Virginia's wild oats
Date: 2026-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

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Title: Virginia's wild oats

Author: F. E. Baily

Release date: August 9, 2026 [eBook #79318]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1924

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79318

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VIRGINIA'S WILD OATS ***

VIRGINIA'S WILD OATS

BY

F. E. BAILY

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1923, 1924,
By THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

VIRGINIA'S WILD OATS

I

"My dear Charles," observed the Honorable Virginia Lauriston in her very clear voice, "you simply must realize that a girl isn't necessarily a fool just because she is a girl."

The great drawing-room at Wynwood disposes its noble proportions like a graceful woman. The furniture was looted at the sack of a continental palace, and upon its south wall hangs Titian's celebrated Pink Lady. The French windows of the great drawing-room at Wynwood give upon the first of sweeping tiers of terraces constructed in the days when every one had plenty of money. Sir Charles Gillespie liked to sit there in the summer when the cost of heating need not worry him, thus combining spaciousness with economy.

Virginia, swathed in the softest old-rose, poised herself delicately on a carved and gilded armchair, its silk tapestry frayed by the limbs of distinguished generations. Her white shoulders, the most perfect among society, quivered in the faintest shrug. The light from a solitary chandelier high in the painted ceiling caressed her beautifully waved hair; she turned her admirable profile, glanced at her companion out of calm eyes neither gray nor green and went on reproachfully:

"You don't seriously mean to be a beast to little Vingie, do you, Charles?"

Sir Charles smiled at her a smile enriched by almost sixty years of joyous bachelorhood. The ingredients of that smile are lost and irreplaceable. Eton, two years in the Guards and then Embassy after Embassy had gone to its making; the esteem of every head waiter in Europe, the genuine interest of more than thirty reigning beauties had mellowed it. Innumerable tight corners had steadied it. Vingie, aged twenty, could see through it like glass.

"No woman with your looks is ever a fool. Sometimes, however, she's a little ill-advised."

Vingie enlaced her slender fingers round one knee, exhibiting two of the purest ankles in the world, never shifting her level glance.

"You've had your good time, Charles, and now you've got into the stuffy stage and want to water down everybody else's. I should hate you to drive me into deceit."

"The man is not born who could drive a woman into anything," replied Sir Charles, making, however, a mental reservation in favor of himself.

"You're so impossibly reasonable, Charles, dear. A lot of very pretty women must have worked frightfully hard over you. It's very difficult being a girl. You see, I want a career."

"Oh, my God!" murmured Sir Charles, staring out over the umbrageousness of the park.

Vingie fluttered weightlessly across the deep-piled carpet and set herself gently on his knee. One arm stole around his neck, and her irreproachably waved hair just crushed his cheek. Sir Charles suffered a desperate internal revolution. He knew she was his ward, and the situation might not be exploited; he knew the powder from that moonbeam arm would never really leave his dress coat, unless it went to the cleaners.

Vingie, stroking the gray head with devilish fingers, proceeded to intensify the torture.

"Lovely thick hair," she murmured. "Thank heaven you'll never go bald, Charles. You're awf'ly young in some ways—but then fifty-five's nothing for a man. I loathe boys—they're so shallow and pig-headed. I don't mean a career in your sense of the word, you old silly—not a typist nor a sanitary inspectress nor a she-doctor, nor even a membress of Parliament. They wear simply odious clothes, and men hate them. But I've only a thousand a year of my own and that hardly buys stockings nowadays. Why, even these were four guineas."

She extended one pure ankle. Sir Charles could see with his own eyes just what one gets in the way of half a pair of stockings at four guineas the pair.

"I want a career like Helen of Troy's or Cleopatra's, Charles—something tremendous that lets a woman be a woman. I should like to toy with statesmen and drive foreign offices mad."

Sir Charles removed the arm from about his neck and achieved a deprecating smile.

"Marriage is the only career for a girl in our set, Virginia: wife of a coming man, one of the great political hostesses; Rupert's for instance."

Vingie slid lingeringly from his knee.

"I don't think little Vingie wants to be married," she said at last. "My wild oats aren't sown—not one teeny little oat. Besides, Rupert fatigues me. He dances rottenly, and he doesn't understand the first thing about women. Where would you be if you hadn't understood women to the very depths, Charles?"

"Probably among the ten richest men in the country, instead of scraping to raise the interest on the mortgage. Rupert will go far, Virginia. He's a worker; a damn' sound, plodding, ambitious fellow, with the sort of face anybody's husband would trust and the instincts of a gentleman. I should give my daughter to him without a pang, if I had a daughter and he wanted to marry her and there were nobody in a position to get up and forbid the banns."

The door opened casually and there entered Rupert Frack of the Foreign Office, with knitted brow. He propelled his tall lank figure into the family circle; his dark hair lay protestingly where it had been put, his trousers hung in depressing folds, and his hands, thrust into his jacket pockets, made the garment sag slantwise. He had never really grasped the essential spirituality of tying a dress tie.

Flinging a mechanical smile at Virginia like a bone to a dog, he said gloomily to Sir Charles:

"I've had a wire from the Foreign Minister in code fourteen. Begins:

"J arrives by air on the tenth and goes to D. Very hush-hush. Please arrange. Practically no servants and the telephone disconnected. Radio set to be installed. Local supplies out of the question; the whole show to be entirely self-supporting. Suitable amusement essential. Ends."

Sir Charles raised his eyebrows and spread out his hands.

"The tenth," he murmured sorrowfully. "That's the opening day of the Hampshire Summer Meeting. Bill Derringham was taking me down in his Rolls. The Lovelace filly is practically a certainty for the three-thirty race, and I've got a hatful on her at a very tempting price. I shall go and ring up Fordingbridge and tell him what I think of him."

Sir Charles went out jauntily, and if souls wore hats, the hat of Sir Charles' soul would have been slightly on one side. Rupert Frack dropped into a chair and stared fixedly before him. Vingie regarded him with kind eyes, and said:

"Rupert, who is she? You can tell me because I'm frightfully sympathetic—almost psychic, in fact. Does she wear black undies and sniff cocaine, or is she one of those innocent-faced little cats with the temperament of a fiend? Poor boy, you look simply worried to death."

Rupert glanced up palely and smote her.

"I am not in love, if that's what you mean. I haven't time. My mind is occupied with more important matters. When every day brings an international crisis or two, one's private feelings must go by the board."

Vingie seated herself before him.

"Then you ought to be thrown out of the Foreign Office. The whole world is a wangle, Rupert, and nobody can wangle like a woman. I can't think how you dare say you're not in love. It isn't safe. Some day a Hungarian adventuress with cloth-topped boots and moldy furs and a Shaftesbury Avenue hat will put it across you and you'll have to go out and plant rubber in Ceylon to hide your disgrace. You see, you might even fall in love with me one day. I'm considered awfully pretty, Rupert. P'r'aps you've never noticed? Look!"

His mind working in its trivial rut, stumbled on an idea.

"By jove," he exclaimed, "there's that phrase in the telegram. You might provide the essential amusement."

Vingie left him because some situations are beyond words. She went up-stairs to her bedroom, undressed, curled herself in an armchair and picked up a book. The night breeze kissed her bare throat and stirred restlessly in her hair.

"Although Angela had dismissed Richard," said the book, "his image remained graven immovably on her heart. She missed his strength, his delicate courtesy, though behind it lurked ever the ruthlessness of the male. She sensed the misery of loneliness. She had ceased to belong to any one——"

Vingie threw the book peevishly across the room.

"Tosh!" she muttered, yawning shamelessly. She spent a deft half-hour cold-creaming her face, dabbed a little powder here and there, slid out of her cobwebby wrap and climbed slowly into bed. As she switched off the light a faint giggle parted her lips. She was thinking of Rupert.

At six A.M. Rupert Frack, looking longer and limper than ever in pajamas and dressing-gown, entered Sir Charles' room quietly but firmly, carrying a black leather portfolio. He coughed, drew an armchair to the bedside, and sat waiting. Sir Charles merely opened his eyes, saw Rupert Frack and closed them again.

"Are you just getting up or just going to bed, Rupert?" he murmured without the least trace of ill-temper. "In either case I'm sure they've given you a room of your own. P'r'aps you've mistaken the door. One door looks very like another."

The visitor opened his portfolio and began arranging papers methodically.

"The chief will be here at ten," he explained, "and I'd just like to get everything cut and dried before he comes, Uncle Charles. This Janowicz affair is going to be frightfully delicate. I want to have all the ground clear for the chief."

Sir Charles opened his eyes again, experienced, patient, rather heavy-lidded eyes.

"If the Angel of Death were calling for me at ten I should still have my cup of tea and biscuit at eight," he complained. "I never attempt anything whatever before my early cup of tea, Rupert. As for Fordingbridge's getting here by ten, the idea is nonsense. He'll arrive just in time for luncheon, if he comes at all."

"Still the matter is very complicated, and it will take one some time to explain clearly," asserted Rupert. "I will begin with our note dated April twenty-sixth."

Sir Charles' eyes glinted.

"Go away, you idiot boy," he commanded. "No wonder you look older than I do, Rupert. No wonder you earn people's undying hatred by your poisonous efficiency. No great man is ever efficient. He leaves that to people like you, and then in the nick of time he comes down wallop and settles the whole thing. Get out of my room. You can say your piece after breakfast."

"It throws out my entire day, but of course if you insist——" grumbled Rupert. He gathered his effects and departed. In his own chamber he lighted a long black cigar, having an iron digestion, and began to pore over a large-scale map of Bessarabia.

At half past seven the laughing feet of sunbeams running races over her adorable face awoke Vingie. She too opened her eyes, and gazed inquiringly round the room. Fortunately she did not find Rupert Frack sitting beside her bed with a portfolio. Instead she dwelt lovingly on the sycamore-wood furniture, the silk hangings and upholstery, and cream Persian carpet, the dressing-table fittings—ivory-backed brushes, and the table top swung back to reveal rows and rows of tiny pots and bottles containing Beauty at fabulous prices.

"How good Charles is to his little lamb!" she murmured contentedly. "Dear, nice, wicked old thing. It takes a long and ill-spent life to teach a man how to look after a girl properly. That's why Rupert's so hopeless. He hasn't a mind above his wretched work. Could I marry Rupert? No, not yet, anyhow. He's too clever and too respectable. I adore a clever man, but he mustn't despise me. Rupert does. He thinks I'm a fluffy empty-headed little nuisance. He must be taught till he goes sick in the tummy when he hears my footstep in the distance. That's what I call love in a man. A girl goes sick in the tummy if she doesn't hear his footstep in the distance, in case some other girl does."

A smile played round Vingie's delightful mouth, a mouth not too small for kisses and not too large for beauty.

A knock fell on the door. There entered a pretty maid bearing a morning tea set of egg-shell china. Virginia poured herself a cup, drank thirstily and began to nibble a wafer of bread spread with golden butter.

"'Morning, Mary," she said. The pretty maid smiled. She was folding Vingie's clothes with caressing fingers. "Give me a hand glass," continued Vingie, and began to examine her face with the ruthless scrutiny of a specialist exploring a possibly inflamed appendix.

"You'd better massage my skin with that Circassian cream," she announced after deep thought. "I don't want to look a hag to-day."

Remote in the bachelors' wing, Rupert Frack's morning toilet afforded no such charm. He stood moodily before the glass, his mind far away in the Middle East, and the kriss kriss of the razor against his beard fell on deaf ears.

A sad-faced, silent valet struggled despondently with Rupert's clothes. As fast as Grimes pressed them into shape, Rupert, like all really clever men—genius as distinct from mere talent—dragged them out again; and Grimes it "give 'im the fair 'ump, so it did—nothing but h'iron, h'iron all day long."

Exactly at twelve-thirty the tires of Lord Fordingbridge's car crunched fatly on the gravel outside the main entrance. That jaunty and rubicund old gentleman sprang out with boyish abandon, removed his gray tall hat, and danced over the smooth lawn to greet Vingie.

Exercising the privilege of an old friend he folded her willowy figure against his double-breasted holland waistcoat and kissed her in the manner of a connoisseur. They moved slowly side by side into the house. Rupert received them solemnly on the threshold.

"Good morning, sir," he began with his excessive competence. "Since receiving your code telegram I have worked out the whole matter in great detail. No doubt you will wish to discuss it with Sir Charles at once."

"Hey!" retorted Lord Fordingbridge genially, "not before luncheon, young man, not before luncheon! God bless me, unheard of, absolutely unheard of! Good morning, Charles! I have captured a young damsel. She is the captive of my bow and spear. Let's toast her in a glass of something. The dust on these roads is a perfect plague. My throat's like sand-paper."

"Well," intoned Sir Charles absently, "here's jolly good luck." He made a face at Rupert and drank.

"A little luncheon I think, if you please, Charles," said Lord Fordingbridge at last. "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and Virginia sitting beside me. Even at my age there are consolations."

"And the older one gets the more they cost," murmured Sir Charles with gentle melancholy.

For an hour Vingie played skilfully with them all. Then she wandered away on dreaming feet. Lord Fordingbridge watched her go, his eyes a thought less innocent. Sir Charles lighted a cigar and said resignedly: "Well, George, you bird of ill-omen, would you like to come into my study and get it over? Rupert has the entire archives of the Foreign Office in a medium-sized portfolio."

In oak and leather sanctuary Rupert unlocked certain dispatch cases and glanced inquiringly at his chief.

"Go on, my boy," said that great man, closing his eyes and settling deeper in his armchair.

Through many golden minutes the voice of Rupert Frack cut pitilessly, reading documents of state. Lord Fordingbridge slept like a tired child; Sir Charles, gazing out of the window, wondered wistfully if the Lovelace filly had really been heard coughing in her stable. At length the voice of Rupert ceased and Lord Fordingbridge woke instantly.

"Good lad, good lad!" he exclaimed admiringly, and addressed himself to his host.

"Y' see, Charles, Janowicz, the Prime Minister of Jugo-Czechia wants a loan of thirty thousand million kronen. It's got to be hushed up because if the rest of Europe knew, about ten States 'ud invade Janowicz's country to get hold of the loot. He's coming over by air, and I'd like him to go to your cottage in Dorset where nobody'll see him. The money's safe because he's willing to lease us an oil-field as security. It's a good oil-field; I've had a man go all over it; but we'd rather not lend him quite so much on it—'tisn't safe. He might double the army and start fighting. The thing is to get him down in Dorset with just you and Rupert and me, and settle everything comfortably. I'd like Virginia to be hostess if she will. Does it rather well, I consider. You got my wire about the details. Hope I'm not putting you out."

"It seems a lot of fuss. How much are all these kronen worth—about fourpence?" asked Sir Charles. "All right, George, I'll arrange everything except Vingie. You'd better do that yourself. Rupert, old thing, if you've locked up all your murky past, why not come and help me find her?"

They found her in a deep cane lounge within the shadow of the terrace, a copy of Baudelaire's poems in her lap, a box of chocolates by her side. She looked up at them with the supreme tolerance of a girl for men, and they delivered their message.

Vingie rose delicately to her feet and passed into the house. Lord Fordingbridge received her magnificently, bowing her into a chair. For three minutes he outlined the position.

"I am very poor, m'lud," she announced at last. "You want me to use such looks and such wits as I have for your benefit entirely free of charge. It doesn't seem quite fair."

"My dear Virginia, what can I offer you? You wouldn't take money, and my heart is sixty-five years old!"

"It's dreadful to be offered money; it's worse not to have any. Why not call it my expenses? Clothes are frightfully important on these occasions. Suppose we say a year's credit at my dressmaker's?"

"It sounds very terrible—very terrible indeed," murmured Lord Fordingbridge dismally. "Of course there are ways and means. It needn't come up on the estimates, or be debated in the House, but still——"

"The very nicest stockings cost four guineas, and you can see what one gets for the money," she complained.

His lordship glanced critically at two slender ankles. It did indeed seem a pity that they should ever be unsuitably clad.

"Well, well," said he—so little does it take to turn the scale—"and how much would you suggest for this annual credit?"

"Oh, about two thousand pounds. You see, if I'm to have any effect on the negotiations I shall need to dress the part. I'm simply in rags at the moment." She stood up and smiled, and Lord Fordingbridge held the door for her respectfully.

"If I may say so, you display a positive genius for finance," he observed. "You take a great weight off my aged shoulders."

Sir Charles' Dorset cottage stands on the slope of a hill declining to the cliff edge. The grounds, some forty acres in extent, are surrounded on the landward side by a high brick wall built when bricks and bricklayers cost relatively nothing. From these reasons it seemed ideal for a secret conference; nothing remained to be done but erect a marquee for the detectives and import a few old servants who had been bred up in the family from boy to man.

In the beginning of twilight Vingie from her rose-embowered casement peeped down to watch the distinguished visitors arrive. Behind her the housekeeper from Wynwood, sixty years old and completely out of touch with modern feminine garments, struggled stonily with the duties of a lady's maid. Sir Charles had proclaimed Mary on diplomatic grounds.

A nondescript hired car, driven by a police chauffeur, a detective beside him, drew up, and there descended two gentlemen in frock coats and silk hats, having the appearance of an undertaker and his chief of staff.

The taller she took to be Mr. Janowicz. Even the funereal garb could not altogether obscure a certain charm, a breadth of shoulder and narrowness of hip, a faint suggestion of swagger. He had a pale thin face, a little black mustache and ironic eyes.

The smaller, Mr. Misch, was doubtless his secretary. Having regard to Mr. Misch's prominent nose, his thin beard, his rotund presence and a mannerism of washing his hands with invisible soap and water, Vingie discovered his Christian name to be Lazarus without surprise.

Rupert Frack received them with distant courtesy. The featureless car rolled fitfully away. Vingie turned back to her dressing.

"I have changed my mind, Vokes. Please give me the black frock and my pearls," she said languidly.

She met him first at dinner. Sir Charles displayed his perfect polished courtesy. Lord Fordingbridge wore his invariable dress clothes of eighteenth-century cut with ruffled shirt and lace stock, and Mr. Misch looked like a rather deplorable waiter. But Mr. Janowicz bowed over her hand with a kind of passionate boredom yet gracefully withal, and his eyes swept her in sardonic admiration.

He observed in French that he was enchanted. They spoke French for the benefit of Mr. Misch, since no foreigner can grasp the Jugo-Czechian tongue, and Mr. Misch knew no English.

On her left at the round dinner table in a bow window, scents of roses and new-mown grass stealing beneath the raised sashes, and the far-off sighing of the sea in the distance, Vingie felt his personality react to hers as a rider feels his horse take hold of the bit. Rupert was saying very correct things in very correct French, Sir Charles and Lord Fordingbridge chatted impersonally, Mr. Misch fawned. Vingie turned and said in English so that Mr. Misch might not understand:

"Do you like my frock, Mr. Janowicz? I chose it specially for you when I saw you get out of the car, because I thought you looked rather difficult."

"I can not tell. I do not know you. When I know you I shall tell you. We shall know each other very well very soon. It is so, is it not?" he answered. "For three days I stay. In three days we shall live a lifetime. In my heart I feel it. The heart is never wrong."

"It sounds topping!" drawled Vingie. She stared at him under half-closed lids, giving him insolence for insolence, but he only said:

"I do not mean to be rude. One can not help but know these things."

Vingie, a faint color stealing into her cheeks, heard the voice of Rupert Frack say emphatically:

"I do not think we should trust too much to the League of Nations, Mr. Janowicz."

"Personally," retorted Mr. Janowicz, raising his fine eyebrows, "I do not trust anybody. In love, in war, in diplomacy, it is not safe.

"There is always one who interrupts, is there not?" he went on to Vingie. "You who are beautiful have doubtless noticed it. Presently we shall go where no one interrupts. For me there is no one but you in this house. For such as these——" his glance indicated Sir Charles, Rupert, Lord Fordingbridge—"I have provided Misch. There are always such people and there is always a Misch. It is the elementary justice of Providence."

"Mr. Janowicz," answered Vingie slowly, "I think you have very simple and beautiful ideas. Perhaps after dinner I will show you the rose-garden by moonlight. It isn't everybody who would understand or appreciate the rose-garden by moonlight, but you're different. Your soul isn't commonplace. As a rule men are deaf and dumb and blind to the finer things of life. Don't you agree?"

"It is exactly what I would have said myself," declared Mr. Janowicz, gazing scornfully at Sir Charles, Rupert, Lord Fordingbridge and Mr. Misch.

When eventually Vingie left the table, Mr. Janowicz escorted her to the door with the suppressed splendor of a well-trained equerry. Returning to his place he made no attempt to conceal profound boredom, treating the rest of the party like dirt. At the earliest opportunity he sought Vingie's side. She smiled up at him with grace, wisdom and understanding.

"In here we stifle," he said abruptly. "Let us, if you please, seek the rose-garden. We shall find it more congenial."

She stood for one moment, surveying the scene: Rupert and Mr. Misch, deep in diplomatic commonplaces, Sir Charles and Lord Fordingbridge absorbed in a game of piquet. Then, on the arm of Mr. Janowicz, she passed joyfully amid surroundings of roses and romance.

"For a one-time senior major in the Hussars of the Guard mine is a dog's life," he complained. "But since the war all things are changed. There are no Hussars and no Guard. Still a gentleman is always a gentleman. Our prime minister, a worthy blacksmith, realizes his shortcomings. He would be at a loss with our friends indoors. Hence, against his will, he appoints me foreign minister. You see, really I am Count Oscar Janowicz, but we do not talk of that now. As for this quarreling over money, I shall leave it to Misch. He is the sort of person who enjoys it."

"Poor Count Oscar!" murmured Vingie very sweetly. Her satin-shod feet glided silently across the velvet lawn in a little romantic dream. The tall figure on her left moved with slow and stately stride. On his heels tinkled ghostly spurs, at his side trailed an invisible sword.

"Ah! not poor Count Oscar to-night," he exclaimed. "To-night I am the servant of beauty. There were never such roses as these roses around us, and this moon, which has looked down on a myriad lovers, never shone so brightly, and the infinite sweetness of this garden was never so sweet before. There are moments in life, Virginia—is it not so? If they endured longer than a moment we could not bear them; we should die of ecstasy."

