of each thing, more noise, more colour, more champagne, more familiarity, but also greater good-nature, less rivalry, and a fresher capacity for enjoyment. This part's arrival had been welcomed with an uncritical friendliness that first irritated her pride, and then brought her to a sharp sense of her own situation—of the place in life which, for the moment, she must accept and make the best of. These people knew her story. Of that, her first long talk with Carrie Fisher had left no doubt. She was publicly branded as the heroine of a queer episode. But instead of shrinking from her as her own friends had done, they received her without question into the easy promiscuity of their lives. They swallowed her past as easily as they did Miss Anstles, and with no apparent sense of any difference in the size of the mouthful. All they asked was that she should, in her own way, for they recognized a diversity of gifts, contribute as much to the general amusement as that graceful actress, whose talents, when off the stage, were of the most varied order. Lily felt at once that any tendency to be stuck up, to mark a sense of differences and distinctions, would be fatal to her continuance in the Gormer set. To be taken in on such terms, and into such a world, was hard enough to lingering pride in her. But she realized with a pang of self-contempt, that to be excluded from it would, after all, be harder still. For almost at once, she had felt the insidious charm of slipping back into a life where every material difficulty was smoothed away. The sudden escape from a stifling hotel in a dusty, deserted city, to the space and luxury of a great country house fanned by sea breezes, had produced a state of moral lassitude, agreeable enough after the nervous tension and physical discomfort of the past weeks. For the moment she must yield to the refreshment her senses craved. After that she would reconsider her situation, and take counsel with her dignity. Her enjoyment of her surroundings was, indeed, tinged by the unpleasant consideration, that she was accepting the hospitality, and courting the approval of people she had disdained under other conditions. But she was growing less sensitive on such points. A hard glaze of indifference was fast forming over her delicacies and susceptibilities, and each concession to expediency hardened the surface a little more. On the Monday, when the party disbanded with uproya sedue, the return to town threw into stronger relief the charms of the life she was leaving. The other guests were dispersing to take up the same existence in a different setting, some at Newport, some at Bar Harbor, some in the elaborate rusticity of an Adirondack camp. Even Gertie Farrish, who welcomed Lily's return with tender solicitude, would soon be preparing to join the aunt with whom she spent her summers on Lake George. Only Lily herself remained without plan or purpose, stranded in a backwater of the great current of pleasure. But Carrie Fisher, who had insisted on transporting her to her own house, where she herself was to perch for a day or two on the way to the Brice camp, came to the rescue with a new suggestion. Look here, Lily, I'll tell you what it is. I want you to take my place with Maddie Gormer this summer. They're taking a party out to Alaska next month in their private car, and Maddie, who is the laziest woman alive, wants me to go with them, and relieve her of the bother of arranging things. But the Brice won't be, too. Oh yes, we've made it up, didn't I tell you? And to put it frankly, though I like the Gormer's best, there is more profit for me in the Brice. The fact is, they want to try and newport this summer, and if I can make it a success for them, they—well, they'll make it a success for me." Mrs. Fisher clasped her hands enthusiastically. Do you know, Lily, the more I think of my idea, the better I like it, quite as much for you as for myself, the Gormer's have both taken a tremendous fancy to you, and the trip to Alaska is—well, the very thing I should want for you just at present. Miss Bart lifted her eyes with a keen glance. "'To take me out of my friend's way, you mean,' she said quietly, and Mrs. Fisher responded with a deprecating kiss, to keep you out of their sight till they realize how much they miss you." Miss Bart went with the Gormers to Alaska, and the expedition, if it did not produce the effect anticipated by her friend, had at least the negative advantage of removing her from the fiery centre of criticism and discussion. Gertie Ferrish had opposed the plan with all the energy of her somewhat inarticulate nature. She had even offered to give up her visit to Lake George, and remain in town with Miss Bart, if the latter would renounce her journey, but Lily could disguise her real distaste for this plan under a sufficiently valid reason. "'You dear innocent, don't you see,' she protested, "'that Carrie is quite right, and that I must take up my usual life, and go about among people as much as possible. If my old friends choose to believe lies about me, I shall have to make new ones, that's all. And you know beggars mustn't be choosers. Not that I don't like Maddie Gormer. I do like her. She's kind and honest and unaffected. And don't you suppose I feel grateful to her for making me welcome at a time when, as you've yourself seen, my own family have unanimously washed their hands of me?' Gertie shook her head, mutely unconvinced. She felt not only that Lily was cheapening herself by making use of an intimacy she would never have cultivated from choice, but that, in drifting back now to