Virginia, standing beneath an arch of pink ramblers, pulled down a spray and laid it against her cheek. Undoubtedly there was magic abroad. Suddenly from a dark mass of trees one crystal note pealed out. "Hush!" she exclaimed. "Listen!"

The bird sang on and on. He may have been sobbing out the bitterness of a broken heart, or voicing that ecstasy more than a moment of which is intolerable. In any case he achieved a desperate result.

Mr. Janowicz stretched out his sword arm, clasped Virginia's hand that still enclosed the spray of pink beauty, and brushed lightly with his lips the curve of her bare arm.

"It is beautiful, that music—yes, but you are the most beautiful thing in the world!" he said.

As Virginia crossed the hall on her way to bed, Rupert Frack came out of the smoking-room, saw her and frowned. He stood in front of her, barring the path.

"Do you," he inquired, "altogether approve of your behavior with Janowicz this evening?"

She raised to him the accusing eyes of a hurt child and replied gently:

"He understands me better in one evening than you've done in a lifetime, Rupert."

"How do you know that?"

"He told me I'm the most beautiful thing in the world, and that's more than you ever did."

"If you think that a sufficient reward for a moonlight flirtation with a stranger——" snarled Rupert, but she lifted a restraining hand.

"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs and you can't be an essential amusement without breaking hearts," she explained, and passed on trailing clouds of glory.

II

"You are doing well, my child. Continue, for Rupert tells me this man Misch is a positive Pierpont Morgan in financial matters. Continue, I beg of you," besought Lord Fordingbridge furtively at breakfast.

Vingie smiled. Men are so simple to a pretty girl.

At eleven o'clock Lord Fordingbridge, Sir Charles and Mr. Janowicz stepped forth from the council chamber to find Vingie playing with a fox terrier on the lawn. She stood up slender and appealing, perfect from head to foot, and Mr. Janowicz came to her as the needle to the magnet.

"It is impossible for the present. Misch and your Mr. Frack are examining the details," he announced.

"There is a little island about three miles off the coast. Would you like to picnic there with me?" she tempted.

He followed her down the cliff path, a servant placed the luncheon basket in a motor-boat lying alongside the slipway, and Vingie politely refused a passage to several well-meaning detectives.

"There are lines in the locker. Fish!" she commanded Mr. Janowicz, and steered seaward across the bay she had known from babyhood.

He put out two lines and caught one bass and five mackerel. Then he rested and gazed pensively at Vingie who sat with sleeves rolled up and the tiller under her arm listening idly to the beat of the engine.

"I love you, Virginia," he said at last.

Her mouth curved into a smile and her eyes met his perfectly unembarrassed.

"You don't do anything of the kind, Oscar. You mean I'm pretty, and I attract you, and you're rather miserable and I make you happier, and you kissed my arm yesterday and we listened to bird-songs in the moonlight, and it all stimulated your emotions. I've had that effect on lots of men and they all said they loved me, but they didn't any more than you do. We shall be great pals these three days and then you'll go home and forget all about it."

"You are not astonished that I love you—not afraid?" he asked in surprise.

"I'm not afraid of anybody, and if you weren't attracted I should be a little disappointed. I expected you to be, up to a point. But people don't love quite so easily. It takes time, and a certain amount of sacrifice. Love and adversity go together. Didn't you know that?"

"But you know so much! How do you know?"

"'Cause I'm a girl and not a man. Get out the boat-hook and go forward and hook on to that rock when I run alongside. It's the only bit of deep water where we can land."

She wedged the kedge anchor between two boulders, paid out the painter, and led him over the rocks to a little sandy bay. Manlike he insisted on cleaning the fish and cooking them in the Jugo-Czechian manner. Vingie sat and watched him dreamily. Finally he offered certain charred fragments on a plate.

"There should, of course, be olives, and paprika, and a touch of garlic, and a squeeze of orange juice, and a sauce made with white wine, and these are the wrong kind of fish. But otherwise you have here our great national delicacy," he explained.

Silently Vingie indicated the luncheon basket—chicken and salad, strawberries and cream, hock cup, petits fours, cigarettes, coffee.

The golden sunshine blessed them as they lay on the sand in perfect idleness. Across a three-mile strip of blue Mr. Misch and Rupert Frack labored dismally to evolve a formula.

"Oscar," murmured Vingie at last, "you aren't amusing me. Isn't there anything interesting in your country except fried fish?"

His eyes dwelt on her fair face, golden brown beneath the sun. "I was thinking of the days when we shall be married," he answered.

"But we shall never be married, Oscar."

He laughed. "I have told you I love you. What else should we do but marry?"

"You forget," she said, "that I don't want to marry you in the least. I don't want to marry any one. Why should I?"

"Marriage is the logical end of love."

"I know marriage often does end love, logically or otherwise, Oscar, but I'm not in love with you, so there's no need to end it."

He got up, clicked his heels and bowed ceremoniously.

"I have offered you marriage formally, Mademoiselle; you choose to be flippant, and so I am in honor bound to terminate my mission here and return to my own country. This is an affront I have not deserved."

She stretched out a hand and smiled up at him.

"Don't be beastly to me, Oscar. You know I didn't mean to hurt you. Please forgive me and sit down and let's be friends. I wanted you to have such a happy day."

The fretful expression faded from his face. Laughing, he flung himself down on the sand.

"'Lay by my side your bunch of purple heather,
The last red asters of an autumn day,
And let us sit and talk of love together
As once in May.'"

he quoted. "I will be very good and very devoted, Virginia, and by and by, before I go, I will ask you again."

Late that night Vingie drifted like a wraith into the smoking-room where Sir Charles and Rupert sat drinking whisky-and-soda. Lord Fordingbridge, in a corner, bowed his fine head over an obstinate game of Patience. Vingie sank wearily into an armchair and passed a hand over her brow.

"I wish I'd never seen your Janowicz man," she announced. "Only Mr. Misch, who insisted on a good-night talk with him, saved me from hysterics. I gave him a rose, which he placed against his heart and fled. I hope Rupert has had extraordinary luck with Mr. Misch. I should like some one to be pleased."

"Misch," retorted Rupert wearily, "is a perfect fool. He insists on a loan of fifty thousand million kronen instead of thirty and talks a lot of nonsense about a sphere of influence on the Adriatic littoral."

"Did I tell you, Vingie, that the Lovelace filly was unplaced in the three o'clock race yesterday?" inquired Sir Charles with a little sigh. "She was well up while Knave of Hearts made the running, but when he collapsed half-way and Simpson called on her for a final effort she failed to respond. On her previous form she ought to have won in a canter by five lengths at least."

Lord Fordingbridge shuffled his cards together and shook his head.

"I shall never get out Miss Milligan unless I cheat," he complained. "I've tried every night for the last thirty years, but it always goes wrong somewhere."

"Is Janowicz married?" demanded Vingie of Rupert.

"No. Why?"

"From a woman's point of view there are about a hundred thousand reasons why, but it would take all night to tell you them, and I'm going to bed. That doesn't make it any the less annoying," she snapped, and departed, leaving chaos behind her.

Sir Charles yawned politely behind his hand.

"If there were any publicity connected with this affair now would be the time to issue a statement saying that we were all in perfect accord over everything," he murmured.

In the morning after breakfast, Vingie gave way to panic.

"If I don't get out of this atmosphere I shall go mad," she murmured, and zigzagged feverishly from tree to tree until, coming to the avenue gates, she passed out and began to walk along the main road. Cheerful rustics at work in the fields, an occasional tradesman's cart passing by, soothed her restless nerves. It all seemed so normal.

Barely two hundred yards on her way she found a stationary car, its bonnet uplifted in an attitude of surrender. Upon the running-board sat what was obviously a nice man, engaged in filling a pipe. His stocky figure adorned a suit of comfortable old clothes and when he saw Vingie he smiled joyously, thankful for the perfect vision thus early in the day. With the confidence of youth Vingie smiled back and stood still before him in the sunshine.

"Is it anything very bad? Shall I ask one of our chauffeurs to help?" she asked kindly.

The nice man, who had risen and lifted his hat in salutation, shook his head.

"I'm afraid my little car has a diplomatic illness, Miss Lauriston," he confessed after a careful glance at Vingie. "You see I rather hoped you'd come along."

"Why? Do I know you?"

The nice man shook his head again.

"But I'd rather it were you than Mr. Janowicz," he amplified, looking steadfastly at the pipe in his fingers.

"Mr. Janowicz? I don't understand!" said Vingie in a faint voice. Officially, only four people were aware of Mr. Janowicz's arrival. She sat down on the running-board of the deceitful car and propped her chin in her hands. After a second's hesitation the nice man sat down beside her.

"If you'll promise not to tell I'll put all my cards on the table," he coaxed. "I'm George Berriman, foreign editor of the Daily Tale. I'm taking a little holiday in these parts and I thought if I had a breakdown close to your gates some one would come out or go in who might make a story. I knew you by sight, of course, from your pictures. We generally call you 'the charming young society beauty.' I'm rather interested in the Jugo-Czechian situation."

"But people don't know——"

"You mustn't say 'people.' There are no people, only readers and potential readers," rebuked Mr. Berriman. "Of course, I know all about Janowicz. One of my correspondents saw him get into his aeroplane, and another saw him get out, and I could tell you the number of the car that brought him down here. But I'd love a few personal touches. He's an interesting fellow. He married a nobody before the war and offended Court circles very badly."

"But he isn't married!"

Mr. Berriman smiled pityingly.

"He married Fritzi Pogany, the cabaret dancer, in 1914, when she was only sixteen years old. She's rather good-looking if I may say so."

Vingie sat up, and held out a dramatic hand.

"Give me a cigarette!" she commanded. "I knew it all the time, but Rupert swore he wasn't. You can always tell. The married ones are so charming and docile and pathetic. And yet he asked me to marry him—carried away by his feelings, I s'pose. This is absolutely confidential, of course."

"Perfectly," agreed Mr. Berriman. "The thing is, what have they decided? We love an exclusive story in the Daily Tale. Mind, I'm not trying to tempt you, because it would be useless as well as unpardonable, but the news must be given to the world somehow. Anything we could do in return—I suppose our ordinary rates wouldn't appeal to you, even the high prices we pay for a scoop, but perhaps you have a pet charity, or a worthy cause which we could assist?"

Vingie turned to Mr. Berriman and smiled at him so adorably that even his iron nerve shook slightly.

"You've helped me a great deal this morning without knowing it," she said. "I feel strong and calm again. I'll do as much for you if I can. Where are you staying?"

"They make me very comfortable down in the village, at the White-faced Goat. The telephone number is twelve. You can rely absolutely on my discretion."

She got up, took a little puff and mirror from her wrist-bag and powdered her face.

"Good-by. I'll remember," she said and walked back thoughtfully to the house.

She met Rupert pacing the avenue, his face pale, his mouth set. Although she found much in his character to criticize, and considered him unsuitable as a husband, and felt particularly annoyed because he had never offered himself in that capacity, and saw infinite shortcomings in his personality it would be most fascinating to remedy, somehow he aroused her maternal instinct.

"What's the matter, my dear old thing?" she inquired kindly.

Rupert jerked his head passionately.

"A deadlock. The whole business is finished. They won't budge. All our trouble is wasted. Complete failure, and Fordingbridge is furious."

"Why? It's as much his fault as yours."

"But he left Misch to me, and I worked out the entire scheme," said Rupert Frack dismally.

"If I saved you, what would you think?" asked Vingie, a benevolent smile softening her young mouth, a warm glow of charity and good will stealing through her veins.

"I should think I was dreaming and expect to wake up with a thud!" answered Rupert, bitterly sarcastic.

Vingie turned on him like a wildcat.

"Then I'll do it—not because I care what happens to you, but just to show I've got more brains than a great thick-headed, commonplace, unattractive lump like you!" she stormed and left him limp with amazement.

Oscar sat on the lawn smoking a Russian cigarette, staring gloomily into the distance. He rose and bowed philosophically.

"A diplomatic tempest rages, but you come as sunshine piercing the clouds," he said. "Virginia, you are more adorable than ever. I can not begin to describe it. Please sit down and let us talk about your hair, and your eyes, and the curve of your cheek when you laugh."

"I can't stop," she answered, not half so annoyed with him as might be supposed, "but will you please ride with me after lunch? There's something I want to tell you."

In a green path amid pine woods Vingie reined in her mare, slid from the saddle and stood, a slight boy-girl figure, in beautiful breeches, long mahogany-tanned boots, linen coat and felt riding hat. She gave the reins to Oscar, seated herself on a fallen tree-trunk and flicked a spurred heel thoughtfully with her cutting whip.

He tethered the beasts and stood looking at her; sunlight glinted through the branches and a mid-summer hush lay all around.

"Sit down," she commanded. "I want to talk. Do you remember asking me to marry you, Oscar?"

"It is hardly a thing one would forget, Virginia."

"Why did you?"

"Because you are the most beautiful person in the world. I love you, and marriage is the logical end of love."

"You know perfectly well we shall never be married."

"Why not?"

Vingie laid the whip across her knees and looked at him.

"Because you're married already!"

He sat up rigidly beside her and went very pale.

"But how did you know? No one knows!" he exclaimed.

"To Fritzi Pogany, in 1914. She was sixteen and very pretty. A cabaret dancer, I understand. Oscar, is there any reason why I shouldn't hit you across the face with this?" She bent the cutting whip idly between gloved fingers.

"You don't understand. It was a ridiculous mésalliance. I had intended to dissolve this marriage, which was hopeless from the first. No one would have known."

"Oscar," said Vingie icily, "do you realize you're talking to me and not to a scullery-maid? Am I likely to want you after Fritzi's finished with you? Am I likely to want you at all? Believe me, I'm not."

"These diplomatic difficulties are solely on account of you," he explained wearily. "Misch has been haggling on my instructions. I was perfectly content with Lord Fordingbridge's original offer. To-night I should have asked formally for us to be betrothed, and in honor of that the concession would have been made."

Vingie's mouth quivered at the corners; she began to giggle; finally she went off into peals of laughter. At last she became calm, laid a small affectionate hand on her companion's shoulder and delivered her judgment.

"Listen, Oscar! You must give way just the same. If you don't I shall be obliged to tell Sir Charles everything, and that will be most unpleasant for you. Remember, we've spent three whole days together, which require some explanation. Officially, I've been talking you over to our side."

He drew himself up very haughtily. "I can not eat my words in that fashion. Even the foreign minister of a post-war republic has his feelings."

"Even I have mine if it comes to that, Oscar. Of course we'll save your face to an extent. You shall have favorable notices in the papers and perhaps a decoration. But remember, by dinner time all this must be settled, and I want you to do it through Mr. Frack. I have a reason for this. Do you promise?"

Mr. Janowicz then behaved in very handsome fashion. He rose, clicked his heels and bowed courteously.

"Miss Lauriston," he said, "although I speak as a soldier it is no disgrace to surrender to the most beautiful girl in the world."

It was, in effect, as if the Hussars of the Guard went by in column of sections and Major Count Oscar Janowicz at their head gave the command: "Carry—suds! Eyes—right!"

Vingie, also rising, lifted her ineffable mouth.

"Rather a darling, aren't you?" she murmured. "You may kiss me just once, if you like, Oscar."

They had dined ceremoniously. They had drunk to the success of the negotiations. The Jugo-Czechian mission had retired to pack; Vingie sat alone in the drawing-room. Presently Lord Fordingbridge entered, and closed the door quietly. He moved across to Vingie sitting in the shadows and smiled.

"You did very well," he said at last.

"It was all luck. I hope you give Rupert proper credit. He worked very hard."

"Does he—er—mean a great deal?"

"I don't know. He's very immature. Not for years and years anyhow. He means well. There's the foreign editor of the Daily Tale staying in the village. May he have special facilities? He gave me the key to the whole thing. I half promised——"

"Just as you wish."

"And Oscar has his decoration?"

"I shall advise the prime minister."

Vingie nodded. "I'm so tired. Do you mind sending me Rupert?"

She watched his stately departure deep in thought. She hardly noticed the advent of Rupert Frack.

"Well," she said at last. "I s'pose you hate me. A man always loathes owing success to a girl."

"No, Virginia, I'm very grateful. You were most generous. I apologize for my rudeness this afternoon. I was extremely worried."

He stood awkwardly before her, a little grim, terribly sincere, as if strange emotions began to work subtly in his soul. She reached out a slender hand and touched his.

"All right, old boy. I'm glad you're glad. Lord F's very pleased with you. Do ask Charles to come and see me."

She sat in the half light until the door clicked a third time, and Sir Charles sauntered across the room, his spirit ever lilting to hidden triumphant music. She made room for him on the settee, and stared at him out of perplexed eyes.

"Charles," she pleaded at last, "tell me the riddle of life. I've won my game and now I'm as flat as yesterday's soda-water."

Sir Charles crossed one knee over the other and clasped it gently.

"The struggle is like wine and achievement is death," he answered. "Also you have hazarded your heart a very little and that's fatal in diplomacy. As I said before, a suitable marriage is so much better——"

Vingie placed a finger gently on his lips.

"I've sowed my first wild oat," she announced joyfully, "but only the first. Marriage, did you say? Oh, Charles, think rather of all the other little oats to come!"

III

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

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

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

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

Vingie smiled straight into his eyes.

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

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

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

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

Virginia sighed very faintly.

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

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

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

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

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

Vingie's straight little nose wrinkled delicately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vingie looked at him with gentle eyes.

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

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

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

Vingie yawned attractively behind a pink palm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Inconsiderate young monkey," murmured Sir Charles politely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not a Ger——" began Vingie.

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

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

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

"Who is the girl?"

Rupert's jaw set like a trap.

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

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

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

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

Rupert complied, hesitating.

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

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

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

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

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

"Madam:

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

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

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

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

Mary shook her attractive head and smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Charles' lip curled.

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

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

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

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

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

Vingie took him up scornfully.

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

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

Lord Fordingbridge made an overwhelming gesture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord Fordingbridge sighed resignedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stared thoughtfully across the chalk pit, and sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Albert came out of a reverie with obvious reluctance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She turned, smiling at him half-tenderly.

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

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

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

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

IV

"My dear kind host," explained Vingie to Lord Fordingbridge in a corner of his drawing-room after dinner, "he's in love with romance, and he thinks he's in love with her. Men are all children. They don't love us; they love what they think we are. If I can persuade him she doesn't monopolize romance, you're safe. Do you care to let me try?"

Lord Fordingbridge eyed her very thoughtfully, glanced across at the bridge four in the middle distance and sighed.

"Perhaps it depends on your idea of romance," he temporized. "We shall be taking a certain responsibility. What do you propose?"

Vingie leaned back in her gilded chair.

"Diane's indoor and exotic. I want to be open-air and natural. She pretends to be simple; she isn't really. You aren't simple just because you fool about with an omelette. I think a summer camp—just he and I, some older woman to play propriety and p'r'aps one man-servant to do the rough work. I'd suggest your sister only her type and generation simply couldn't do it. Charles has a perfect housekeeper, Vokes, getting on for sixty, absolutely discreet and utterly trustworthy. She's known me since I was a baby. He can take a chauffeur-valet. You'll never understand—or p'r'aps you will—but I want to stage a twentieth century Midsummer Night's Dream. Are you going to trust me? I don't think you'd better tell Rupert. He's too conventional."

She outlined her conversation with the duke. "And if you let me have my way I'm going to produce a very effective climax. And I may have to do it just to oblige you, though not if I can help it. Financial considerations don't seem in keeping with the atmosphere at the moment. Is it a bargain?"

Still he hesitated. She read his thoughts and added:

"Of course I shall consult Charles first. I never do anything without telling him."

"Well," said Lord Fordingbridge at last, "the duke has some leisure in a day or two. He's got a shooting estate in Yorkshire remote enough for anything if it comes to that. But you'll be very careful, won't you?"

"My dear," replied Vingie in tender mockery, "a boy of his age would rather die. They're perfect dragons of respectability if a girl trusts them. Besides, you forget Vokes. But don't tell Rupert. He'd never understand."

Rupert had arrived, draped with dispatch boxes, in time to make a fourth at bridge.

At ten o'clock Lord Fordingbridge's sister discovered, by means of that social telepathy peculiar to Queen Victoria's earlier god-children, that bridge began to pall on the duke. In consequence she pleaded fatigue, excused herself and retired, removed her transformation, assumed a woolen night-gown with long sleeves, and slept as only people with no nerves and a good conscience do sleep. The duke yawned, half closed his eyes at Captain Hamish Duncan, made an imperceptible movement of the head, and found himself alone with Vingie. She still sat in the gilded chair, her hands resting lightly on its arms, deep in thought. He stood before her awaiting his opportunity.

"Were you serious this morning?" he said at last.

She turned upon him unfathomable eyes.

"If you know a garden of Paradise, I'll try to be your good angel. It sounds to me like a tiny camp remote from anywhere. There are only you and I and my chaperon and your servant. I'll leave it to you to arrange if you still want it. I shall have to go back to town first and collect some kit."

"Let's go and look at my black list and settle dates," he suggested. In a small businesslike room they found Captain Duncan methodically dealing with correspondence. "Hamish," announced the duke, "I propose to take a holiday. What are our bookings for the next few days?"

The equerry, whistling noiselessly, consulted a small red volume.

"To-morrow there's a parade of ex-service men. Memo: say the right thing to Sergeant Robert Smith, aged eighty-five. Wellington shook hands with his father, Acting-Bombardier John Smith, after the Battle of Waterloo. Except for that you appear to be free for a week."

He closed the book, replaced it and looked a little wistful.

"If you don't actually need me I could idle for a day or two myself," he concluded.

William Albert smiled privately at Vingie.

"Run away and play by all means. Invent some yarn to account for me. In two days, Hamish, I shall, with luck, be out of reach."

He turned joyfully to Vingie.

"In two days," he repeated. "Leave everything to me. In two days the blasé stars may look down on that which will cause sensation among astronomers."

"I'm going up to town," she answered in the manner of one who hears but does not listen. "I need to collect a few necessaries and make peace with my relations. One tells the right story for fear the wrong should get about. You will be ever so discreet, won't you? Remember I'm doing a great deal for you."

She smiled, and smiling contradicted her words. He said good night and watched her move delicately up the great staircase. For a man hopelessly in love with some one else the young blood flowed through his aristocratic veins not unriotously.

Much of Sir Charles' attraction for Vingie lay in the fact that he treated her with the devotion of a new lover allied to the sureness and experience of an old husband. For this reason, in his Park Street library, after a very perfect little diner à deux, she told him all.

"I've collected the right clothes," she murmured dreamily, "and the main idea's absolutely cast-iron. He doesn't really love Diane; she's just been very clever, but I shall be cleverer still. All the same, Charles, I want a partner, a confederate among the crowd. Do you want to come to the rescue?"

"Frankly," declared Sir Charles, "I do not. My years and my position forbid it. You, my dear Virginia, are in the predicament of a secret agent. If they succeed they get no reward, and if they fail we disown them. They languish in a foreign prison and if ever they get out their name is mud. I may sympathize privately, but the most I can do publicly is to send you on a long voyage to the Far East with an impeccable chaperon when your reputation lies in tatters on all the dinner tables of Mayfair."

Vingie slid from her armchair and crept gently on to his knee. "I wouldn't compromise you for all the world, darling," she murmured, stroking his gray hair with caressing fingers. "I know just the man for the job—that very charming Mr. Berriman, the foreign editor of the Daily Tale who helped me once before. He's perfectly unscrupulous, and so adequate."

"In heaven's name, Virginia, keep away from the newspapers," implored Sir Charles. "One can't touch pitch without being defiled."

Vingie spread out two small pale hands.

"I pray I may ever keep these unsullied!" she said solemnly. "Only lend me Vokes, Charles, and if I perish I will never darken your doors again."

"You may have Vokes by all means, but try not to put a most respectable, faithful servant to the blush," replied Sir Charles a little plaintively.

In the morning Vingie, all Paris in her summer frock, drifted from Sir Charles' limousine through the stern portals of the Daily Tale, eclipsing the most divine divorcee that ever lied through her tears to a sympathetic special writer. She penetrated via the intoxicating hum of giant machines and the faint violet smell of printing ink to a calm silent room containing one really nice man and many telephones.

Mr. Berriman laid aside the habitual ferocity before which correspondents in Brussels, Vienna, and even far New York, dwindled and pined, rose from his lair amid blue pencils and damp proofs and gripped her hand.

"Thank God it's only eleven and the rush hasn't begun. If there's anything in the world I can do for you, Miss Lauriston, I shall be so happy. Or perhaps"—his stocky figure gathered as for a spring, and his quiet, good-looking face hardened—"perhaps you've got news?"

Vingie shook her head and sank plaintively into a chair.

"I've come to you for that. I'm at my last gasp, and you helped me once before. Who, what, and why is Diane de Blanchefôret?"

Mr. Berriman lifted the receiver of a telephone.

"Is that the news room?" he inquired. "I want Mr. Marsh."

Vingie glimpsed curiously the discipline of a great paper. The door opened quietly and a young man entered.

"This," explained her host, "is Mr. Marsh, who does the society feature. What do we know of Mademoiselle Diane de Blanchefôret, Marsh?"

"She's one of those weird birds—on the stage and yet not of it," observed Mr. Marsh, like a distinguished naturalist explaining a rare species. "Everybody that is anybody receives her; she dresses quietly, lives in a house, not a flat, women recognize her, she only runs a very small car, she doesn't go to dance clubs, her credit is good in the West End and she pays her own bills. Extremely good-looking and intelligent. I should call her a dark horse."

"All right, Marsh," murmured Mr. Berriman, assembling his proofs methodically and ringing for a boy to remove them. "And what exactly do you want me to do?" he went on to Vingie with the painful directness that seemed to her a feature of the place.

"To produce her plausibly at a given place and time," answered Vingie, growing reckless. "If you can, you shall be the first to announce whom the Duke of Sussex is really going to marry. Is it a bargain?"

"Suppose," said the imperturbable Mr. Berriman, "you tell me the whole story, strictly in confidence."

So, looking him straight in the face, she told it. His expression never varied by the flicker of an eyelash.

"Probably we know fairly well whom he'll marry, but you and I are only just beginning. One day we'll land a real story," he said at last. "Anyway, I think I can work it. We've got a certain stunt going—'Is the Country Girl Prettier than the Town Girl?' I might ask her to help judge, and take her along to Yorkshire to look at country girls. We can always lose our way. Now I'm afraid I must ask you to go. Sorry, but there's a crisis in the Near East. It keeps me rather on the stretch. Remember to let me know the date, the place and the time. Good-by!"

She went out thoughtfully in the light of his brief smile. In the lift she glanced at her platinum diamante wrist-watch. "That took him just five minutes. I wonder what he could do in an hour?" she mused. Undoubtedly Mr. Berriman had made a certain impression.

At the great entrance of Diss, Rupert, his trousers baggy-kneed with distress, stood beside Captain Hamish Duncan surveying the chaste outlines of a two-seater Rolls-Royce. Lord Fordingbridge, who preferred not to be present officially, had laid this burden upon him.

As in a nightmare he beheld Vingie, shrouded in a fleece-lined weather-proof, escalade the passenger's seat. The sporting body being innocent of doors, she revealed a certain wealth of silk-veiled limbs, to the extreme delight of Captain Duncan, and the intense disgust of Rupert. Vingie nestled in her padded shell, adjusting a rug with joyous fingers.

Hours ahead, harbinger of a brighter convoy, Figgis, the duke's chauffeur, guided a baggage car, and by his side sat Vokes, austere with sixty years, sublime in decent black.

The duke gave a last look round, climbed neatly to the wheel, took off the side-brake and waved a benevolent hand.

"Well, toodle-oo, every one," he said serenely.

"Pip-pip, sir," returned the faithful equerry.

The sweetest clutch in the world took up the noiseless drive; with scarce a disturbed pebble they glided unstressed away.

"It is the most appalling error of judgment I ever heard of!" said Rupert hollowly.

"Now, now!" reproved Captain Duncan in his soothing fashion. "Try to take the broad view, dear old bird. Don't be mother's little kill-joy!"

Vingie glanced lazily at the good-looking profile beside her and put her thoughts into words.

"We're playing truant from life like two happy kids," she said. "We'd better leave the trappings of state in care of Rupert for the time being. I think you may call me Vingie, oh, fellow conspirator, and I'm going to call you Bill."

"My dear Vingie," replied her princely chauffeur with profound appreciation, "Bill was always my middle name."

Vingie lay back in murmuring peace. Her soul took wings and sought a certain window in the Diplomats' Club where a neat elderly figure, with gray thick hair and a Victorian mustache perused the Morning Post, a thin-stemmed glass at his elbow.

"Oh, Charles," she crooned to herself, "you who preached marriage to me, how many times have you done what I'm doing, you delightful old hypocrite, except that my indiscretion's as innocent as the light of day? How many girls haven't you eloped with in everything from a post-chaise to a hansom cab, and told them all how you loved them, with that perfect, devastating, far-too-wonderful-for-this-world manner of yours? And yet you threaten me with the Far East and a chaperon, you deceitful adorable darling. As if even that wouldn't be worth setting my teeth to this delicious stolen fruit!"

She turned again to the tanned face beside her.

"Bill," she announced, "this might be a honeymoon, but it isn't."

"Don't," groaned the duke bitterly.

"It might be an escapade, but it isn't. I'm going to christen it 'The Quest of the Young Wild Oat.'"

They floated on north by east. They flickered through a kinematograph film of summer green varied by distracting close-ups; the halt in the market town at the foot of a fifteenth-century market cross while a flock of sheep flowed by; the ten-minute answer to an S.O.S. call from two unmechanical girls in a stricken two-seater; the picnic lunch in a little wood with Vingie licking the traces of the last peach from her slender fingers; the quest for cheap cigarettes in a wayside village because his costly Turkish cloyed her palate.

Toward sunset they began their long climb upward on a moorland road, with the everlasting heather stretching for miles on either hand. The scented air grew keener; the car took on that super-efficiency cars do take on mysteriously by twilight. Shaggy woods loomed up to clothe the moorland fells; they won the peak of the road, dropped down and swung into scarcely more than a bridle track, the furze brushing their wings, the startled rabbits hopping wildly for safety. Presently in the distance a little river gleamed, bordered by five green tents, two of them each in its own isolation, three clustered at a greater distance. The baggage car stood parked in the shelter of the trees; a camp-fire sent up its cheery glow and scented wood smoke. The duke swept round into a little clearing, reversed faultlessly in line with the baggage car, switched off, removed a glove, and held out his hand.

"Welcome to our camp, Vingie, dear," he said joyfully. "We've done it. Let me help you down."

She sauntered stiffly to her own green tent, and Vokes ministered to her; there came a shedding of dusty clothes, the steaming luxury of a canvas bath, a clean, cool, costly linen frock simple enough to deceive a man, the saunter back to a table spread beneath the rising moon. The duke came out in comfortable gray flannel, they sat down, and Figgis served dinner.

"They cook it over there," explained the duke, jerking his head to the clustered tents. "I've arranged for a first-rate man. We may as well be comfortable. Well, cheerio!"

Vingie raised her glass of bubbling wine. He watched her as if he hoped to see it flow down her slender throat. She set down the glass, rested her chin on her hands and smiled into his eyes.

"Bill," she murmured dreamily, "this is going to be sheer heaven."

Sleepily they ate, drugged by a day in the fresh air. Sleepily she stretched for his cigarette-case, tilted her chin to the held match. At last the beautifully waved head drooped; she offered her fingers for a good-night clasp, staggered to her tent and slept like a baby, with Vokes in the outer division lying between her and the censorious world.

William Albert sat dreaming over a final cigar. With an effort pathetic from fatigue he conjured up a mental image.

"Diane, Diane, if it were only you!" he said, and really believed he meant it.

At seven thirty A.M. a slender figure shrouded in a cream and scarlet bathing cloak tiptoed past Vokes and sought the sweet morning air. Vingie, whistling softly, stretched one white arm to adjust her already perfect bathing cap, and wandered in search of Figgis. She found him as a good chauffeur should be found, in overalls grooming his car.

"Figgis," began Vingie, "I want a message taken to the outer world, and it's private. I want it handed in at a post-office with instructions to wire it."

"We have a lad who runs errands on a motorcycle, miss," replied Figgis, not unimpressed by the vision before him. "I will see to it at once."

Vingie nodded, plucked a sheet of paper from an envelope and reread it for the last time.

"Berriman, Daily Tale, London. Bring Diane day after to-morrow, tea time. Place is Long Moor, near Cleckbarrow, Yorks. Bear left on top of moor and make for river. Good luck. Virginia L."

"I'm very much obliged to you, Figgis," said Vingie, moistening and sealing the envelope flap. Turning away on happy feet that longed to dance she ran across to the duke's tent and stood listening.

"Coo-ee!" she cried at last. "Wake up, Bill! It's a lovely morning."

Two seconds later a pajama-clad form emerged from the tent door, hair charmingly tousled, cigarette between fingers.

"Good morning," said Vingie. "Have you forgotten that river? Put on your bathing-kit and be quick, 'cause I've been waiting hours."

He disappeared obediently. In five minutes, approaching the river-bank he came upon a naiad in a scarlet one-piece swimming suit seated upon her cloak with an air of great patience. She stood up, waved a hand, raised her arms, stayed poised for one heart-beat, and dived. A moment after his blue-clad form cut the air in pursuit.

"I'm going to cook breakfast, Bill," she announced later, pattering tentward by his side. "You're keen on these real women, and you think I'm only a butterfly. Run along and shave and I'll be ready when you're finished."

By some miracle of galvanizing the sixty-year-old limbs of Vokes into young activity, Vingie, when he came forth groomed and hungry, he beheld deep in the mysteries of chafing-dish cookery.

Eggs and bacon sizzled with an appetizing smell; coffee steamed near by. Figgis, having spread a table in the wilderness, looked on indulgently. The duke praised while he marveled.

"I brought my own tools," explained Vingie, heaping his plate. "They say seeing's believing. You never knew I was useful before, did you, Bill? Look how the toy of an idle hour can produce grub and coffee for two. And what are we going to do with our nice day?"

"Anything in the world you like, Vingie."

She thought a moment.

"Let's take the boat and sandwiches and go exploring along the wild coasts of the river. If we get tired of it we can always land and go for a tramp across the moor. I love a boat. It's kind of lazy and romantic. Do you mind?"

The duke sighed. "No," he said. "I don't mind." He looked at her thoughtfully while she sat bare armed in some little elbow-sleeved rag and smiled at him from sheer vitality. "If you asked me to rig up sky-hooks and a rope and try and climb to the moon I'd do it. One does do things you suggest somehow. One gets the habit and then it's fatal. You see, they always sound so nice when you say them."

All day she made a perfect playfellow. Sometimes she would be a little girl, when she preferred not to walk any farther, and let him take care of her. At others she played the calm sensible friend, full of elder wisdom. Occasionally she remembered Diane and oozed soothing maternalness, as when he cut his finger and she bound it up, or when arriving back in camp she insisted on mending a tear in his coat.

For dinner that night she arrived bathed, powdered, beautiful, manicured, not one hair out of place, with a faint air of haughtiness very compelling. Having made a worm of him she relented and became kind as they sat smoking beneath the stars.

"Happy, Bill?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you."

"Know any more about what a woman can be to you than you did?"

"Oh well, you're not an ordinary woman. You're a witch or a devil or a darling, and sometimes all three at once."

Vingie rose to her feet in judgment.

"Either every woman's ordinary or else there are no ordinary women. Once a woman's attracted a man she can be anything she chooses to him if she likes to take the trouble. Attracting him's easy. She only has to ignore him and the vain thing comes running up to see why."

"No, really? By jove, you amaze me!" said the duke with mild sarcasm.

"So I'm going to bed, so night-night," she ended and left him, proving the truth of her wisdom, for he sat down feeling a little lonely and forsaken, wondering how she could bear to be without him, seeing it was only nine o'clock.

They came at tea-time. Mr. Berriman knew that punctuality is the courtesy of kings, having dealt with kings at odd times in the execution of his duty; consequently his hired limousine rolled gently into the duke's camp at four P.M. looking a little self-conscious and metropolitan. The chauffeur gazed about with a "Well, I never!" expression, got down, opened a door and consulted Mr. Berriman. Mr. Berriman alighted, a comforting and unmovable figure in tweed, and assisted Mademoiselle Diane de Blanchefôret to alight also. They moved slowly in the direction of the two isolated tents.

Vingie and the duke sat in two comfortable deck-chairs awaiting tea. Vingie was the first to behold the advance of Mr. Berriman and a tall dark woman with dead white complexion who moved with the subtlety of a snake, wearing an afternoon frock suitable for the races and an immense black hat. The high heels of her wonderful shoes were such as are forbidden by large and legible notices on all the best golf-courses. She would have looked perfect in the Park or Bond Street.

"Frenchwomen simply don't understand country kit," murmured Vingie to herself, and aloud: "Oh, Bill, look what's blown in!"

The duke raised his eyes and froze. First the color drained from his cheeks and then it returned at double-strength. Then his training asserted itself. He had received too many deputations not to know what to do. He went forward with outstretched hand.

Diane's dagger-glance flashed past him for one second to photograph a perfectly adorable Vingie utterly self-possessed; then her smile bathed the duke's unhappy face.

"Ah! Monseigneur, que je suis enchantée de vous voir!" she exclaimed in a voice like milk trickling over white velvet. "Figurez-vous que nous nous sommes perdus! Permettez que je vous présente Monsieur Bairymont."

Mr. Berriman raised his soft felt hat and remarked: "How do you do, sir? I must apologize for this descent on you, but we lost our way on top of the moor. What a perfectly delightful spot!"

"Oh, a filthy hole really, but I rather like it," deprecated the duke, and introduced him to Vingie. They met as perfect strangers. Figgis, having grasped the situation from the alien chauffeur, came forward to arrange tea.

Vingie with the feeling of one whose work is well done took the woman guest tentward, and Vokes offered hairpins and face powder and all that she had. Nevertheless all traces of Vingie's occupation had been removed, and plain hair-brushes replaced her ivory-backed treasures. From the subtle under-currents it was plain to her that the romance of Diane and the duke was shattered into bits and on the other hand would never be remolded nearer to the heart's desire. The slight on Diane was too deep, the pride of the duke too profound. The bright sallies and tinkling mirth of the tea-party proved this beyond a doubt.

As Vingie sat marveling at her own cleverness, a second car curved into the little clearing, an open touring car of distinguished lineage. A door opened and Rupert alighted, turning to assist his companion, the Lady Celia Pytchley. They advanced gently upon the tea-party.

Rupert wore the expression of a murderer who, found with the body of his victim, declares he has never noticed it before.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed with false geniality. "We thought we'd just drop in to tea."

"Cheerio!" returned the duke with equivalent heartiness. "The very thing! Figgis, two more cups, please."

Vingie smiled upon Lady Celia and Rupert as the sun shines on the just and unjust alike, but her eyes when they met Rupert's told him through the smile that rat-poison was too good for him. Lady Celia being a pleasant, pretty girl who played all sorts of games, fitted into the gathering without one wrinkle on her fair brow. If any man had said, "What a fine day!" she would have replied "Yes, isn't it!" and if he had continued, "No, it's wet!" she would have replied "Yes, it is rather wet!" Thus she had the making of a perfect wife, but Vingie's brain worked furiously nevertheless.

"Diane doesn't know me, but Celia and I played as children. There's no deceiving even an imbecile who played with you as a child. I must seem to be nothing but a tea-party guest and leave with the others. If she knew I was staying here my reputation would disappear. As Rupert has done me in it's up to him to rescue me."

With considerable skill she drew him aside and sauntered toward the river-bank. Then she turned on him.

"I always realized you were a fool, Rupert," she said bitterly, "but would you mind telling me exactly why even you brought Celia here?"

Rupert frowned thoughtfully.

"It is the theory of the attraction of opposites," he explained. "I considered it likely that the violent contrast between you and her might turn his fancy in her direction. It was an experiment in psychology, my dear Virginia. Of course, I had no idea that other woman would be here. It is most distressing that Lady Celia should breathe the same air——"

"It would take more than air to hurt Celia," snarled Vingie. "My dear Rupert, you're the hopeless frozen limit. I get him here quietly, handle him perfectly for days, arrange for Diane to come down looking like a film star on a desert island, and to-night I'd have finished the job and packed him off to Celia in the morning. Now I wash my hands of you and your duke. All I'm concerned is to get away before Celia. She must never know I'm staying here."

"Why not?" asked Rupert kindly.

"Because——" retorted Vingie, fighting for breath, "because it's—just possible—she might think it—funny. Not laughing funny you know, curious funny, like widows who aren't married and that kind of thing. Do you see that man over there with two arms and two legs? That is Figgis, the chauffeur. Go and tell him to get the Rolls ready and not be surprised when I tell him to drive me home, but just to do it. And tell him to tell Vokes to hide. Celia must never see Vokes. She might remember her. And tell him to get a coat of mine and put it in the car. It looks better and I'll need it. And, Rupert, if I didn't happen to have a hat on nothing could have saved me. Now go!"

Rupert had at least one virtue, the capacity to obey. He went.

For ten minutes Vingie tossed the shuttle-cock of conversation lightly to and fro. Then she rose and held out a hand to the duke. He had long ceased to think or wonder; he hid a bruised and bewildered boy behind a grinning society image, but under this last blow his nerve almost cracked.

"Good-by," said Vingie. "I've enjoyed my tea most awfully; thank you for a gorgeous time."

His eye, wandering helplessly, beheld Figgis, capped and dust-coated, beside a purring Rolls.

"But," he began, "must you go? What about your——"

"My coat's in the car, thanks!" she broke in. "Rupert, you can take me over to it if you like. Good-by, every one."

Once again, Rupert watched with disapproval while she escaladed the sporting body.

"I didn't really want you; I loathe the sight of you," she explained over the side of it. "But I must know which road your car will take."

"We go north. Celia and I are both staying with the Tees. I think you are being a little unkind, Virginia."

"Let's go south then," said Vingie to Figgis, and at her word the car glided away.

"I followed your instructions, miss," he reassured her. "I told the other chauffeurs what I thought would do most good, and Vokes is concealed in the stores tent."

"Jolly good of you, Figgis. Take me about twenty miles and stop at some decent place for dinner, and then we'll go back when the coast's clear."

Even as Vingie nourished herself in the ancient splendor of the Rose & Crown while Figgis lurked in the outer darkness where chauffeurs feed, the duke dined alone in his stricken camp. Diane had gone and Celia had gone and Vingie, for all he knew, still traveled south in his pet car. His dinner was badly served by some awkward substitute for Figgis. Afterward he lay back in a cane lounge, smoked a cigar and stared at the evening sky.

"A person in my position," he said to himself at last, "is doomed as far as women are concerned. The suitable ones are dull and the attractive ones aren't suitable. They do these things better in the East; I believe I could get together a harem as well as the next person if only people's silly prejudice didn't stand in the way."

The sight of an approaching car interrupted, but he never raised his head. There had been so many cars that day. He did not hear Vingie's feet upon the grass, and started when she laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Bill, darling," she said reproachfully, "you didn't think I wouldn't come back, did you? Have you forgotten this is our last night? We've got to go home to-morrow."

"Don't touch me or I shall go mad," implored the duke. "You might remember that when you touch them men are inclined that way, Vingie. It may simplify life for you. Sit over there and listen."

She went obediently.

The duke held up his left hand and ticked things off on its fingers with his right.

"Diane is finished," he began. "She looked rather a fool in those clothes out here, and I looked rather a fool being caught here with you. A man does look a fool when one woman catches him with another. I don't know why. And directly people have looked fools, love ceases to exist."

He paused, and ticked off a second item on a second finger.

"You," he went on, "are perfectly delightful. But with you it was all fair and above-board, a kind of demonstration like when I go down to Aldershot and a general with no brains, for reasons that don't exist, maneuvers troops armed with blank cartridge against an enemy that isn't there."

"The enemy was there, Bill," murmured Vingie. "And kindly don't confuse me with people who have no brains."