her former manner of life, she was forfeiting her last chance of ever escaping from it. Gertie had but an obscure conception of what Lily's actual experience had been. But its consequences had established a lasting hold on her pity since the memorable night, when she had offered up her own secret hope to her friend's extremity. To characters like Gertie such a sacrifice constitutes a moral claim on the part of the person in whose behalf it has been made. Having once helped Lily, she must continue to help her. And helping her must believe in her, because faith is the mainspring of such natures. But even if Miss Bart, after her renewed taste of the amenities of life, could have returned to the bareness of a New York August, mitigated only by poor Gertie's presence, her worldly wisdom would have counseled her against such an act of abnegation. She knew that Carrie Fisher was right, that an opportune absence might be the first step toward rehabilitation, and that, at any rate, to linger on in town out of season was a fatal admission of defeat. From the gormers tumultuous progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view of her situation. The renewed habit of luxury, the daily waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material ease, gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void they could not fill. Maddie Gormers' undiscriminating good nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other, all these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her endurance, and the more she sought to criticize in her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them. The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea, but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her pride. These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to cling to her hosts up their return from Alaska. Little as she was in the key of their milieu, her immense social facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer Group. If their resonant hilarity could never be hers, she contributed a note of easy elegance more valuable to Maddie Gormer than the louder passages of the band. Sam Gormer and a special crony stood indeed a little in awe of her, but Maddie's following, headed by Paul Morpeth, made her feel that they prized her for the very qualities they most conspicuously lacked. If Morpeth, whose social indolence was as great as his artistic activity, had abandoned himself to the easy current of the Gormer existence, where the minor exactions of politeness were unknown or ignored, and a man could either break his engagements or keep them in painting-jacket and slippers, he still preserved his sense of differences, and his appreciation of grace as he had no time to cultivate. During the preparations for the Brice Tableau, he had been immensely struck by Lily's plastic possibilities. Not the face, too self-controlled for expression, but the rest of her, gagged what a model she'd make. And though his abhorrence of the world in which she had seen her was too great for him to think of seeking her there, he was fully alive to the privilege of having her to look at and listen to, while he lounged in Maddie Gormer's disheveled drawing-room. Lily had thus formed, in the tumult of her surroundings, a little nucleus of friendly relations, which mitigated the crudeness of her course in lingering with the Gormers after their return. Nor was she without pale glimpses of her own world, especially since the breaking up of the Newport season had set the social current once more toward Long Island. Kate Corby, whose tates made her as promiscuous as Carrie Fisher, was rendered by her necessities, occasionally descended on the Gormers, where, after a first stare of surprise, she took Lily's presence almost too much as a matter of course. Mrs. Fisher, too, appearing frequently in the neighborhood, drove over to impart her experiences and give Lily what she called the latest report from the Weather Bureau, and the latter, who had never directly invited her confidence, could yet talk with her more freely than with Gertie Farish, in whose presence it was impossible even to admit the existence of much that Mrs. Fisher conveniently took for granted. Mrs. Fisher, moreover, had no embarrassing curiosity. She did not wish to probe the inwardness of Lily's situation, but simply to view it from the outside, and draw her conclusions accordingly. And these conclusions, at the end of a confidential talk, she summed up to her friend in the succinct remarked, "'You must marry as soon as you can.'" Lily uttered a faint laugh, for once Mrs. Fisher lacked originality. "'Do you mean, like Gertie Farish, to recommend the unfailing panacea of a good man's love?' "'No. I don't think either of my candidates would answer to that description,' said Mrs. Fisher, after a pause of reflection. "'Either. Are there actually two?' "'Well, perhaps I ought to say one-and-a-half, for the moment.'" Miss Bart received this with increasing amusement. "'Other things being equal, I think I should prefer a half-husband. Who is he?' "'Don't fly out of me till you hear my reasons.'" George dorset. Oh! Lily murmured reproachfully, but Mrs. Fisher pressed on, unrebuffed. "'Well, why not? They had a few weeks' honeymoon when they first got back from Europe, but now things are going badly with them again. Bertha has been behaving more than ever like a madwoman, and George's powers of credulity are very nearly exhausted. They're at their place here, you know, and I spent last Sunday with them. It was a ghastly party. No one else but poor