"Well, never mind all that. Now we come to Celia. She's a nice bright girl, and she'd never give me a moment's anxiety. But think of a lifetime with a woman who never gave one a moment's anxiety!"

Vingie rose, seated herself on the edge of the cane lounge and slid an arm behind his tired head. He let it fall back against her with a little sigh.

"Listen," she said. "Celia will be just as nice to you as I've been. All women are the same really. The difference between one and the other is what you imagine. A man always falls in love with an imaginary girl, but he marries a real one, and spends his life discovering the difference. But with you it'll be the other way round. You'll expect nothing and make all sorts of exciting discoveries."

The duke reached up, drew her head down and kissed her affectionately. At length he delivered judgment.

"If it were going to be you and not Celia I should never have a moment's peace of mind till the grave closed over me," he said.

In her Park Street boudoir Vingie entertained Lord Fordingbridge to tea. There is a certain appeal about these intimate entertainments which no man is too old to appreciate. Lord Fordingbridge's genial, rubicund countenance wore an expression of beatitude.

"So you see," continued Vingie, "I managed to persuade him finally. But it was a fearf'ly narrow escape and I can't tell you how sick I am with Rupert. He nearly wrecked everything."

There is also something in the charm of a delightful girl which makes men reveal secrets they would do better to hide. Lord Fordingbridge simpered self-consciously.

"As a matter of fact it wasn't Rupert's idea at all," he confessed.

"You don't mean you——?"

Lord Fordingbridge shook his head.

"I'm a very stupid old man. All I can do is to look cheerful and pick other people's brains. But somehow I felt a little nervous about our conspiracy—indeed you were somewhat uncertain yourself."

"Oh, no, I wasn't!" scoffed Vingie.

"So I went and had a chat with Charles," Lord Fordingbridge rumbled on. "Charles is the brainiest fellow I know, a perfect marvel; never makes a mistake. And Charles said to me: 'Arrange for Celia Pytchley to find him with the other two.' So I got the Tees to ask her and Rupert up to their place, and told Rupert what to do. Of course he had to do it, so you mustn't be angry with him."

"And what was Charles' reason for the idea?" asked Vingie in a gray voice.

Lord Fordingbridge chuckled.

"He explained it all to me, because you know I haven't his brain. He said: 'I know Vingie's damned attractive and I presume Diane's damned attractive, but Celia's absolutely safe. Now when he sees all three together he'll lose his nerve and play for safety. He'll choose the safe one and that's exactly what you want him to do.'

"'But why will he?' says I.

"'Because, you fool, a man always does!' says he, and you see he was right. Charles was right! But your skilful handling of the situation—your tact—your patience—your insight—marvelous, my dear young lady. Simply marvelous!"

Vingie surveyed him in frigid silence. He continued to smile benignly.

"I may say that the—ah!—investments you suggested have been made in your name," he purred. "And the news of the duke's engagement shall be announced in that deplorable newspaper, a copy of which, thank God, I have never seen."

"And one thing more," demanded Vingie swiftly. 'You must send Rupert to Mr. Berriman to arrange the announcement."

"But why?" asked Lord Fordingbridge dubiously.

Vingie's smile was very sweet.

"Because they'll put him in his place at the Daily Tale," she said. "He'll stroll in languidly and they'll grab him, and shut him in a waiting-room, and whiz him up in a lift and rush him into Mr. Berriman's room and rush him out. They only let me stay five minutes! And Charles' brain conceived it, but Rupert's was the hand that torpedoed me."

Lord Fordingbridge, still smiling, turned his thumbs down.

V

The butler, hovering in Olympian calm over the ministrant footman, stepped forward, moved the teapot one-sixteenth of an inch, stood back, bowed his head in acknowledgment of perfection at length achieved and passed out in the wake of his underling. Vingie, from the depths of her cane armchair, blessed with her eyes the sweeping terrace of Wynwood, the velvet swathes of shaven lawn, the umbrageousness of the park, and came back contentedly to the contemplation of her own delicious ankles. Sir Charles, draped in the creamiest of flannel trousers, silk shirt, and the violent blazer of the dear old regiment, surveyed her in dreamy reverie.

Vingie, pouring his tea with slender fingers, drenching it generously in cream, fondled him with a glance half provocative, half maternal. It is so hard for good-looking twenty to be altogether merciful.

"Charles," she murmured reproachfully, "I know you're thinking about Mrs. Trevor-James."

"Nothing of the kind," retorted Sir Charles. "I was looking at you and being perfectly happy. One can look at a beautiful ward and experience a solely esthetic pleasure. It's one of the few pure emotions of which we are capable."

"The violence of your flirtation with Mrs. Trevor-James has been a great comfort to me, Charles," pursued Vingie, totally unmoved. "It showed me that even at her age I shall still be dangerous, and it proved to me the perpetual charm of sowing wild oats. She isn't your first wild oat by any means, and yet you displayed a childish excitement that was very pathetic. In the days to come when I am a carefully corseted widow with a past——"

Sir Charles shook his head gravely.

"Youth! Youth!" he intoned, "so headstrong, so censorious, so inexperienced! Yours is the age of greedy emotions, Virginia. You mistake the harmless exercise of a perfect technique—since that is all it amounts to at my time of life—for the sort of temperamental thunder-storm you would indulge in if you dared. I have been a soldier, a diplomat, a man of the world, and I tell you candidly that wild oats in your case are like artificial pearls—a confession that you were unable to achieve the real thing. With the solemnization of every marriage a woman exchanges the inside of a cage for the outside and a man the outside of a cage for the inside. Speaking as a bachelor, honestly I don't see what more you can want."

"You're just a few years out of date, Charles. To-day a girl can sneak out of her cage for a little sight-seeing and sneak back again in time for the wedding. It's a sensible precaution, like learning the language and looking up the history of a foreign country before you go abroad. It enables one to know exactly the right sort of cakes and things to throw between the bars to cheer up one's poor caged man after he's caged."

A gentle smile modified Sir Charles' clean-cut mouth.

"Rupert has come on a lot of late," he said darkly. "You haven't seen him for a month or more. You'd be surprised. He ought to be here at any moment, unless the three-forty-five train is later than usual."

"And what has caused the miracle?" queried Vingie with delicate scorn.

"I shouldn't wonder if it's some girl," chuckled Sir Charles. "It would cause me a certain amount of amusement if you were to officiate one day as one of Mrs. Rupert's bridesmaids. He'd be certain to ask you; after all, he's known you since you were a child."

The distant purring of a car at the farther side of the house came soothingly to their ears. Two minutes later the tall form of Rupert emerged from a French window, his earnest preoccupied face wreathed in a deprecating smile. Vingie leaned back in her chair literally aghast at his transformation. She had expected a lank untidy figure, its trousers baggy-kneed, its jacket sagging at the pockets, its hair undisciplined, its shoes deplorable. She saw a young man of fashion slenderly embraced by an inspired morning coat beneath which a cream waistcoat peeped coyly. His striped trousers were ironed into a tin-like severity, his white spats and patent shoes gleamed, the silk hat he raised shot back the rays of the summer sun, and he carried a gold knobbed straight Malacca cane with a certain panache.

"Good afternoon," began this vision, a little self-consciously. "Forgive the festive appearance, but I came straight from an official Foreign Office luncheon. The chief is motoring down late with Jim Andaside. We're very worried about him. It is a most unfortunate business all round."

"Tell us about it while I give you some tea, you standardized Don Juan," scoffed Vingie. "Or perhaps you'd rather drink whisky-and-soda; I'm afraid we haven't any absinthe. Do find him a cigarette, Charles; it's the one touch lacking."

The bad habits of a lifetime not being conquered in a moment, Rupert Frack tossed his glossy hat carelessly on to the grass and subsided into a chair. Vingie stared in fascination at his sleek, brilliantined head. "I mustn't," he said soberly. "Tea, please. The chief will use his discretion. I rather think he wishes to consult Uncle Charles. It's lovely weather for June, isn't it? By jove, Virginia, what topping tea-cakes!"

"He even has polite conversation on the tip of his tongue," commented Vingie. "Where did you learn all this, Rupert? Whose is the white reforming hand?"

"To tell you the truth," he confessed, "it became my duty to cultivate a certain rather attractive lady in whom the Foreign Office was interested. We deported her last week, but newly acquired mannerisms are apt to cling. I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to the chief. Jim was bringing him down in a new car of recent design. They should really be here by now."

"Man proposes but God disposes," commented Sir Charles, offering his cigarette-case to Vingie.

A violent commotion resembling machine-gun fire heralded the arrival upon a winding drive beneath the terrace of a car bristling with ferocity whose two-seated body contained a rather grim-faced young man and Lord Fordingbridge. His lordship descended with dignity from the severely braked vehicle, which emitted irregular and protesting booms from its exhaust, contemplated the exiguous body festooned with luggage and spare wheels, shrugged his shoulders resignedly and climbed the flight of stone steps leading to the terrace. He removed his gray tall hat in sweeping homage to Virginia and gazed down on the assembled tea-party.

"Jim is a good-hearted fellow and means well," he observed judicially. "Nevertheless I have envied the French aristocrats journeying in a tumbril to the guillotine ever since we left Hyde Park Corner. The certainty of their end, swift and comparatively painless, gave rise to my somewhat unchristian feeling. To have one's innermost self spread out for the vulgar to gaze upon—an imminent prospect for the last twenty miles—rather appals me. My dear Virginia, to see you is more than sufficient reward for my sufferings. You look positively blooming."

She smiled graciously and offered him a slender hand which he raised to his lips in the old-time manner. She had a definite esteem for this rubicund old gentleman with the heart of a child and the eye of a connoisseur. He presented the Honorable James Andaside, a youthful person of quiet exterior, foreboding hidden fires, whose battered blue suit and stained finger-tips bespoke a descendant of Tubal Cain, the Father of Artificers. His eyes dwelt gratefully on Vingie and his voice wooed her, for women and petrol engines have much in common and a man who is clever with cars may toy skilfully with girls.

Then, turning to Lord Fordingbridge he said briefly:

"Don't you agree she ought to land the Iberian contract?" He jerked a wise young head toward the silent monster in the drive. Lord Fordingbridge raised his eyebrows.

"We certainly progressed by leaps and bounds, if that is a recommendation."

"You don't expect," remonstrated Jim Andaside, "a car with a high compression engine, overlap valve timing, racing cams, aluminum pistons and drilled con-rods to doddle along like a ten-year-old taxicab."

"It is not my custom to indulge in fatuous expectations," responded Lord Fordingbridge gravely, "and even if it were I should reflect at some length before aspersing the very delicately organized mechanism on which you and your associates have lavished so much anxious thought."

Jim Andaside shrugged his shoulders.

"The only thing to do is to marry that infernal woman," he declared. "After all, what does it matter? I spend all my time at the works."

"I shall revoke your passport, my dear fellow," countered Lord Fordingbridge with his most child-like smile. "You won't be able to leave the country. I may be only a foolish old man, but one day you'll succeed to the title and we can't have the Earl of Borth tied up to a Dago countess. There are more ways of choking a cat than by killing it with butter."

"What is all this talk about the assassination of cats?" inquired Sir Charles in his gently indulgent voice. "The great question is, George, do you know the name of a horse that is bound to win at Ascot? Higgins, the head-gardener, is pressing me for new shoes for the pony that pulls the lawn-mower, and Virginia is positively in rags."

"No wise man would risk his reputation by tipping the sort of rubbish they breed now-a-days, Charles," sighed Lord Fordingbridge. "I've got a tenner on Belted Earl for the Gold Cup at fifties, but it's money thrown away. Jim, I wonder if you'd mind showing Rupert your pet leviathan. After all, he comes into this strange business that involves us all. Dear me, dear me, how extraordinary it seems! I don't know what Lord Palmerston would think if he were alive."

His shrewd old eyes followed the departing pair of young men with interest. "I find Rupert very well turned out lately," he went on dreamily to Vingie. "Positively proud to be seen about with him. But, my dear Virginia, my dear Charles, we are in a sad fix. The cares of state become almost more than I can bear."

"Rupert half-hinted at some crisis, but, of course, he gave nothing away," murmured Vingie with balm in her tone far transcending the bedside manner of the most expensive consulting specialist. "Do you think it might help if you were to tell us just the bare outlines?"

"The curse of old age is that one begins to take advantage of one's friends!" declared Lord Fordingbridge passionately. "Y'see it's like this: The war did one thing to one man and another thing to another, and it got young Jim Andaside mixed up in trade. He nearly broke poor Bob Berth's heart, especially as Geoffrey, the eldest boy, was smashed up so badly that marriage is out of the question for him. That means Jim will succeed to the title eventually. He always had low mechanical tastes—don't know one end of a horse from the other, God help him, and I never saw such a disgraceful game shot in my life—and he actually apprenticed himself to a firm of motor engineers, Daimely or Wolseler or some one.

"He was a Sapper during the war, and happened to come across some dreadful fellow—I'm not sure he wasn't an Australian—who had an idea for a new-fangled car. Anyhow, they started to manufacture the thing, but the Australian—if he was an Australian, but he may have been a Canadian—broke his neck testing a new model. So now Jim's on his own. He's made quite a bit of money out of it, which rather reconciled his family, for, of course, dear old Bob Borth hasn't a bean, and one day what does he do but find out that the Iberian Republic is bringing the whole of its internal transport up to date."

"Iberia? Iberia?" pondered Vingie. "Isn't that where the Russians used to knout prisoners to death before the Bolsheviks destroyed all the old Russian civilization?"

"You're thinking of Siberia, my dear," corrected Lord Fordingbridge with the large tolerance of the expert. "Iberia is one of those Latin countries, somewhere in the region of Portugal or something. Rupert would know exactly. Hitherto the Iberians have stuck to the ox-carts of their forefathers, but there's been a terrible wave of progress since the war, and the government felt it ought to encourage motor transport. So Jim gets an introduction to the president of Iberia and practically persuaded him to sign a contract for five thousand Catapult cars, just as a beginning, so to speak."

"Clever blighter," murmured Sir Charles, hiding a yawn. "But how dull and soulless these commercial transactions are, my dear George. How much more picturesque the Iberian peasant appears seated in the ox-cart of his ancestors!"

"Ah, but he wouldn't be supporting the Borths in their ancient fastnesses, dear old boy! However, before Señor Alphonso del Sol—that's the president's name, y' know—could put pen to paper, his only daughter appeared on the scene."

Lord Fordingbridge paused, and sighed.

"She has no mother to guide her, poor girl, her father being a widower. It may be that or it may be her nature, but I understand that Maria Dolores del Sol practically runs Iberia.

"They're a romantic lot of scoundrels, and there's probably a great deal more noblesse oblige going about than is good for the young lady. She's nineteen, but of course, in that climate they mature very early."

He glanced guardedly at the chair which enshrined Vingie's twenty flower-like years. "Her seniority in this country would be at least twenty-five. Independent witnesses assert that she's remarkably good-looking—naturally, in that florid Iberian fashion. Probably nobody would look at her twice over here."

"Your delicacy does you credit, but pray don't mind me," said Vingie very sweetly. "The question is, what did she do to Jim Andaside?"

"She played him simply the meanest trick a woman has it in her to play," answered Lord Fordingbridge with emotion. "She fell in love with him at first sight, and in a long life of diplomacy I never heard of anything more miserably selfish. Jim aroused in her all those terrible possessive instincts with which Providence curses woman; she conjured up visions of an establishment, a wedding ring, servants, tradespeople, cradles, and Heaven knows what else. She insists on marrying the poor boy, and if he refuses the contract for these five thousand cars will never be signed."

"And still," observed Sir Charles, "I fail to see why that should worry you. Jim isn't your child, and I imagine you haven't invested money in this undertaking."

"You don't understand, Charles. You've been out of harness for some time—otium cum dignitate so to speak. Diplomacy and commerce are sadly mingled nowadays. Every ambassador carries a ready reckoner in his pocket. The Foreign Office has to keep an eye on a big deal with a foreign state; it means a lot of employment here next winter, and there's a certain prestige attaching to the whole thing. Jim's got the heart of a lion; he'd marry the girl sooner than lose the contract, but my feeling is that we sacrificed enough young lives during the war. Besides I can't hear of dear old Bob being saddled with an Iberian daughter-in-law. At the same time Jim won't listen to any scheme that jeopardizes the contract. You're a sound fellow, Charles, and you know how stupid I am. I wonder if you could think of any way out."

"I know a little about women and a great deal about Dagoes, and I can see Jim with a handle of a knife sticking out between his shoulder-blades," Sir Charles replied thoughtfully. "What is this car we are discussing? Has anybody ever heard of it? There is only one car that any decent person cares to be seen in, as far as I know."

Lord Fordingbridge, with shame written all over his face, furtively extracted a leaflet from his waist-coat pocket, adjusted his glasses, and read: "The Catapult car. For those who have no time. It needs none. Faster than a flapper. Wears like a wife. Scrap your 'ought-to'-mobile for the Buzz-bus that Does!"

"I call that jolly clever!" commented Vingie.

"May God forgive him," groaned Sir Charles.

"It goes on to mention things like 'full-floating axles' and 'spiral-bevel drives,'" explained Lord Fordingbridge apologetically, "but I needn't profane your ears with any more. Nevertheless I understand that for the sort of people who like that kind of thing the Catapult car is most satisfactory. The Iberian Government proposed to guarantee a scheme of easy payments—a dreadful system devised for the classes that can neither owe like a gentleman nor pay cash like a profiteer. As I said, however, Maria Dolores has queered everything. There's a kind of moratorium for a fortnight and after that, Heaven alone knows."

"Well," declared Sir Charles, "I don't want to seem like a rat leaving the sinking ship, but I should like to be excused from interfering, George. Blackmail I can understand, and embezzlement, and highway robbery, but this has the drawbacks of each and the virtues of neither. If I haven't got a pure heart I like to have clean hands."

"How wise you are, Charles, darling. It takes a woman to beat a woman at her own game. As long as her heart is pure she can always wash her hands," said Vingie in her clear modern voice, smiling a little.

"Ah!" sighed Lord Fordingbridge. He leaned back easily in his comfortable chair. The anxious lines round his mouth relaxed. He hummed a little tune, one that took London by storm in 1878. "My dear," he went on craftfully, "it is quite a time since I saw the rose-garden. I wonder whether you would be so kind as to show it me. Somehow or other I can never manage to grow roses like Charles does. He brings a touch of genius to everything."

She drifted rose-garden ward beside him, utterly adorable in her brief tennis frock. Lord Fordingbridge felt himself move in an atmosphere of extreme benevolence dashed with romance. Ultimately he took a perfect specimen of Gloire de Dijon speculatively between thumb and finger, and said simply:

"My dear Virginia, what is your opinion?"

"How should a mere foolish girl rush in where Cabinet ministers fear to tread?" responded Vingie with humility.

"In this case, to be quite frank, she would do it almost on her own terms."

"My poor friend, you must indeed be worried! I'd love to help you for nothing because I'm ever so fond of you, but I'm very hard up and Charles is such a dear I can't bear to sponge on him. You do understand, don't you?"

"I think I could promise a commission of ten shillings per car supposing the deal for this five thousand cars goes through without Jim's marrying Maria Dolores. That's two thousand five hundred pounds. It would buy quite a number of frocks."

"Yes. Thank you!" said Vingie, raising her fair young face to the light and letting Lord Fordingbridge admire it in the academic spirit of an expert. "A girl, of course, doesn't make a fool of herself over a man like a man does of himself over a girl. Jim must appeal to her vanity. Probably he shows up rather well beside the local men; he's more athletic and capable, and he's done a certain amount. Besides it's practically certain he made love to her, partly for the sake of business, mostly from habit. The great thing is not to thwart her or else she'll never let him go. If we could show her something better than Jim, or make her feel he's not worth troubling about, the whole thing's perfectly simple. It's a very delicate matter. I should need to go out to Iberia, and take Charles, and probably Rupert. You see, she mustn't get the idea that I want Jim myself. I'd suggest that I wouldn't touch him with a long stick. I expect I'm putting it all very badly. May I have a quiet talk with Jim after dinner? Do you feel you can trust me?"

Lord Fordingbridge patted gently the loveliest shoulder this generation has produced.

"Tiresome and ugly monuments have been erected in important thoroughfares to people who have done far less than you are about to accomplish," he said with conviction....

"Mary," announced Vingie half an hour later, "I must try to be almost nice-looking this evening. Chuck an extra handful of bath-salts in the bath—those Baisers d'Amoureuse are the thrilliest I think—and I should like a rather passionate make-up. I want to impress a young man who's just left the most beautiful girl in Iberia. Do you think we can manage it?"

"With the cream and gold gown it'll be quite simple, miss. Accustomed as he has been to dark young ladies wearing brilliant shades, your fair complexion and a gown to match will take his breath away."

"What a comfort you are, Mary—so sympathetic and understanding," murmured Vingie, snatching a kimono about her slender form and sliding her little feet into pink mules.

In truth, when after a very satisfactory dinner, the one girl among three men, the pampered darling of an admiring trinity, she took Jim Andaside apart, subjecting him to the third degree, herself and her intriguing frock reduced him to a very suitable frame of mind.

She took in subconsciously his alert figure, the gray eyes in a thin tanned face, the intelligent hands.

"Lord Fordingbridge suggested I might be able to help over this Iberian affair," she began slowly. "Do you mind telling me exactly how you stand with Maria Dolores!"

His eyes dwelt thoughtfully on hers.

"Strange as it may sound, she insists on marrying me. I've done everything in reason. I gave her a Catapult salon with a gold-plated body and scarlet cord upholstery. It sounds disgusting, but it suits the Iberian taste. I've left her my head tester, Pete Hannen, to drive it, because it's one of three racing models, with a special engine all machined out of the solid, and I don't want her to break her neck. She rides about looking like the band-wagon out of a circus, as happy as a kid."

"Have you ever kissed her?"

"I never tell tales. Besides, what's that got to do with it?"

"Well," said Vingie severely, "you shouldn't have done."

"You don't know Iberia as well as I do," he sighed.

"'The wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.'

Besides, when she's in the mood Maria Dolores positively palpitates, and if a young lady produces a stiletto from her garter and spikes it through your shirt over your heart, and swears you shall never live to look at another woman, and then you have to take the stiletto away, and she shows you the marks of your fingers on her wrist, life becomes a little difficult."

"The idea is to convince her that personally you're not worth bothering about."

"I'm not proud, but you'll have a job to find anything to beat me in Iberia."

"Do you want to marry this girl?" demanded Vingie icily.

"God forbid! I don't want to marry any girl until I've sold a Catapult to every man, woman and child who's got the price of it. But I should hate you not to realize the difficulties we have ahead of us."

He smiled gently and placed his finger-tips together.

"It's a great life if you don't weaken, isn't it? But I'll do anything in order to be rescued. I want to plant those five thousand cars on the Iberian public."

"Well, if you'll be kind enough to leave me and ask Lord Fordingbridge to spare me a few minutes I dare say it can be arranged," said Vingie, with more casualness than actually she felt. It did not seem desirable for the young man to overrate his personal charm because he had impressed a simple Iberian damsel unaccustomed to the Anglo-Saxon. Presently Lord Fordingbridge arrived.

"How wonderfully you understand women," murmured Vingie as he stood surveying her with respectful homage. "Do sit down and I'll try to work out a plan. The only thing I can think of is to make her give him up out of pique. If you could arrange for Charles and Rupert and me to go out to Iberia as I said, and for Charles and Rupert to pose as directors of the Catapult Car Company while Jim is just a salesman, it might work wonders. Of course, we'll all treat Maria Dolores and her father most tactfully and rather snub Jim. I think I'll be engaged to Rupert for the time being—it doesn't matter; I know him so awfully well—and that will annoy Maria Dolores too. And if the worst comes to the worst we can invite her over here. I should like to arrange a little newspaper publicity for her in case of accidents. Mr. Berriman—of the Daily Tale—can work anything. If I could promise to take a little advertising space for this car he'd feed out of my hand."

"Just as you wish, my dear Virginia," replied Lord Fordingbridge. "Jim can't afford to refuse me anything at the moment. I will arrange for him to transfer the necessary stock to Charles and Rupert; it amounts merely to a paper transaction, for they will hardly wish to retain an interest in the company. I will also give instructions for cabins to be reserved in a steamer sailing, shall we say, at the end of next week, and accommodation in Peixoes, the capital of Iberia. That is, I'll leave it all to Rupert; I'm afraid I haven't a head for these tiresome details, but he's a wonderful fellow. Now I can scarcely look up a train in a time-table, but then, why should I if I can get somebody else to do it for me?"

Vingie rose from her chair, placed a hand affectionately on his arm, and moved across the drawing-room to the open French windows giving upon the terrace. A full moon sailed high in the summer heavens and the mingled scent of lawns and flower borders drifted intoxicatingly on the air.

"It's an ideal sentimental setting," she murmured à propos of nothing. "Could I borrow Rupert for a moment or two?"

When Rupert stepped out on to the terrace she was standing by a vast ornamental vase set on the balustrade dividing the terrace from the gardens. Slowly she raised one white arm to remove the cigarette from between her lips, turned, leaned against the balustrade and faced him.

"I hardly know you nowadays, Rupert," she began irrelevantly. "You used to look like something out of a rag-bag. Now you're perfectly beautiful; was the deported lady so very charming?"

Rupert Frack, a very modish figure indeed in one of the daring new double-breasted white dress waistcoats, shrugged his shoulders with dandified grace.

"Have you ever observed, Virginia, how extremely trivial life is?" he asked with cynical flippancy. "Even you judge entirely by exteriors. For instance, my good work in connection with the Navigable Waters of the Danube, my Minute on the Trans-Caucasian Iron Mines, my Report on the Latvian Boundary Commission left you absolutely unmoved. But because a man runs an iron rather more frequently up and down the legs of my trousers, because I brilliantine my hair and double my tailor's bill, you are impressed."

"I'm not impressed but I used to be rather sorry for you," explained Vingie in the kindness of her heart.

"Well," replied Rupert, dropping his platform manner, "it doesn't matter. You see one has to have one's pose; you've yours, Fordingbridge has his and I have mine. It took people's eye, it gave me time to work, I had to work in order to get on. But, having established myself in the Foreign Office, I can afford to blossom forth a little. How lovely blossoming is when you've kept yourself severely in bud-formation for ever so many years."

"I never did. I was always a wild one, the gilded little prodigal, the sickening anxiety in darling Charles' stately life. I've sown several wild oats, Rupert, and I'm on the point of sowing some more. You've got to come and help sow. It's this sordid business of Jim Andaside and the Iberian siren, Lord Fordingbridge has lent me you for the time being, but I suppose you've heard. Now that you've started to blossom it may make life even more dangerous for me, but you little know what chilled-steel nerve a girl has to have in these insidious days. By the way, Rupert, how do I strike you in your blossoming state?"

She stood before him, chin lifted, lips parted, eyes daring him.

Rupert smiled a smile more eloquent than words. The best cut sleeve in Mayfair crinkled to enfold her slight beauty; his half-sensitive, half-stern mouth stooped to hers. With a calm, unhurried turn of her head, Vingie foiled him, with that barren gesture every pretty girl knows so well and enjoys so much. She moved carelessly from the circle of his arm and looked him up and down.

"For the last four years, Mr. Rupert Frack," she said venomously, "I've been just as pretty as I am now, just as fascinating, just as enthusiastic, and you preferred the waters of the Danube. I dare say you knew what you were doing, but you don't imagine I'm going to stand still like a good little girl and be kissed on the first occasion when you can distinguish me from a Caucasian iron mine, do you?"

"And you don't suppose you can stand there asking for it and not have me try, do you?" reproved Rupert.

"I never need to ask, and I'm not accustomed to men who merely try. No, go away, and listen. You've repented a little too late, Rupert. By now so many men have made love to me that I'm very difficult. I doubt if you'll ever appeal to me in the right way. I know you so well—I can see the very thought flick in and out of your mind. But you shall have this much opportunity. Directly we're outside the three-mile limit on our voyage to Iberia, you will become officially engaged to me, the engagement to cease as soon as we reenter the three-mile limit on our way back. This engagement carries no privileges and I shall be very exacting, but it'll be a wonderful chance for you to learn. Now you may take me indoors."

Somewhere within, Jim Andaside, having repaired the stricken motor of a large gramophone, was giving it a trial run, and the strains of a foxtrot quivered in the air. Vingie sighed faintly, snuggled into Rupert's arms and whirled with him over the polished parquet of the vast drawing-room. "Dancing lessons too!" mocked Vingie. "Oh, Rupert, Rupert, you reckless dog!"

The music of the gramophone ceased. At the foot of the historic staircase she paused and extended a slender hand. Reverently he raised it to his lips.

"George Fordingbridge does it better, but the instinct is praiseworthy," murmured Vingie. "Good night, Rupert, darling."

Mr. Berriman was glad when Vingie invited him to a tête-à-tête luncheon at Sir Charles' town house in Park Street. Accustomed to dealing with mere reporters, foreign adventurers, privy conspirators and rebels, his keen quiet eyes rested with pleasure on his adorable hostess clad in a summer toilet of such inspiration as even improvers might not fell or hem until they had been beaten with rods.

Somewhere in the thirties, disillusioned and self-reliant, he knew he had not been asked for nothing, so he said politely:

"It's some time since we made newspaper history together. What scoop have you got for me this time, Miss Lauriston?"

Vingie laughed and shook her head. Mr. Berriman thought he had never seen anything more fascinating than the side curl that hid her ears.

"You know I've never brought you a scoop yet, but one day we'll wreck Fleet Street," she crooned. "I'll be perfectly candid. This is the situation."

Mr. Berriman listened quietly to the plight of Jim Andaside deftly set forth.

"What I want you to do," explained Vingie, "is to work as many paragraphs about Maria Dolores as you can into the Daily Tale. Let me have the name and address of your Peixoes correspondent and I'll send them through him. The idea is to give the girl a swollen head and make her despise Jim. In return I can promise you a certain amount of advertising, and the exclusive news of the contract, if we put it through. Will that be fair, do you think?"

"Perfectly," answered Mr. Berriman gravely. "I'd like some personal stuff about you too, if you don't mind. We could use a photograph, and have a little story about your trip to Iberia, referring to you as the charming young society beauty. I realize how you must loathe anything of the kind but you have a certain responsibility to the public."

"And if I have to bring Maria Dolores to England I can still rely on you, can't I?"

"Let me choose my own photographer and we'll boost her even if she's as plain as a pikestaff," promised Mr. Berriman. "Forgive me if I run away but I've got a man coming to see me at three. Unfortunately life isn't all feasting and revelry. How I wish it were!"

After he had gone Vingie sat idling joyfully, savoring adventure to come. Upon her musing the arrival of a messenger broke abruptly. He brought a note from Rupert and a sheaf of roses, typifying both sides of that astonishing young man's nature, the routine and the romantic.

The note contained a résumé of necessary facts: "The train leaves at ...... the car will be at the door at ...... the boat sails at ...... on ...... your state room is number ......" Attached to this order of march she found a list of useful phrases:

It is too expensive; have you nothing cheaper? | Es demasiado caro. No tiene usted nada mas barato?
I do not like garlic. | No me gusta ajo.
Can you tell me the way to the railway station, tramway, police station, post-office? | Puede usted dirigirme a la estación tramvia—policia— casa de correos.

Vingie sniffed fitfully at the roses.

"He might be worth training. Unfortunately one never finds them ready-made. Well, we shall have a chance to see in a few days," she murmured.

As the S.S. Badajoz shook the third territorial mile from her creaming wake, Vingie slid an expensive diamond and sapphire ring from the third finger of her right hand to the third finger of her left, extended the hand meaningly to Rupert, and withdrew it swiftly. The gesture was not lost upon him; thenceforth he became her slave according to his, as yet, limited comprehension. Sir Charles passed idle days reading or in the practise of such pastimes as poker, bridge, or even a little quiet baccarat. Jim Andaside scarcely left the entrails of two racing model Catapults, camouflaged to look like the standard product, the deceptive sprats with which he hoped to catch golden Iberian mackerel.

On the last night of the voyage they drank success to their enterprise in the golden waters of France. Vingie gazed thoughtfully at her three fellow travelers, dwelling particularly on Jim.

"Remember," she said at last, "this is to be no joy-ride. My one object in life is to sell Catapults. People's love-troubles don't interest me. I look on you two young men simply as so much human material for bringing me in ten shillings per car on a sale of five thousand cars."

"You are distraught with commercialism, my dear Virginia," declared Sir Charles gravely. "Oblige me by taking her on deck, Rupert, and letting her look at the moon. I mean the boat deck not the promenade deck. One is nearer the moon on the boat deck."

VI

From the cool, white, slatted-shuttered house in Peixoes, rented by Lord Fordingbridge through the Embassy, Vingie launched her attack on this new, sun-baked indolent world where time stood still and the fretfulness of a more northerly race seemed impertinence. Sir Charles, blending with his new atmosphere through the habits of a lifetime, went forth to call upon Señor Alphonso del Sol. Vingie sent messages to one Henry Carter, who did the bidding of Mr. Berriman in those regions, and Jim Andaside, in the Hotel Nacional, where he dwelt, put Pete Hannen to the question.

"May you live a thousand years, Señor," implored the president, settling deeper into his chair and folding his hands upon that portliness time had brought him. "Welcome to our poor capital!"

Sir Charles exhaled the smoke of an excellent cigar. They were both much of an age, philosophic, light-hearted elderly gentlemen.

"It is thirty years since I stayed here last," he said reminiscently. "Señorita Tortola was dancing at the Alcazar, and there was a wonderful vintage, I remember."

"Yes, yes, I too remember," sighed the president. "Her hair came below her knees and you could span her ankle with your finger and thumb. There are no women like her nowadays, Señor, and the wine is not what it used to be. But the women are worse than the wine. I have a daughter of whom I understand nothing whatever."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Sir Charles sympathetically. "Every one says how beautiful and accomplished she is. We—that is, my ward and myself, were hoping to be honored with your company at dinner."

"I am overwhelmed!" declared the president. "But tell me, Sir Charles, are the women of your country as lovely as they are said to be, and what is the wine like?"

Over long, iced lemon squashes in her cool white house, Vingie bound Mr. Carter to the chariot wheels of her young charms. She outlined the unfortunate predicament of Jim Andaside, and Mr. Carter shook his head.

"I heard as much," he said sorrowfully, "but there's another complication since then. Somebody named Pink, Hildebrand Pink, has turned up with a car he calls the Demon Six. He rather splashes himself about, and candidly, he gets away with these Iberians. The commercial element has gone crazy over him, and they'll certainly approach the president and try to get this contract away from Mr. Andaside. I don't think you've arrived a minute too soon, but of course, any one with your personality, Miss Lauriston——" He paused and the pause vibrated with eloquence. "No people are more sensitive to feminine personality than the Iberians."

Pete Hannen, a thin, bitter little dark man, sat under the cafe awning, eyed his Iberian drink with disgust, and drew gratefully at a cigarette.

"There's a man called Pink, sir, come since you left," he began. "Drives something he calls a Demon Six. I wouldn't 'ave it draw my remains to the cemetery, but this Pink understands the natives all right. He's got a racing body on 'er and no silencer and he always wears a crash helmet to make her look faster. Takes all his corners on two wheels, kills a couple of dogs most days, and comes down the Avenida with flames shooting out of the exhaust pipe just when all the lads of the village are having their evening drink and giving the girls a treat. At the moment you couldn't give away a Catapult as long as there was a Demon Six for sale. People are inclined to laugh at us. Of course, I 'aven't said nothing. It's true I did have to remove three or four young fellers from the pub where I generally get my glass of beer at night."

"What's Pink like?" asked Jim Andaside.

"I couldn't say, sir, never having spoken to him, but he's a big, hefty sort of bloke, and got red hair and curly at that and I don't like him. I knew a red-haired girl once. 'S been a lesson to me."

Jim Andaside's keen eyes wandered thoughtfully to the Sierra Morena which rises like the backcloth of a theatrical set behind the pleasant city of Peixoes.

"What sort of a road runs over those mountains?" he asked.

"Well sir, you know what they call a road in these parts. It's the kind that makes a mule feel sorry for itself, and the gradient's about one in one here and there, not to mention lumps of rock scattered about. Fit to tear the tires off a traction engine, I should say."

"I have fitted a set of unpuncturable tires to that chassis I brought out with me. I s'spose a racing Catapult hasn't really anything to fear from Mr. Pink, has it, Pete?" went on Jim dreamily.

Pete expectorated silently.

"Just as I thought," concluded Jim Andaside. "We'd better arrange a little hill climbing contest. Bear up, Pete, my lad; all is not lost, not by a jugful."

He went up to his room, and by much fluent persuasion extracted a bath from the staff, shaved, changed, and drove himself gently in a despised Catapult to dine with Vingie, Sir Charles and Rupert. Over cocktails and cigarettes the air became electric.

"I have most awful news," began Vingie, "there's a man called Pink——"

"I know all about Pink, or Hildebrand as I prefer to call him," interrupted Jim Andaside suavely. "I shall give his flesh to the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air."

"We must arrange a race or something and beat him," continued Vingie.

Jim shook his head.

"I should be ashamed to take the prize," he declared. "It would be murder to start a Catapult against that galloping bedstead of his. With your permission we'll give the poor chap a chance and arrange a little reliability run up the Sierra Morena. You and the Señorita and Rupert can come as my passengers and Hildebrand can just take his poor self, and the car that goes farthest and comes back under its own power wins. It would look a bit personal if I were to suggest it, so perhaps you wouldn't mind fixing up details with the president!"

"Does any one know a respectable local bookmaker?" inquired Sir Charles. "The Iberians bet like blazes, and if all their money is going on this Pink fellow I might be able to get a very decent price about Jim. Have you any information, Rupert?"

"I'll go and ring up Harrington at the Embassy," volunteered Rupert. "He's an honorary member of the Jockey Club. He might be able to get better odds than we should. It's worth trying."

"Jim," demanded Vingie, "are you perfectly sure you aren't going to make a fool of me if I do what you ask?"

"Perfectly, my dear lady. Hildebrand is a gear-grinder, a clutch-crasher, a brake-and-accelerator person. One needs a soul to drive cars, and he only possesses red hair and a face of brass. Pete has listened to Hildebrand's engine day after day and it's simply a sheep in wolf's clothing. My Catapult has the heart of a lion although it purrs like a kitten and ticks like a clock."

Vingie drilled him with her ruthless gaze.

"The del Sols are dining here to-morrow," she said at last. "From what I hear of the old gentleman, I may have a certain influence over him. You'd better not come, Jim, because of Maria Dolores. But if you and your Catapult let me down I shall simply hand you Charles' revolver and you'll know what to do."

Twenty-four hours later, all that was mortal of her veiled in a wisp of flame-colored inspiration, she received Señor Alphonso del Sol with precisely the right mingling of homage to his exalted office and stimulus to his masculine intuition. He wore the riband of the Order of the Flaming Sunset, a pretty thing in scarlet and gold, draped across his immaculate shirt-front, and dissolved easily into flowing gestures. Maria Dolores accompanied him, swaying from the hips, her lips red and passionate, her eyes dark and smoldering, mysterious beneath her mantilla, undeniably beautiful.

When her glance fell upon Rupert Frack, tall and a thought austere, his earnest intelligent face molded into an expression of welcome tinged by that faint hauteur peculiar to the Foreign Office, her lips drew back a shade from the pearliest teeth in Iberia and a suspicion of warmth underlay the peach bloom of her cheek. Then her dark eyes swept Vingie from head to foot and her red upper lip curled in faint contempt.

"She's saying to herself: Thin cold northern skeleton, I will take the caballero away from you before you know where you are," reflected Vingie, who missed very little. "Well, she can have Rupert if she likes, for the time being anyhow. Business before pleasure is my motto at the moment."

"I'm so delighted to meet you, Señorita," she said aloud. "I've been looking forward to it most frightfully. I think Iberia's so wonderful. How lucky you are to live here always."

"Beautiful, yes—poor, alas!" returned the señorita. "In your country every one has several motor-cars. Here, sometimes an ox-cart, sometimes nothing."

Rupert Frack came forward to be presented; they moved slowly in the direction of the dining-room. Under the majestic ægis of Sir Charles' butler, who hypnotized his Iberian staff, rising superior to ignorance of the language as butlers and highly trained N.C.O.'s can rise, the meal glided like a perfect lyric to its close. Sir Charles spoke the epilogue with stately indulgence.

"Señor, the other day we sat in the sun reviving our youth as old men do. We lamented the beauties of those days, but then I had not seen the señorita. With your permission, I raise my glass to your beautiful daughter."

His words roused two couples from mutual oblivion. Señor Alphonso ceased to gaze into the eyes of Vingie. Rupert tore his glance from the slumberous orbs of Maria Dolores. On the noticeable silence broke the clear tones of Vingie very sweetly:

"Señorita, may I envy your delightful motorcar?"

She referred tactfully to the gold and scarlet horror presented by Jim Andaside. Señor Alphonso, courageous with wine, took up the tale.

"It is indeed a delightful motor-car," he asserted, "and in order to reform the internal communications of my harassed country I had arranged to guarantee the purchase of a vast quantity of these cars. But opposition arose." He looked sternly at Maria Dolores. "And now a competitor arrives, a Señor Pink, with another car, and representations are made to me concerning it, as if I, the chief executive, did not know better than any one else what is good for Iberia."

Sir Charles permitted himself a rich chuckle.

"I'm not a betting man, Señor Alphonso, but I'm prepared to risk a little money on your opinion. I happen to have a few shares in the company that makes your car."

Vingie gazed at the president with wide-open eyes and childish enthusiasm.

"Why not arrange a sporting event, Señor? Suppose you made them both climb the Sierra Morena, and chose the one that got to the top and returned the first?"

"Only a goat could climb to the top of the Sierra Morena," declared Maria Dolores scornfully.

"Well, the winner might be the one that got farthest, and came back quickest," amended Vingie, still with her infantile air.

"It is a brilliant suggestion," declared Señor Alphonso, placing his hand affectionately on Vingie's bare arm. "I, the president, will arrange it. To-morrow I will summon the Señor Andaside and the Señor Pink. The affair will be as amusing as a bull fight, for one of them will certainly be killed, and perhaps both."

"My father is often foolish when he has taken a little wine," observed Maria Dolores. "However, what do I care?" she turned exclusively to Rupert Frack. "I suppose you are greatly beloved by the ladies of your country, Señor?" she suggested with delicacy.

Rupert Frack smiled sorrowfully.

"My country is far away and I have no one to love me. It is hard, is it not, to be a stranger in a strange land?"

"It is our duty to console the exile," murmured the señorita and raised her eyes to his.

When the gold and scarlet motor-car had rolled away, Vingie, sipping iced lemonade, considered her audience thoughtfully.

"A nice pair, those two!" she said at last. "Upon my word, Charles, I had great difficulty in restraining the old gentleman."

"There did indeed seem to be a slight atmosphere of sangre y arena at one time," admitted Sir Charles. "I half feared a family quarrel might break out under our very eyes."

"Of course, Rupert's behavior with that very crude young woman was simply disgraceful," continued Vingie. "I feel positive he was holding her hand under the table the whole time."

She rose to go to bed. Rupert took her empty glass, held her cloak, and arranged it reverentially about her white shoulders.

"I assure you, Virginia, I was thinking of no one but you; for the rest my most sensitive feelings have simply been butchered to make an Iberian holiday," he answered, without a trace of hesitation.

Seated under an awning and on the balcony of the city hall at the president's right hand, Sir Charles gazed down on an animated scene. Two squadrons of the seventeenth Iberian Lancers and police innumerable controlled a vast crowd. Two cars, a four-seater Catapult containing Vingie and Jim Andaside in front, Maria Dolores and Rupert behind, and the licentious Demon Six with Hildebrand Pink as sole passenger, stood bonnet by bonnet in the roadway. Presently the Orderly Trumpeter of No. 1 Squadron sounded the reveille, and at this signal the president arose, shut his eyes tightly and fired a revolver. With a terrific roar, the Demon Six tore away and was lost in a cloud of dust. Five minutes later the president fired again, and with the utmost deliberation Jim Andaside started in pursuit.