Nettie Silverton, who looks like a galley slave, they used to talk of my making that poor boy unhappy, and after lunch in George carried me off on a long walk, and told me the end would have to come soon.'" Miss Bart made an incredulous gesture. "'As far as that goes, the end will never come. I will always know how to get him back when she wants him.'" Mrs. Fisher continued to observe her tentatively. "'Not if he has any one else to turn to. Yes, that's just what it comes to. The poor creature can't stand alone, and I remember him such a good fellow, full of life and enthusiasm.' She paused and went on, dropping her glance from Lily's. He wouldn't stay with her ten minutes if he knew. "'Knew?' Miss Bart repeated. "'What you must, for instance, with the opportunities you've had! If he had positive proof, I mean.'" Lily interrupted her with a deep blush of displeasure. "'Please, let us drop the subject, Carrie. It's too odious to me.' And to divert her companion's attention, she added, with an attempt at lightness. "'And your second candidate, you must not forget him.'" Mrs. Fisher echoed her laugh. "'I wonder if you'll cry out just as loud if I say, "'Sim Rosdale?' Miss Bart did not cry out. She sat silent, gazing thoughtfully at her friend. The suggestion and truth gave expression to a possibility which, in the last weeks, had more than once recurred to her. But after a moment she said carelessly, "'Mr. Rosdale wants a wife who can establish him in the bosom of the Van Osbergs and Trenners.'" Mrs. Fisher caught her up eagerly. "'And so you could, with his money! Don't you see how beautifully it would work out for you both?' "'I don't see any way of making him see it,' Lily returned, with a laugh intended to dismiss the subject. But in reality it lingered with her long after Mrs. Fisher had taken leave. She had seen very little of Rosdale since her annexation by the Gormers, for he was still steadily bent on penetrating to the inner paradise from which she was now excluded. But once or twice, when nothing better offered, he had turned up for a Sunday, and on these occasions he had left her in no doubt as to his view of her situation—that he still admired her was, more than ever, offensively evident. For in the Gormers' circle, where he expanded as in his native element, there were no puzzling conventions to check the full expression of his approval. But it wasn't the quality of his admiration that she read his shrewd estimate of her case. He enjoyed letting the Gormers see that he had known Miss Lily—she was Miss Lily to him now—before they had had the faintest social existence—enjoyed more especially impressing Paul Morpeth with the distance to which their intimacy dated back. But he let it be felt that that intimacy was a mere ripple on the surface of a rushing social current—the kind of relaxation which a man of large interests and manifold preoccupations permits himself in his hours of ease. The necessity of accepting the view of their past relation, and of meeting it in the key of pleasantry, prevalent among her new friends, was deeply humiliating to Lily. But she dared less than ever to quarrel with Rosedale. She suspected that her rejection rankled among the most unforgettable of his rebuffs, and the fact that he knew something of her wretched transaction with Trenor, and was sure to put the basis of construction on it, seemed to place her hopelessly in his power. Yet at Carrie Fisher's suggestion, a new hope had stirred in her. Such as she disliked Rosedale, she no longer absolutely despised him. For he was gradually attaining his object in life, and that, to Lily, was always less despicable than to miss it. With the slow, unalterable persistency which she had always felt in him, he was making his way through the dense mass of social antagonisms. Already his wealth, and the masterly use he had made of it, were giving him an enviable prominence in the world of affairs, and placing Wall Street under obligations which only Fifth Avenue could repay. In response to these claims, his name began to figure on municipal committees and charitable boards. He appeared at banquets to distinguished strangers, and his candidacy at one of the fashionable clubs was discussed with diminishing opposition. He had figured once or twice at the Trenor dinners, and had learned to speak with just the right note of disdain of the Big Van Osberg crushes. And all he now needed was a wife whose affiliations would shorten the last tedious steps of his assent. It was with that object that, a year earlier, he had fixed his affections on Miss Bart, but in the interval he had mounted nearer to the goal, while she had lost the power to abbreviate the remaining steps of the way. All this she saw with the clearness of vision that came to her in moments of despondency. It was success that dazzled her. She could distinguish facts plainly enough in the twilight of failure, and the twilight, as she now sought to pierce it, was gradually lightened by a faint spark of reassurance. Under the utilitarian motive of Rosdale's wooing, she had felt, clearly enough, the heat of personal inclination. She would not have detested him so heartily had she not known that he dared to admire her. What then, if the passion persisted, though the other motive had ceased to sustain it? She had never even tried to please him. He had been drawn to her in spite of her manifest disdain. What if she now chose to exert the power, which, even in its passive state, he had felt so strongly? What if she made him marry her for love, now that he had no other reason for marrying her?