"Well," observed the president, "they are brave men. I wish my daughter had not insisted on participating, but she is a law unto herself. Let us retire, my friend, and drink a glass of wine to their safe return."

The road from Peixoes to the Sierra Morena is impossible for ten miles, and then becomes unrecognizable. At the twelfth mile it crosses a river bed, dry at this season, but deep and sandy. Jim Andaside, who had organized mechanical transport during the Great War in Eastern lands where there are no roads at all, ambled delicately over the ruts and bumps without a care in the world.

"Note the attractiveness of cantilever springing and four wheel braking," he said to Vingie, "neither of them standard on a Catapult, but how should the president know that? Don't look so anxious; we shall find Hildebrand quite safely in the river bed."

Twelve miles they lurched and staggered with no other excitement than the pleasant conversation of Rupert Frack and the occasional prayers of Maria Dolores. Then on the brink of the river bed they halted, below their eyes a pathetic sight.

At the foot of the steep descending bank a cloud of dust arose, churned by the revolving wheels of the Demon Six. They revolved indeed, but to no purpose; they gripped nothing; they merely stirred the foot-deep sand. Jim Andaside eyed the steaming radiator of the Demon Six and shook his head sadly.

"Too bad," he murmured, "but it had to be. I felt sure Hildebrand would change down too late. Besides, he has no weight over the back axle. Now we have Maria Dolores."

He turned to Vingie and spoke simply, as to a child.

"In a case of this kind you will always engage first speed on the top of the downward slope, and give her every scrap of gas all the way down it. You will follow in any existing wheel tracks because the ground under them will be more solid. These two precautions will get you up the opposite bank if anything will. I shall utilize those ruts made by some providential ox-cart. Now watch!"

He snicked the gear lever into first, eased in the clutch and accelerated to the utmost. The Catapult roared down into the river bed, skewed a little in the loose dust, recovered at a touch of the steering wheel and rushed up the farther bank. Maria Dolores screamed. Jim Andaside retarded the ignition notch by notch; the rear wheels gripped and slipped and gripped again. Slowly, but safely the Catapult heaved herself over the crest on to level ground. Jim Andaside pushed out the clutch put the gear lever in neutral, and pulled in his side brake.

"And that," he explained calmly, "is how it's done. We'd better go on a bit for the sake of appearances, but Hildebrand will never get out unless he's towed out."

They drifted over a scored and abraded earth for five miles or so, saluting certain officers stationed at intervals to report on the progress, if any, of the two cars. Under the shadow of an over-hanging cliff, Jim Andaside produced a very adequate luncheon basket. In the cool of late afternoon they began the return journey. Amid the river bed the Demon Six still stood, but of Hildebrand Pink there remained no trace.

"You shall drive the rest of the way to show how easy it is—with a Catapult," said Jim Andaside to Vingie. "Remember—first speed, and all the gas."

"In heaven's name no!" exclaimed Maria Dolores.

"Calm yourself, Señorita; Miss Lauriston drives superbly," retorted the owner of the Catapult, and Rupert restrained Maria Dolores with a firm yet gentle touch while Jim and Vingie exchanged seats.

Again the Catapult roared down, skewed, recovered and flung upward. For one awful second Vingie's nerve failed, her foot hesitated on the accelerator. A fierce face glared into hers. A frightful voice snarled, "Gas, damn it—gas!" The Catapult swept up and over; the remaining miles Vingie survived with easy triumph.

At the fine house of the president, Rupert handed Maria Dolores impressively from the car. She stood surveying Vingie with the supreme affection of one cat for another that has secured from it the succulent wing of a chicken. Her eyes spoke a language of knives and daggers, but her tongue dripped honey.

"You have done well, Señorita," declared Maria Dolores. "The victory of the afternoon is indeed yours. Now in celebration I will give a dinner party to you and these gentlemen and Sir Charles and to-night I will show you something. Perhaps the night may yet be mine!"

She swept arrogantly into the coolness of the entrance; Rupert Frack glanced a little wistfully at Vingie, and Jim Andaside shook his head.

"I'd rather wear a shirt of mail this evening if I had one than a boiled shirt!" he murmured. "You," he went on, turning to Vingie, "have scored over her; she was scared blue when you took the wheel. Beware of an Iberian revenge. It may be anything from scratching your face to poisoning your soup."

In spite of his foreboding, Vingie's unscratched face smiled later over her unpoisoned soup. Only when, afterward, in the formal sparsely furnished salon Maria Dolores excused herself did Rupert Frack place his tall exquisite form nearer his temporary fiancée. The president leaned forward and indicated with lifted forefinger the point of the story he was telling Sir Charles. Two musicians in Iberian national costume entered carrying guitars and bowed before the president.

At last came Maria Dolores, also in national costume—long wide-skirted dress, high combed hair, and castanets complete—and proceeded to dance the dance of her country.

Vingie sat upright in a stiff chair drinking in the scene. Harsh electric light fell nakedly on the highly colored costume; the musicians squatted on the floor, Maria Dolores turned slowly with stamping of feet, and head thrown back, a provocative smile on her lips and castanets clicking miraculously.

Vingie's eyes sought the faces of all the men; they were set in a curious unblinking stare; even Sir Charles could not take his eyes off this slowly circling figure. Maria Dolores clicked her castanets triumphantly. It was the victory of the evening. Vingie might not have existed for the moment. She seemed like a little girl allowed to sit up late with her elders to witness an entertainment.

Maria Dolores danced three dances, each a little more intriguing than the last, ending in a froth of whirling skirts.

Sir Charles clapped his hands twice, sonorously.

"Magnificent!" he declared to the president. "Your daughter has absolute genius. Really, my dear President, she eclipses anything I have seen on the stage for years." He began to speak in technicalities.

"Her power-to-weight ratio seems pretty good just now, I admit," said Jim Andaside under his breath. "The trouble is, when she's thirty, she'll weigh a ton."

"Rupert at any rate is positively obsessed," retorted Vingie. "He has the rapt look of the devotee seeing his goddess in a vision. We might be in Noah's Ark instead of a drawing-room for all he knows or cares."

"My interest, purely academic, is merely the outward manifestation of an intelligent mind," explained Rupert a little plaintively.

Vingie shrugged contemptuous shoulders.

"Well, I'm frightfully tired. I'd like you to take me home please, if the cabaret show is quite over."

"A perfectly marvelous technique!" declared Sir Charles in the car. "I speak with some authority, having seen every creditable dancer for the last thirty years. Like poets, they are born, not made."

"Oh, the little more stocking and how much it is, and the little less and what worlds away!" mocked Vingie. "I want to talk to you people when we get home. Don't you dare go to bed till I tell you."

In her own drawing-room she lighted a cigarette, curled into a chair, and regarded them coldly.

"What about Pink, Jim?" she began.

"He confessed all," answered Jim Andaside. "He made the car himself out of oddments he picked up from the Disposals Board—old war stuff, you know. I lent him fifty pounds to get out of the country."

"Have you signed your contract with the president?"

"Not yet. I'm waiting for a sign from Maria Dolores. At present she seems a little distant."

"You!" jeered Vingie. "You are extinct, my young friend, Rupert is the blue-eyed darling, just now. She will never do anything for you unless I interfere. She so hates to think she ever thought twice about you when a Rupert existed."

She flicked cigarette ash delicately on to the floor. "This rather vulgar exhibition we've just witnessed has given me an idea, however," she went on. "I suppose I can trust your judgment as to the merits of this young person's dancing, Charles? And I suppose, Rupert, that George Fordingbridge would give his patronage to a theatrical entertainment to the extent of sitting in a box and lending tone to an otherwise undistinguished mob?"

"I think I can promise that much on his behalf," declared Rupert.

Vingie rose gracefully to her feet and stood for one moment fastidiousness incarnate.

"I am going to bed," she announced icily. "Which of you connoisseurs of Iberian limbs would like to open the door for me?"

On the morrow, after the hour of siesta, Vingie put on a simple white frock and called upon Maria Dolores, ostensibly to inspect ancient Iberian lace, the heirlooms of ages. Her hostess received her intimately, clad in a wrapper, a cigarette of the country between her lips. Presently, over the archaic cobwebs of needlework they talked as girl to girl.

"Lace—silks—jewels, all are but toys to give us power over men," declared Maria Dolores. She glanced down at her supple limbs and sighed. "If only there were men worthy of me," she complained. "I am tired of Iberia. I'm a fit mate for an English prince, or an American millionaire."

"You do not love Mr. Andaside?" queried Vingie innocently.

"For a moment he interested me. Later I desired to win the Señor Frack away from you. At the time, I was angry but that is all over. Women should assist one another, Señorita. Men are our common prey."

"Mr. Frack is nothing to me. I have dozens of admirers," said Vingie absently. "Sir Charles decided to visit Iberia as soon as he heard that your distinguished father wished to buy a large number of motor-cars. He felt Mr. Andaside was a trifle too young to act alone. Mr. Frack is a—a kind of secretary to Sir Charles. I believe there is some little difficulty to be cleared up."

"It is very well for my father. He will get a present from the motor-car company and commission from every Iberian who buys a car, but I, what do I get, and I am cleverer than my father; besides he does what I tell him," replied Maria Dolores moodily.

"Sir Charles has talked of nothing but your dancing ever since last night," Vingie went on. "If you were to come to London you would have society at your feet. We know absolutely every one; it would be quite simple to arrange for a theater, a manager, publicity, everything. An artistic triumph such as yours opens all doors, and any one as beautiful as you are might choose practically any man she likes for a husband."

"I have an old aunt who would act as my chaperon," mused Maria Dolores. "If what you say is true I think the little business difficulty of Señor Andaside would vanish."

"I will settle the details in twenty-four hours," promised Vingie.

Maria Dolores rose from her couch and flung away the cigarette.

"Señorita Virginia," she implored, "permit me to embrace you. May you have a thousand lovers, every one of them faithful!"

Half an hour later Vingie stepped daintily across the threshold of the Hotel Nacional and demanded Jim Andaside.

"I've saved you," she said briefly, "but don't waste time being grateful. Get that car of yours and take me to Henry Carter. There isn't a moment to lose."

At Mr. Carter's office she poured her tale into his sympathetic ear. He nodded gravely and made swift notes on a scribbling pad. "I've fed Berriman with a gentle stream of anecdotes," he explained, "and the dust-up with Pink made a good story. The Maria Dolores stunt in London will be a scoop of course. I'll send Berriman an S.O.S. cable."

"How perfectly charming of you," murmured his fair accomplice, and in the light of her eyes he wrote with such eloquence as brought the reply from Mr. Berriman:

"Dorian, eminent manager, agrees produce Maria Dolores, whole story exclusively to Daily Tale!"

"You aren't cross with me, Charles, darling? You don't mind hurrying home?" pleaded Vingie that evening, straightening his tie with affectionate fingers. Sir Charles, who was really very fond of her, smiled indulgently.

"On the contrary," he declared, "we shall be back just in time for the Early Summer Handicap. I have a tip straight from the stable at very comfortable odds."

Jim Andaside, a slight but exceedingly tough figure, stood on the pier to say good-by. He declined to leave the land of promise. "I shall remain on the Rhine, so to speak, until the reparation money is paid over," he insisted. "Besides, an Eye-Opening Eight or a Terrible Twelve may come along. One never knows."

The S.S. Rodriguez commenced to shake the miles from her creaming wake. Through sunny days at sea Vingie began to depend exclusively on Sir Charles for spiritual companionship. Almost violently she flung Maria Dolores and Rupert Frack together. When Sir Charles reproved her in his tactful fashion she smiled with lovely patience.

"I feel old and maternal, Charles. Let the young creatures play," she said.

In London Mr. Berriman was found to have exceeded the liveliest expectations. His publicity proved of a superhuman cunning. The public stood on tiptoe to behold a new star. Lord Fordingbridge, invited to dine at Park Street, could hardly take his eyes from Maria Dolores. Afterward he went and sat by Vingie, and spoke with his usual rich charm.

"For people with inherited taste like you and me she's a bit obvious," he rumbled, "but then, my dear, we are a small and dying company. The great mass of the electorate will go off their heads. She will even be pleasin' to some of the young of our own set. I've been fairly clever, for me; her photographs are all over the place you know, and I've tipped her to a few likely young fellows in the Household Brigade—young Norreys and Jack Plinlimmon, and all that crowd. It'll be a wonderful first night. I've got a box and you must promise to sit beside me, and bring Charles."

Vingie nodded absently.

"Stay with me a little while if you will be so kind," she begged. "I feel I've been living among dreadfully crude people. Are there any people nowadays, do you think? I begin to doubt it."

When Mr. Dorian, the well-known manager, saw Maria Dolores he wept for joy, and then bargained for an increased share of profits. He had dark curly hair and a conquering nose, and the shine of his silk hat and patent shoes made one think of diamonds.

On the night when Maria Dolores made her debut at the Ommium Theater, the scenes baffled description and the critics wished to hide themselves in the woods, because they knew it was not art, and were afraid to say so in the face of popular enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, they were right; it was the personality and the supple form of Maria Dolores at the age of nineteen, before she became thirty and weighed a ton.

Lord Fordingbridge flung an enormous bouquet on to the stage with the verve of a boy.

"A thing I haven't done since 1876," he said apologetically to Virginia, "but it's a good thing to let one's self go occasionally and it'll please the dear girl."

His voice dropped to a graver note. "I've paid the check into your account, if you'll forgive the horrible sordid detail; we had a cable from Jim this afternoon to say the deal was settled. How happy Berriman looks down there in the stalls. His is the only paper with any exclusive news of our young friend."

"Well," said Vingie with a little sigh. "I have deserved well of the state I suppose. If you want a monument to me, look over there." She pointed to the rampart of roses on the stage. Lord Fordingbridge smiled gaily.

"Largely, largely no doubt. But we must give a crumb of credit to Rupert. Y'see Dorian absolutely declined to risk his own money and backing had to be found. Rupert suggested Silby, the war-profiteer. He invented a sock with a little asbestos in the wool. Troops simply couldn't wear 'em out. Silby sold thousands of millions of pairs. We put it to him as a semi-official matter, and as he's anglin' for a title, he was delighted. I felt quite proud of Rupert, the dear fellow."

Even as he spoke, Rupert Frack, in faultless kit, entered the box. Vingie summed him up in a comprehensive glance. He smiled down joyfully.

"Bill Norreys is giving Maria Dolores supper," he announced. "She saw him in uniform when he was changing Guard at the Palace. I've ceased to exist. I'm so happy."

"Then perhaps you could spare time to take me home," murmured Vingie. "I'm awf'ly tired. Charles and George are going to be boys again, I understand."

In the car she was very silent. She reserved the small drawing-room in Park Street for the epilogue of their adventure.

She stood by the fireplace, a beautiful figure perfectly turned out from head to foot and with a delicate gesture of resignation removed a diamond and sapphire ring from the third finger of her left hand to the third finger of her right.

"I forgot about it before," she explained. "It's been very instructive to be engaged to you, Rupert. You're very nice, but much too obliging. You not only obliged me but practically any woman who came along, particularly Maria Dolores. I s'pose it's your diplomatic training."

Rupert's expression became crestfallen.

"I tried to be very tactful," he declared. "I didn't want to worry you in any way. But I was always there when you wanted me, and not a fragment of your luggage was lost in that thieving country."

"Probably I shall have to be thrashed into submission," she murmured. "I seem to require a tigerish wooing. You're far too sympathetic to thrash any one. It would hurt you more than it hurt her. Good night, Rupert. Try not to break your heart too badly."

She was standing alone, deep in thought, when Sir Charles returned. She went up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. "If only I could marry you, Charles, I should never want to sow another wild oat as long as I lived. But it would be too bad to do that. You've escaped for about forty years. You shall live on in your sentimental bird-sanctuary."

She kissed him and went, sighing softly, to bed.

VII

On the terrace of Wynwood, Vingie, curled subtly in a wicker armchair, passed and repassed her needle through a scrap of fine, hand-woven linen.

Hard by, Rupert, in a similar armchair, his tall lank form (once so unkempt, but Love is greatest of reformers) clothed in gray lounge suiting, straight from the caressing shears of Savile Row, glared stonily at her admirable profile. At last she said thoughtfully:

"Rupert, you needn't sit there looking at me as if we were married and I were sewing tiny garments with an inscrutable smile on my face. We're nothing of the sort, and I'm only embroidering a hanky."

"My dear Virginia," retorted Rupert with the most irritating patience, "if any one has a right to be justly annoyed, it is I, not you. I hardly know on what grounds you see fit to criticize me. I have just endured the deepest insult a woman has it in her power to offer with, I trust, exemplary good manners."

"I've done nothing of the sort. I merely refused to marry you."

"That," explained Rupert, "is the insult to which I referred."

Vingie leaned back in her chair, and gazed in front of her with an expression of serene amusement. Small breezes kissed her satin cheek and disturbed her fair hair, bearing from the rose-garden faint, intoxicating scents. Her heart sang little songs of triumph, inarticulate things which if interpreted would have described how a tall strong gentleman murdered other tall strong gentlemen for love of her, subsequently dragging her away by the hair to a sequence of unparalleled honeymoons. She turned again to Rupert.

"Anything more ghastly selfish than men I never met," she complained. "You may not remember, Rupert, that yesterday I was twenty-one. In spite of that you'd like to tie me down, a mere girl, for life, never, officially at any rate, to look at any other man but you. There are thousands of men in the world I've never met; some day I s'pose I shall have to marry, but the time is far off."

Rupert rose and shook his shoulders with a hardly perceptible gesture, as if he shed a weight of an unbearable responsibility.

"I don't feel as if I could stay in the house any longer," he announced bitterly. "I dare say in time I shall be able to meet you with comparative calm, Virginia, but at the moment my most sacred feelings have been outraged. I shall go down to the Home Farm and ask Mrs. Giles if she can give me a bed over the week-end. I return to town on Monday in any case. Perhaps you will be kind enough to explain my absence to Uncle Charles."

He stalked moodily from the terrace. Vingie watched him go with a faint shrug. "The child deprived of his toy. How babyish all men are when it comes to the point when they can't get what they want!" she murmured. "I dare say I shall have difficulties even with dear Charles when I tell him. But there! Why meet trouble half-way?"

She rose, stretched our her arms to the incalculable promise of sun and blue sky, and sauntered slowly indoors toward the dim coolness of the library.

Sir Charles rose to greet her from the depths of his armchair, placed the book he was reading carefully on a table and smiled with exactly the right mixture of homage and affection.

He said gently:

"Crabbed age and youth can not live together, but I will at least make every effort. You look singularly resolute, my dear Virginia. It is a very warm day for resolution."

She laid a hand affectionately on his shoulder, pushed him back into the chair, sat on the arm of it and gazed down at him.

"Charles," Vingie began. "I've just refused to marry Rupert."

If Sir Charles was surprised he did not show it.

"Marriage," he observed, "is a woman's fortress and man's prison. One day you will come to it, and then you may remember what I say."

"As I've told you before, he doesn't know a thing about women; he can't make love, I might as well marry a wild animal, and I don't want to marry any one," objected Vingie.

"When you do, there may not be any one to marry," retorted Sir Charles. "Competition in the marriage market becomes more a matter of ferocity every day."

Vingie ran caressing fingers through his hair.

"Charles, do you realize I was twenty-one yesterday?"

"I thought my humble string of pearls, all that my financial position will allow at the moment, but I wish it had been ten times as long——"

"Hush, darling! They were perfectly lovely. What I mean is, I'm grown up. I want to try my own wings just a teeny bit. It isn't that you're not an angel to me, but every grown-up person has to taste blood once in a lifetime. Leonie Falsecastle's going to stay in East Africa for a bit, and she'd let me her flat off Portland Place. She leaves a very decent cook, and I can take Mary to look after me. You won't mind, will you, Charles?"

"'To-day the almonds bloom in Kandahar,'" quoted Sir Charles. "Only youth breaks its heart over partings, Virginia, but I shall be sorry if you persist very long in this idea. I have a horror of what is called the bachelor girl. Women were meant to be taken care of by some man. Independence, as it is called, demoralizes them dreadfully. Their faces take on an aggressive expression, and they gnash their teeth when they speak. However, the experience will be good for you and you have been so accustomed to consideration that it may not endure very long."

"You're so sensible, Charles, I'm afraid you've lived a very bad life," murmured Vingie. "Opposition would have hardened me, but now I don't want to go a little bit."

"Well," observed Sir Charles, "all I beg of you is not to invite me to dinner. The greatest curse in life at my age is inferior cookery and a haphazard idea of housekeeping. However advanced women may suppose themselves to be nowadays, they still consider a bottle of wine and a bottle of Worcester sauce in much the same spirit."

Vingie slid from the arm of the chair, hesitated and stood for a moment in thought.

"I hope I didn't hurt Rupert's feelings," she said at last. "Of course he's a dear thing really. But, Charles, he asked me to tell you he can't stay under the same roof with me. He's going over to the home farm till Monday morning."

Sir Charles hastened to reassure her.

"You needn't feel the least alarm, my dear Virginia. A man's first instinct on meeting with a reverse at the hands of a woman is to make himself as uncomfortable as possible. It's a sort of sentimental homeopathy; one form of misery counteracts the other. I should be grieved if he were to drown his sorrows in drink, but the difference between his bedroom here and his bedroom there is unimportant. He will even enjoy his privations in some extraordinary way."

"Men," complained Vingie, "have an appalling knack of proposing at the wrong moment."

"No doubt you are right," responded Sir Charles. "As it happens I can not speak from personal experience. I have always exercised restraint in these matters."

VIII

Vingie, stroking on a glove with ecstatic fingers, gazed round the best bedroom of Leonie Falsecastle's flat with much the same expression as stout Cortez displayed when he stared at the Pacific, silent upon a peak in Darien.

"You don't look happy, Mary!" she observed. "Hasn't our independence any charm for you? Have you realized we can do exactly as we like regardless of consequences?"

The pretty maid ran her hand mechanically into the foot of a silk stocking and sighed.

"I always had a great deal of liberty at Wynwood, miss," she answered sorrowfully. "More charming people than the servants' hall there I never wish to meet, particularly the second chauffeur, and here there's nobody at all except that there image of a cook."

"Friends will rally round you," promised Vingie. "This isn't the only flat in the block and the hall porter's frightfully good-looking. Bear up! I shall be back early after lunch, unless anything exciting happens."

She sank to the ground floor in a gilded cage, bringing back into the lift-boy's soul all he had ever beheld of Theda Bara, Mae Murray, Bebe Daniels, and other Helens of that modern Troy situated in California. The hall porter swept a taxi to the curb rather than summoned it. Vingie stood a moment lost in thought.

"The Savoy!" she commanded at last.

"I'm alone!" she crooned dreamily as they breasted the surge of the traffic. "Nobody knows where I am, what I'm going to eat, when I shall go home. I can do exactly as I please. How wonderful the world looks sometimes!"

It is the business of all good maîtres d'hôtel to know every one; they stand before kings, princes, and governors and deal out justice tempered with mercy. The face of the Honorable Virginia Lauriston is not strange to fame; she smiled kindly at the ambassadorial presence who greeted her and shook her head. "I'm waiting for somebody. Probably he's got a table," she explained, and turned aside to a superlative chair.

For Vingie who had never done anything of the kind before, it seemed the very breath of adventure to sit in the vestibule of the great restaurant, the guest of no one, unexpected of any, and watch the come and go of all the sundry. She presented an aloof alluring figure, with the straight lines of the modern girl, very self-sufficing, and played at being alone in the world, penniless, hungry, seeking some man whom she could trust sufficiently to ask in the language of eyes for her lunch. It seemed so real that a little thrill of faintness passed through her; there emanated a distinct wave of brutality from the average well-fed male.

"He'll have to be very young; they're kind and sympathetic when they're young—before too many of us have sponged on them," reflected Vingie.

As if in answer to her prayers, at that very moment there passed toward her through the door a quite young man, pale and dark, upon whose slight shoulders care, the Black Horseman, rode without remorse.

She watched the young man pause, remove his hat and pass a handkerchief across his damp brow. His sensitive nostrils dilated, and his troubled blue eyes sought in vain a friendly face amid this throng of strangers. His clothes, his manner and the cut of his hair suggested the unspiritual wealth of the suburbs rather than the insolvent charm of the West End. His glance met Vingie's and he made a perceptible movement toward her even as a child turns to its mother; then with a flush of embarrassment he moved irresolutely in the opposite direction.

With all the hauteur of an abandoned woman Vingie rose and stalked frigidly across his path. As she did so a bunch of artificial violets at her breast detached itself and fell almost at his feet. Remotely elegant, Vingie pursued her path. A hand plucked at her sleeve; she turned haughtily to perceive the blue-eyed stranger.

"Pardon me—your flowers," explained the young man, licking his dry lips.

He stood offering them, intolerably plaintive, and if he had had a tail he would have wagged it. His entire being announced dumbly she was not that sort of girl, and even if she had been he was not that kind of man.

Vingie, with a pretty smile, took the violets from his hand and said: "Thank you so much. Have you a pin?"

The young man passed moist, imploring hands over his body in search of pins he knew to be nonexistent. Finally he announced in despairing tones that he had no pin but would obtain one if it cost him his life, or words to that effect. She let him go on a wild piece of knight-errantry, watched him appeal to a uniformed man who sent little boys dashing hither and thither. Finally he returned with assorted spoil and offered it. Vingie secured the violets in leisurely fashion while the young man watched as in a dream.

"I've given you a great deal of trouble," she said in a gentle voice. "I'm ever so grateful, particularly as you look dreadfully worried. You see, I rather value these violets, as it happens."

"They come out at three pounds the dozen bunches wholesale, but I dare say you paid ten shillings for them," he replied absently, and then blushed scarlet.

"What on earth——?" began Vingie.

Omnipotence descended on them, wrapped in a smile.

"This way, Madame," exclaimed Omnipotence, and swooped forward into the restaurant. He revealed his carefully wrought miracle, a table decently secluded, not too near the band and not too far away. Vingie seated herself; the young man collapsed into the chair on her right. A waiter commenced the ritual of luncheon.

"Of course, it's all a mistake and you aren't to pay for my lunch," said Vingie, with a happy sigh, "though now we are here you may as well tell me what's on your mind. But, my dear man, for heaven's sake pretend to look after me, and order some food and put a brave face on things or they'll think I'm a nurse in plain clothes and you're my patient."

The young man, turning to the waiter, rapped out a sequence of commands in the most hard-hearted fashion. Then he became his mild distracted self.

"My name is Anthony Brooks," he began, "and, as you suggest, I am in sad trouble. But you would hardly understand, for I don't suppose business ever comes into your life. I hope it never will, Miss 'Er."

"I'm Virginia Lauriston. Go on!" commanded Vingie.

He smiled as one humoring a woman, or a lunatic.

"I am at the parting of the ways," he declared. "Either I continue and risk everything, or I get out and remain with a pittance. If only I knew a little about women I could make up my mind more easily."

Vingie looked at him pitifully.

"You don't mean you're going to get married?" she asked.

Anthony Brooks blushed, put down his soup spoon and looked her squarely in the face.

"Before the war my father was comparatively a wealthy man," he explained. "We lived in some luxury at Surbiton, and I never imagined I should need to work. However, he has just died and I find myself with a few thousand pounds and a dress-making business in Bond Street, which father owned. He was a widower and at one time I believe there may have been something between him and the manageress of those days. However, she left when the business began to lose money. It's been losing money ever since. What I must settle is whether to try to make it pay, or sell it for what it will fetch. My capital isn't large enough to divide. If I stick to the business all the money will have to go into it."

Vingie shook her head gravely.

"I want grilled sole, please," she said. "There's not the faintest use you trying to run this dress-making show alone. My dear man, you were born a victim for women. Any woman could do what she pleased with you. Look where you've landed this morning for instance—at lunch with me, a complete stranger, just because I meant you to."

"Women," retorted Anthony Brooks with the bigoted assurance of the entirely ignorant, "are just like anybody else. Treat them fairly and they will respond fairly. Attempt to browbeat them and they will burst into tears and break their hearts."

"My dear," said Vingie very sincerely, "take your few thousands and buy an annuity, or War Loan, or hire a piano organ and grind it in the streets, but give up this idea of a dressmaking business. You'll be bullied by your staff and find yourself dressing a lot of customers free of charge, simply because they've told you some hard-luck story."

"I raised the wages of the staff only this morning," confessed Anthony Brooks defiantly. "They have as much right to the money as I have. After all they produce it—that is, they would produce it if the place wasn't being run at a loss."

"I would like pêche Melba, please," murmured Vingie in a far-away voice. Her eyes saw visions of splendor; she molded costly fabrics on the supple forms of beautiful girls; the fame of her name ricochetted from boudoir to baronial hall; she created costumes for musical comedies and remedied the dry respectability of clothes worn in court circles. She intrigued with charmeuse and dreamed in cloth of gold.

"On the other hand," she went on, "if you were to take me into partnership I could raise a little capital and save you from this fatal softness of yours where women are concerned. A great many useful people would come to us for their clothes out of sheer curiosity. I could get a little work out of the blonde enchantress whose wages you've just raised. The maître d'hôtel can tell you all about me, and if you care to ring up the Foreign Minister, he's an old friend of mine. Besides, I know a man in the Daily Tale who'd give us some very useful publicity. It's always rather a stunt if a society girl tries to do a job of work."

Anthony Brooks looked doubtfully across the small table. He had heard of sirens without ever meeting one, and although her clothes, her appurtenances, and a certain expectation of being obeyed commended Vingie to him, he had not the remotest idea who had paid for her belongings, and her name meant nothing in Surbiton.

"What is your real reason for suggesting a partnership?" he asked with dreadful cunning.

Vingie exhaled a little cloud of scented smoke.

"Adventure, the fight for a business that's going down-hill, and an opportunity to run a show of my own," she answered. "You'll never get so good an offer from anybody else. I'll put up a thousand pounds capital and not take a penny out till the place is paying. Harden your heart, Mr. Brooks, and take the plunge!"

"Who are your solicitors, please?" inquired Mr. Brooks, still darkly.

"Scrymgeour, Scrymgeour & Fortescue, 1002 St. James Street," she answered, giving the name of Sir Charles' men of business without a second's hesitation.

"Mine are Abrahams & Abrahams, 4914 Chancery Lane."

Vingie crushed out her cigarette-end and drew money from her wrist-bag.

"Let's go and pick up one of the chosen people in a taxi and take him round to Scrymgeour and fix it," she suggested.

"I insist on paying for lunch," began Mr. Brooks turning rather red, but she raised a protesting hand.

"This is a Dutch treat, partner. When the business is paying you can take me out and celebrate. Till then we'll settle our own expenses."

It is certain that the chiseled, aristocratic profile of Mr. Scrymgeour expressed all, if not more than he felt when the ward of his distinguished client, Sir Charles Gillespie, came with alien solicitors and an entire stranger to enter into a deal of partnership. The very furniture in the room—and nothing had been touched since 1721—cried fie upon this outrage. Nevertheless the influence of a pretty girl is such that no open quarrel ensued, although the whole affair ruined Mr. Scrymgeour's golf for several weeks. They delved in balance sheets and audits, hereunto and thereunto they set their seals, and the deed was done.

Vingie entering number ten Criteria Mansions toward the hour of dinner clung in exhaustion to Mary and then sank on to a divan, a black satin divan bestrewn with cushions.

"Mary," she gasped, "I'm quite dead, but I've taken a quarter share in a frock shop. For heaven's sake tear my things off and get me the hottest bath and half fill it with bath-salts. I want to wallow and gloat."

"Really, miss!" responded Mary politely, answering the first part of the remark. She coaxed off shoes and stockings, removed a frock and loosened masses of wavy hair. A small private smile played about her mouth.

"Give me a cigarette and tell me what you're grinning at!" demanded Vingie.

The smile widened, and Mary glanced down coyly.

"It's the hall-porter, miss," she confessed. "As you said, he is rather good-looking, and such a gentlemanly young fellow."

IX

In the early morning seclusion of 14 Breath Street, Bond Street, Anthony Brooks showed Vingie his little world.

"This is the salon," he explained proudly. She saw a medium-sized room done in green and gold, vile with velvet, its mirrors molded and twisted and gilded. She nodded speechlessly.

A tall blonde girl slumped across the carpet in a sidelong crawl, one shoulder higher than the other, knees pressed together. The expression on her face suggested contemptuous refusal to put a penny in some one's missionary box. She exhibited one of the house's evening gowns. Wherever trimming could go on it trimming was.

"Miss Dodsworthy, our star mannequin," beamed Anthony Brooks.

Vingie nodded again. She dared not speak.

"This," he continued, indicating a highly modern young person of twenty-two, in black charmeuse that showed every line of her boyish figure, bobbed haired, silk-ankled, manicured and made up to the eyes, "is Miss Buxton, our manageress."

Vingie smiled genially on Miss Buxton with hell in her heart and put out a slender hand.

"And this," concluded Anthony Brooks, in the manner of a chairman introducing the comic turn, "is Miss Glymp, who is learning the business."

Vingie beheld a sallow-faced girl of sixteen with black hair and the sharpest eyes in the world. She wore her hair in a plait, dressed in black alpaca, and appeared to be on the alert for a slap or a scolding at any moment.

"Now then, Miss Glymp!" admonished Miss Buxton.

The eyes of Vingie flickered for one second in the eyes of Miss Glymp, to breed complete understanding. A hand stretched out to grasp Miss Glymp's little paw. "Good morning," said Vingie and the undercurrent implied: "Don't worry, Cinderella. Watch me handle the two ugly sisters!"

Anthony Brooks led Vingie away to his private office. The manageress and the mannequin gazed after.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Miss Buxton.

"Ts! Ts!" agreed Miss Dodsworthy, resuming a natural pose.

"A fine madam to bring into a respectable business, I don't think!" elaborated Miss Buxton.

"Loathesome!" said Miss Dodsworthy languidly.

A faint giggle startled their ears. It came from Miss Glymp. It was the first time she had ever dared to giggle.

"Now then, Sauce!" snarled Miss Buxton. "Have you tideed your show-room? No! Then go and tidee it this instant!"

"You know, Anthony," said Vingie, leaning back in the visitor's chair, "this place is absolutely fatal."

"I don't understand," he faltered, a little shocked at the use of his Christian name.

"That room—those women! The room looks like a coffin-maker's dream of Heaven, and the two women simply make one's skin feel like sand-paper all over. The kid's all right. She's got some brains."

"What do you suggest?" inquired Anthony a little stiffly.

"Get the decorators in and get the women out I should think. No decent person would put up with either. By the way, is that strange garment on Miss Dodsworthy's rather limp back a fair specimen of the goods we stock, Anthony? If so, I think a rebuilding sale is indicated, with murderous reductions in all departments."

Anthony Brooks made a last ineffective stand against his beautiful tyrant.

"For many years, my father, a respected man in the soft-goods trade, ran this business on these lines. I propose to continue. True we aren't showing a profit, but owing to post-war depression, high taxation and so on, times are bad. However, a trade boom is imminent——"

Vingie held up a reproving finger,

"Newspaper stuff," she answered cruelly. "I don't propose to sit here till my chin sags, making an occasional ten pounds and thanking God the brokers aren't in, Anthony. If we aren't booming in less than a year I cut my losses and depart. I know all the people we want to get, the people with money or influence or both, and I'll get them. They don't live in Surbiton, but Surbiton will follow them, and so will Manchester and Yorkshire. Also, we'll find a new staff. Leave the women to me, my dear, and you keep the books and boss up the commissionaire who stands outside. Do you agree?"

"I insist," he said weakly, "on these ladies being given another chance."

Vingie sighed. "Ring the bell, please," she commanded. When Miss Glymp arrived, her dark eyes snapping, Vingie put a hand affectionately on her arm and requested the presence of Miss Dodsworthy.

The star mannequin curved through the doorway in her filleted fashion, put a hand up to her blonde head as though to reassure herself of its existence and said:

"You wished for me, Mr. Brooks?"

"No," explained Vingie silkily, "I rather wanted to see you, Miss Dodsworthy. The point is, were you born tired or do you consider it lady-like?"

"I don't think I quite understand," observed Miss Dodsworthy loftily.

"Perhaps you aren't well?" suggested Vingie.

"I am in perfect health, I thank you."

"I doubt if you could stand hacking ten miles to a meet, hunting all day in the rain and hacking eighteen miles home, Miss Dodsworthy."

"I am not acquainted with horse-riding, nor wish to be. I have my figure to consider," retorted Miss Dodsworthy looking at Vingie's lines with a disparaging stare.

"Well, the fact is I'm a partner in this business now. If you care to go through a stiff course of physical culture, and elocution, we might be able to use you. Otherwise——"

"I do not think I should care——"

"Fired, Anthony," said Vingie briefly. "Good morning, Miss Dodsworthy. Send Miss Buxton please."

"No wonder women hate one another. Anything more heartless I never imagined," declared Anthony.

"Can't afford passengers, my friend. Oh, Miss Buxton, if you'll wash that stuff off your face, and be taught how to make up properly, and not show so much of your legs, and stop bullying that kid in there, you can stay on. Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll have to go."

"Thank you, Mr. Brooks," said Miss Buxton, ignoring Vingie, "I should like to leave instantly."

"I suggest a month's pay, each, Anthony," was Vingie's only comment. "Now we'll ring up a good decorator, and get a typist along. We must put out these sale notices, and start looking for a couple of decent mannequins, and get on to the wholesale houses. I'll manage the place for the time being, with that kid as my second string. Hurry, there's a dear."

At night she found awaiting her a note from Sir Charles.

"My dear Virginia:

"Scrymgeour has acquainted me with your business transactions. He seems filled with alarm. Personally, I take up the attitude of Gamaliel who observed in another connection. 'If this council or this work be of men it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.'

"Nevertheless I ought to warn you that in my experience a man who will enter into financial arrangements with a woman to whom he is not related by marriage or kinship is invariably an insufferable blighter.

"Your affectionate,
"Charles Gillespie."

"Poor darling," murmured Vingie sympathetically. "How I hate leaving him, but it has to be. Some day I'll take Anthony down to Wynwood and show how harmless he is."

She was too busy to do more than sigh. Anthony Brooks, far from being one of nature's born gamblers, hung heavy on her hands, grudging the expenditure of capital. Vingie drove him as with whips to a decorative scheme of gray and powder blue, hired two sylphs who displayed frocks like fallen angels, and replenished the stock in the spirit of a girl trained from infancy to depend on clothes. Nevertheless, prosperity lagged.

She sat one sunlit morning, the loveliest thing in London, opposite him, staring across the private office of 14 Breath Street, Bond Street, the curve of her chin propped on her two hands.

"Anthony," she said at last, "get me a taxi. I'm going to do what is called 'enlist the services of the press.'"

"We can't afford any more advertising," began Anthony, but she waved him aside.

"It won't cost anything, you poor fish. You never realize what good copy I am, or how many people I know. Look at my face, my figure, my name, my clothes! News editors have more sense than you, Anthony, especially my darling Mr. Berriman."

At eleven thirty A.M. she found the pleasant man in the vast premises of the Daily Tale, his clean-shaven, clever face alert for the possibility of news. Telephones hedged him round, and damp proofs fluttered all about him.

"My dear Miss Lauriston, how do you do? No doubt you bring me the historic scoop at last!" he beamed, with one eye on the clock.

Vingie shook her head and smiled. She made a fair ornament in the soulless, efficient room.

"Only a little personal one at the moment. I've started a frock shop: 'Society beauty takes to commerce.' But any facilities regarding divorce, blackmail, or scandal that come along are yours for the asking, and I'll really buy a wee little bit of advertising space if you insist. Don't you think you could send a nice sympathetic reporter to interview me? Do make it a man though. Women are so hard on their own kind."

Mr. Berriman began to think aloud in the terms of his craft.

"'Beauty in Business; Aristocrat Acquires Atelier; Gifted Girl's Gesture in Gowns,'" he murmured. "I think we might risk half a column, Miss Lauriston. There's always a certain sentimental interest about putting a butterfly to work."

"Of course I take my work intensely seriously, Mr. Berriman."

"Undoubtedly. They always do. If you could spare half an hour at three P.M.? Thank you so much!" murmured Mr. Berriman and bowed her out.

Nevertheless, the rise of the business, the first steps of Anthony Brooks toward becoming Lord Mayor of London, the solvency of Vingie and many other miracles date from that historic afternoon. At the bidding of his chief, Mr. Gilbert Anstruther, late of Oxford University, took a taxicab westward, and wrote the famous interview that began:

"In the Forest of Arden, which clods do call Breath Street, W., I found Titania wielding magic shears. Fairies of surpassing beauty displayed on their lovely forms those gossamer fabrics whose composition is of dragonflies' wings. I would I were some sloe-eyed daughter of the idle rich, that I might veil my charms in the woven lyrics which the Honorable Virginia Lauriston, another of our aristocracy to descend into the hustling marts of Commerce, is merchandizing with such grace and brio in a promising new venture."

Here followed a Latin quotation, but the sub-editor swore and cut it out.

It brought Vingie the Goold-Tamberlaine wedding to dress. Every profiteer's wife rushed to Breath Street, where, surely an Honorable would know exactly the right thing for her to wear. Vingie appeared at important first nights, and the very select dance clubs in a sequence of toilets that wrung tears of envy to ruin many a carefully-wrought complexion. As a crowning triumph she designed the gowns for the cabaret scene in one of Mr. Dorian's remarkable super-revues.

On a day when the sun shone passionately into her little personal room at Breath Street, where she sat at her Louis Quinze escritoire, her eyes sparkling with the delirium of business, the little side-curls that hid her ears darling enough to break any man's heart, Lord Fordingbridge drew up his pair-horse phaeton outside these arcadian premises.

The noble lord descended, caressed the shining quarter of the near wheeler, nodded to the commissionaire, and ambled into the reception room, his gray tall hat slightly a-tilt, a flaming carnation in the button-hole of his gray frock coat. He removed the hat, and a genial smile lightened his rubicund countenance as Miss Glymp came to receive him. He patted her absently on the head.

"I should be greatly obliged if Miss Lauriston could spare me a moment," he rumbled. "Will you run along like a good little gal and tell her Lord Fordingbridge would like to see her, please?"

Miss Glymp, who had never hitherto had her head patted, been called a little gal, or run along anywhere, disappeared in some disorder. Lord Fordingbridge, who stood six feet two in his socks, prowled absently into the salon and beheld the two sylphs posturing in joy-gowns for a lady client. He screwed an eyeglass firmly into position and began frankly to enjoy himself until Miss Glymp led him to Vingie.

Lord Fordingbridge lifted her slender fingers to his lips, looked doubtfully at the furniture, and subsided, with misgivings, on to a window-seat.

"My dear, my dear, this is all very preposterous, and yet it has its charm," he began. "You look positively blooming if I may say so. Charles is widowed and despondent, but he tries to bear up. He asked me to tell you Lycidas is an absolute gift for the Canterbury Stakes. I can get you on at twenties, but mum's the word."

"I gamble in better things these days, George, dear. I'm quite indecently well-off. Is there anything I can do for you?"

Lord Fordingbridge sighed.

"This place reminds me so much of a certain young woman's surroundings in the Paris of my youth," he said irrelevantly. "Still I couldn't very well call at your flat. I should have liked to send Rupert—youth to youth, my dear Virginia—but alas, an estrangement seems to have come between you two. Rupert's a great stickler for etiquette. He declined to thrust himself on you. Y'see, I'm rather at my wits' end, and I think you could help me if you would."

Vingie pressed a bell. "Russian tea and cigarettes, and I'm engaged for the next hour," she commanded Miss Glymp. Lord Fordingbridge sipped his amber drink, savored his cigarette and gazed at her through half-shut eyes. She avoided his gaze and smoked quickly.

"Rupert and I—oh, well I expect I hurt his feelings. You see I couldn't marry him—life's too exciting for marriage—and now I'm busy I never see a man of any sort except Anthony, my partner. Anthony's an awful dear in many ways, but——"

"I know, I know. Never without his regimental tie since Armistice Day," sympathized his lordship, and paused. "I suppose," he went on slowly, "I should be considered an impertinent old man if I asked whether Miss Mauricette Maxwell comes here for her dresses?"

Vingie surveyed him thoughtfully.

"Not at the moment, but she will. She wears one of my gowns in Dorian's revue, and after she saw it, what there was of it, I haven't much doubt. What makes you ask?"

"It's a long story," declared his lordship dreamily. "I regret to say it points to the depravity of man and the duplicity of woman. All flesh is grass, my dear, but some grass is greener than other, and in this case the man ought to know better. Still, which of us who live in glass houses dares cast the first stone? He's a high official if he's the man I think he is."

"Yes, dear, but what's all the mystery?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge with the air of one laying down the ace of trumps, "y'see Mauricette Maxwell isn't Mauricette Maxwell at all. That is, she is as far as she goes—you follow me, don't you?—but the contents of the bottle doesn't always correspond to the label on the outside. She's not British or American, as she sounds. I don't really know what she is. Her mother was French and her father—je ne sais quoi. Let's presume he was a Pole, or a Magyar or a Russian. Anyway Mauricette's linked up with Somebody's Secret Service, and she's caught our poor friend X in her toils. That is, I think it's X. It might be Y or Z. If anybody writes a check for her account with you, I wish you'd let me see it before you pay it into your bank. I'd like to hush things up if possible. Terrible thing if it got in the papers. After all none of us'd like the skeleton in his cupboard washed in public, would he?"

He rose to his feet with grave dignity and bent again over Vingie's hand. He passed out to his phaeton, a fine survival of the old school, gathered up the reins, and clattered splendidly away.

Vingie remained at her desk deep in thought.

"I don't like this idea of mixing up business with Foreign Office work," she pondered. "On the other hand it may give me some kind of hold over Rupert. I consider Rupert has behaved very badly just because I wouldn't marry him. Who on earth would marry Rupert, or any other man, at the first time of asking unless she were Miss Glymp or some one like that? He's never written to me, or been to see me, or asked me to dine with him. I think a little cruelty would do him good."

The telephone bell tinkled faintly. Miss Mauricette Maxwell's maid wished to make an appointment for Miss Mauricette Maxwell to discuss the subject of frocks. Vingie put down the receiver with a little gasp.

"Now, how much does George, or Rupert, or both of them know, and how do they find it out?" she demanded solemnly of space.

Her brain began to weave the tortuous, involved plans peculiar to females, all seemingly ridiculous, yet very much to the point if only people knew.

"I think I'll take Anthony down to Wynwood in the car this week-end," she decided. "Rupert is sure to be there. It would seem appropriate for him to know Anthony. Rupert's too fond of imagining nothing exists outside his own world."

Though Anthony Brooks had not the faintest desire to visit Wynwood, being perfectly happy to drowse away the week-end at Mon Plaisir, his Surbiton home,—alternating perusal of the Sunday papers with a little clock-golf on the lawn, fortified by the Sunday luncheon of roast beef, two veg., trifle, and half a bottle of that excellent Burgundy he picked up from a man in the city who unfortunately went bankrupt,—yet Vingie had her way because clay can not presume to argue with the potter.

She took him down personally in the little ten-horsepower "Wonderful" she had bought out of her profits. The limited space precluded much luggage, and Anthony wondered in misery whether he had sufficient changes of raiment for stately surroundings.

Vingie presented him to Sir Charles and poured tea for him on the sunlit terrace. The butler terrified him; he sat in gloom juggling drearily with a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter.

"The enterprises of commerce hold great fascination for me," declared Sir Charles, with his imperishable charm. "Observe how beautiful woman lays the whole earth under tribute, from the silks and perfumes of the East to the furs of the Arctic."

"Mostly wood-fiber and pussy-cat now-a-days, sir, I'm afraid," replied Anthony with ghastly mirth.

"I rejoice, moreover, that my ward has enjoyed the benefit of your ripe experience in this undertaking of hers," pursued Sir Charles blandly. "You have been the soul of good nature, Mr. Brooks. Believe me I am not ungrateful."

"Not at all. Pleasure I'm sure," muttered the wretched guest, reddening to the edge of his ears.

"Charles, darling," interrupted Vingie, "surely Rupert is somewhere about? I haven't seen a sign of him."

"Oh, he'll be along presently. He got rather hot knocking the balls about on the tennis courts and I think he's changing," explained Sir Charles.

Even as he spoke, a tall immaculate figure, with all the aloofness of a very superior god, stepped through the French window and advanced toward them.

"Oh, hullo, Rupert!" Virginia began in a little bored drawl. "By the way, have you met my friend, Anthony Brooks?"

"Ah! how do you do?" said Rupert impersonally. "Delightful day for motoring down. I trust the car ran well, Virginia."

He seated himself apart, and glanced vaguely at Anthony Brooks rather as a man inspects the bacillus of a new disease, striving as it were to appear interested and failing entirely to conceal very natural horror.

"We're making a great deal of money these days, Rupert," Vingie went on. "I'm getting to be quite an heiress. Probably Charles has told you."

"No," replied Rupert with terrible politeness. "I don't think we discussed the matter. I should love to hear all about it, but Lacey absolutely insisted that I should dine with him and stay over to-morrow. He delivers his big speech on the Near East in the House next week and he wished to discuss certain points with me. In fact I'll have to run away almost at once. My kit is already in the car."

He rose and smiled like the moon shining upon the crests of the Himalayas. "Good-by!" he claimed. "Good-by, Mr.—er—Brooks." With a faint inclination of the head in Vingie's direction he retired as he had come. Sir Charles gazed in rapture at the distant woods.

"We have indeed reason to be grateful to our ancestors for their devoted efforts in afforestation, Mr. Brooks——" he began, while Vingie's teeth met viciously in a macaroon biscuit.

Very soon after dinner she retired to rest, alleging fatigue. No one's appearance at breakfast on Sunday coincided with that of Anthony, and Sir Charles proved to be his only companion at luncheon. As it transpired, he passed the day much as he would have done at his Surbiton home, but he remembers the Burgundy at dinner as something to dwell upon, and Sir Charles' port went straight to his heart. He recalls gratefully an excellent cigar or two and has vague memories of a discussion on trout-fishing afterward. Vingie compelled him to leave very early on Monday morning in order to reach Breath Street by nine A.M. Nevertheless he preserves a tender feeling for the aristocracy. They understand, he declares, the art of living, and devote much thought to that end.

Now, even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.

On a day when the presence of bright sunshine coincided with the weekly cheap train to London from Great Booking (a place of ninety-three houses, not to be confused with Little Booking which boasts only twenty-seven) Ella Fairbody decided to avail herself of the railway company's generosity. She was a person accustomed to make these gentle decisions from which, once made, she never departed.

She put on her gray organdie frock with the cerise touches, which she had made herself aided by a paper pattern, because Ella was clever with her needle and there is no use throwing money away on these dressmakers, and the gray shoes and stockings and hat to match. (Nevertheless she took her umbrella because you never know in this climate.) She brushed her mid-brown hair rather carefully, and rubbed a powder puff over her face with a pleasant, slight feeling of wickedness. There was no need to add color because she had one of those wild-rose complexions, although going on for twenty-seven. She met Mrs. Hickman at the station, who, seeing Ella in her best dress, standing on the up platform in time for the eleven-thirty train which does not stop after Great Booking, said: "Are you going to London, Miss Fairbody?" and Ella smiled and said, "Yes," and bridled a little as though confessing to something rather devilish.

At two-thirty she passed through the door of 14 Breath Street, Bond Street, paused, raised her head, and tilted it slightly to one side. Her eyes told her the place was altered; her instinct told her the alteration was for the worse. A faint perfume troubled her senses; the decorative scheme smote her as somehow unchaste. Miss Glymp, coming forward courageously instead of furtively, in a perfect little frock, her hair perfectly arranged, offended Ella's sense of righteousness.

"I want to see Mr. Brooks. Is he in his room?" she asked in the voice she kept for servants.

"Mr. Brooks is engaged with Miss Lauriston at the moment. If you will kindly take a seat I will inform you. What name may I say, please?"

"Say, Miss Fairbody, his fiancée," replied Ella coldly.

Miss Glymp, internally convulsed by Ella's gown, glided perfidiously to Anthony's room. She found him in animated discussion with Vingie, who, cigarette in mouth, laid down her views on business policy.

"Miss Fairbody wishes to see you, sir," murmured Miss Glymp.

A pale perspiration bedewed Anthony's forehead. Although he had done no wrong, vague sickness afflicted his internal economy. Notwithstanding, he passed a care-worn hand over his brow and said:

"Please bring her here."

Vingie raised shocked eyebrows. "But, Anthony——" she began.

Anthony did not heed. Even as a condemned man on the morning of execution reviews all the delicate and desirable things of life he is about to leave, so Anthony Brooks said a mute farewell to the pleasant associations of the last six months; the charm and genius of Vingie, the business losses turned into a hundred per cent. net profit, the glimpses of a delightful secure world not his own.

The door opened, and Ella came in, holding her umbrella across her body as one nurses a baby. "Anthony, dear!" she exclaimed, halted one pace from him, and held up her face in sure and certain hope.

In the fulfilment of his duty he bent and kissed her.

Vingie stood rooted to the carpet. She saw Anthony turn to her and heard him say: "This is Miss Fairbody, my fiancée." There was that in his eyes which almost evoked pity from her, but not quite.

She put out a slender hand, smiled, and murmured: "How do you do?" but her heart cried out for whips and thumb screws to be applied to Anthony. He should never have allowed the situation to occur. "I expect you'll have all sorts of things to talk about," she went on politely. "Perhaps you'll both come and have tea in my room at four o'clock?" She passed out, an affecting figure, far too affecting in fact. As the door closed behind her, Ella put her head very slightly on one side.

"Anthony——" she began.

In her own room Vingie sat lonely, and reviewed the entire scheme of things with marked distaste.

"It's very curious," she reflected, "but I s'spose human nature being what it is, I oughtn't to be surprised. I haven't the vaguest affection for Anthony and if he were to kiss me I should scream. Yet the fact that he's engaged to that terrible young woman has taken away every scrap of interest I ever had in this job. P'r'aps it's because of her dreadful mind. She probably thinks I want him for myself. Vingie, dear, your latest wild oat has run rather to seed I'm afraid. How on earth am I to get out of all this? Anyhow for sheer pride I simply must produce a man of my own."

A light yet firm knock fell on the door. It opened to reveal Ella Fairbody. She closed the door, smiled in saintly fashion, seated herself and folded her hands in her lap. She conveyed mutely that she was glad her clothes were what they were, instead of resembling Vingie's.

"Miss Lauriston," she began, "I wish to be quite frank."

"If there is anything to be quite frank about, Miss Fairbody," replied Vingie in her most silky voice, "that is undoubtedly the best course."

Ella Fairbody sighed.

"The world is a very difficult place," she proceeded. "I've been having a look round with Anthony, and I don't quite like the tone of this establishment now it's altered. Those two mannequins for instance—of course they may be good girls but they seem dreadfully brazen. There used to be a Miss Buxton here—such a lady-like person. And that Miss Glymp has become a very pert little girl. The whole atmosphere here is quite changed; it's—well, it strikes me as not quite nice."

"What is 'nice'?" asked Vingie.

Her visitor smiled even more icily.

"I think you know what I mean. Any woman would. And I do feel that for a young man who's engaged to one girl to be in quite such close association with another as Anthony is with you isn't quite—quite wise. You see, people are so uncharitable. I understand that he's been to stay with your people and you motored him down in your car, and he has had dinner at your flat. That seems to me rather a mistake."

"My dear woman, how on earth should I know he was engaged to you?" demanded the goaded Vingie. "I never heard of you till half an hour ago."

"Oh, of course in that case——" admitted Ella Fairbody, "it seems strange though that he didn't tell you. Our love means a great deal to Anthony." Her entire form shrieked dumbly the one word "liar!"

Another knock fell on the door. There entered the cashier bearing a slip of pink paper. "Excuse me, Miss Lauriston," she murmured, "but this is the check for Miss Maxwell's account. Your instructions were to bring it to you at once."

"Thank you," said Vingie absently. She examined the check saw that it bore the signature "Gerald Loxley, Capt. 91st Hussars" and leaped at once to a brilliant rearguard action.

"Forgive me one moment," she continued, picked up the telephone receiver and asked for the Foreign Office. "Miss Lauriston speaking. Give me Lord Fordingbridge, please. Is that Lord Fordingbridge? Oh, George, the Maxwell check has come. I wish you'd send Rupert down at once to look at it. No, not made out in her name. Yes, a man. I particularly want Rupert. Send him in a car, will you—it's rather urgent. Thank you ever so. Good-by."

Ella Fairbody, whose mind had never worked at such a dizzy speed as Vingie's, felt more than ever convinced of her hostess' iniquity. Vingie turned to her with cruel calm.

"In the circumstances, of course, I shall withdraw from this concern," she announced. "It seems a pity to take capital out of the business just when it's booming, but that naturally is no affair of mine. Perhaps you can spare Mr. Brooks for half an hour to arrange the details? That's very kind of you, Miss Fairbody. Would you mind telling him as you go out?"

He entered slowly, and for a second she pitied him even as on that far-off day at the Savoy when he had seemed so young and distraught. But hell holds no fury like a woman scorned. Vingie turned on him the two glinting bits of green-gray ice that were her eyes and said:

"You might really have told me you were engaged, Anthony. I dislike being accused of baby-snatching by peculiar young women."

Like a cornered rat he burst out in despairing fury:

"What about you? How do I know whether you're engaged or not? Why should I take all the blame?"

"My poor thing," she answered mildly, "don't let's quarrel just as we're about to part. Heaven knows you've enough trouble on your hands. What on earth made you get engaged to such a very—shall I say conventional?—person?"

"You ought to know. You told me once any woman could do anything she liked with me. I'm damned if I can tell you why!" groaned the stricken man before her.

"Mr. Rupert Frack to see you, moddom," announced Miss Glymp.

When Anthony had staggered forth Rupert stood before Vingie for a moment with all his soul in his eyes. She sat with her elbows on the desk, her beautiful head drooped, and she played absently with Miss Maxwell's check. As he tried vainly to harden his heart she glanced up reproachfully and said:

"Why don't you stop being such a brute to me?"

To this there is no more answer than to the classic question: "Why don't you give up beating your wife?"

He commenced to flounder in the morass churned up by his conflicting emotions.

"If only you'd chuck all this——" he exclaimed. She flung out her hands, relinquishing the check.

"All this is giving up me. My partner's fiancée comes and accuses me of man-stealing, I'm abused and humiliated, and still, Rupert, I've played the game to the end, and done what I undertook to do for George Fordingbridge and you. Here's the Maxwell woman's check. It's signed by a Captain Gerald Loxley. Now I s'pose you'll want to run off and arrest him and leave me to fight a lone hand all by myself. Shall I ring and have a taxi called for you?"

"Captain Loxley? That clears us completely. We can now take up the matter with the War Office!" announced Rupert triumphantly. Then his proud look humbled. "My dear Virginia, you've been an absolute brick. Your unselfishness in the midst of your own troubles moves me deeply. Of course I was mad to think you would marry me; I'm not half good enough for you. I should like to see the man who is. If only you'll forgive me and let me help you whenever I may, in however humble a capacity——"

Vingie rose from her chair. A faint glow of victory suffused her oval cheek. She hummed lightly the latest fox-trot. "If you will be kind enough to take me out of this hell!" she requested.

He stood in admiration while she pulled on the smartest little hat in London. He admired the adorableness of her hands as she coaxed on gloves. They went out side by side, a patrician pair, pausing only at Anthony's room. Rupert held the door and followed Vingie into the last arena of her business life.

Ella Fairbody sat placidly in the visitor's armchair; Anthony stood in gloom before the fireplace. Ella Fairbody gasped almost audibly to behold Vingie garbed for departure, attended by a most desirable young man the sheen of whose silk hat, the cut of whose morning clothes made Anthony in his business suit resemble a mouse in the presence of lions.

"Anthony," said Vingie in her clear voice, "I'm going. Your solicitors can settle up the details with mine. This has been a peculiarly odious day, for which we have to thank Miss Fairbody alone. Good-by! Please believe I don't bear you the smallest ill-will."

She held out a hand in farewell. Ella knew that for the moment she herself did not exist. She made a vow that Anthony should expiate this moment all down the merciless years.

"Rupert, darling," cooed Vingie as his car bore them away, "be an angel and dine with me at the flat to-night. To-morrow I shall give it up and return to my poor Charles. I don't suppose the dear lamb has had a happy moment since I went away."

"I should love to if you'll let me," answered Rupert, flinging his traditions to the winds.

In the rich calm of Wynwood's drawing-room, Vingie sipped coffee like a cat licking cream, and dwelt upon Sir Charles with maternal eyes.

"You don't know how delightful it is to share your roof again, Charles," she said peacefully. "I shall never find any one like you as a husband. You've spoiled the rest of mankind for me from everlasting to everlasting. I begin to understand why you never married. All the other women in the world would have scratched her eyes out. The risk was too great, even to possess you."

"I confess I never thought of it in that way before, but perhaps you are right," responded Sir Charles.

"I've come back financially restored and spiritually bankrupt, darling."

"It is impossible to be at once spiritually and financially sound. That is the real reason why I have never possessed any pecuniary surplus, my dear Virginia."

The door opened to admit Lord Fordingbridge.

"I've dealt with those accursed dispatches at last. They are part of the heavy price one pays for engaging in public life. You look exceptionally beautiful to-night, Virginia, my child," he said benignly.

She smiled up at him in great content.

"Tell me how that affair of Mauricette's check ended, George. It all seems part of a bad dream, but I'd like to know."

Lord Fordingbridge creased his rubicund countenance into a reminiscent smile.

"Ah!" he said, "I'm afraid that turned out to be a case of dog eating dog. Y'see, we had our suspicions of the lady and kept our eyes open, but the War Office had theirs too. So what do they do but tell off a good-looking cavalryman to make the running with her and see if she started asking awkward questions about how many bows and arrows we had in reserve and all that kind of thing.

"Well, of course I couldn't know that, could I, so when you got Captain Who-is-its check, I tipped it off to the Adjutant General, and as Captain What's-his-name was acting under instructions, the A.G. became quite tart about it. I'm afraid poor Rupert had a bad quarter of an hour with him."

"So you sent Rupert, and the Adjutant General ticked him off," mused Vingie. She rose gracefully to her feet, and extended a hand to Sir Charles.

"I think for the only time in your life you're wrong, Charles," she ended. "At the moment I am in truth spiritually and financially sound. Night-night, you dear things!"

X

"Charles, darling," pleaded Vingie, "how did you ever come to be possessed of a nephew like Rupert?"

Sir Charles beamed on her with courteous attention.

"My sister Ann married Arthur Frack, and they were blessed with a son," he explained. "I always suspected Arthur—Heaven rest his soul—of some obscure failing. His merits were considerable, and yet he fell just short of distinction. Successively Governor of the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands, beyond a K.C.B. and a pension he achieved little. Now Rupert will go far. He combines his father's reverence for tradition and his mother's extreme perseverance."

Vingie, toying with after-dinner coffee and cigarette in the small Park Street drawing-room, presenting quite consciously a very distracting figure, turned pensive eyes on the trim figure of her guardian now lost in a reverie of his spacious bachelor past.

At last, with the lithe motion of a siren she rose, and composed her slight loveliness gently upon his knee.

"Nice thing!" she crooned. "I adore unworthy men. They're so broad-minded and adequate and sympathetic. Rupert's abominably worthy. Charles, I'm going to confess to you, and instead of the whipping I deserve you shall give me the most delicious advice. I'm very hard up again, dreadfully in debt, a wee piece bored, and I know a delightful man who might help me to a very pleasant and profitable adventure. You don't feel it would be wrong of me, do you, Charles?'

"My dear Virginia," replied Sir Charles feebly, "there is only one course for a girl to pursue when in doubt. She should say to herself: 'What would the late Queen Victoria have done in my place?' It is an infallible recipe."

Vingie took his face between her hands, kissed him lightly on the brow, rose, sketched one or two steps of a fox-trot, and came to rest.

"I mean Mr. Berriman," she explained, "the news editor of the Daily Tale. If I go and see him in a perfectly tailored brown suit, with brown shoes and beige silk stockings, I think he'll give me a job on his paper. By the way, who exactly was Queen Victoria? I seem to have heard the name."

The door opened quietly to admit Rupert, radiantly attired in the height of fashion. His eyes mooned over Vingie in forlorn admiration.

"You promised," he explained, "that I might take you to the Plinlimmons' dance. Rogers has the car at the door."

Vingie gazed at him fixedly.

"You are quite sure it is a dance, and not a funeral? Your clothes are the clothes of a roisterer, but your manner is that of a respectable undertaker," she said patiently. "Nevertheless, I will get my cloak."

When she had gone Rupert looked at Sir Charles, and Sir Charles looked at Rupert. A dreadful sigh tore the younger man's bosom. Sir Charles shook his head gravely.

"The poet sang of woman: 'When pain and anguish wring the brow, a veritable angel thou,'" he observed. "Either woman has altered, or the statement was inaccurate, for you exhibit as much pain and anguish as any two ordinary hospitals, and it avails you nothing with Virginia. My dear Rupert, you have just time for a whisky-and-soda if you act quickly. It is the best advice I can offer on the spur of the moment."

Newspaper men being hardened to shocks, the possessors of steel nerves, and totally unsentimental, Mr. Berriman merely raised his eyebrows when they announced the arrival of the Honorable Virginia Lauriston. He instructed them to show her up and went on balancing the scales of justice between a disturbance in the Sandjak of Novibazar and a thrilling divorce in aristocratic circles. He rose courteously when there appeared in his doorway a slim vision in a brown suit, her slender ankles veiled in beige silk, her feet encased in bench-made mahogany shoes, her hat raked celestially over her fair hair.

"Perfectly charming of you to see me," declared Vingie in clear tones. "I suspect you're frightfully busy."

She gave him a little gloved paw, sat down on a quite unworthy chair, and waited. Mr. Berriman reflected absently how those shirts of thick pajama silk set off an adorable throat if skilfully cut with a V shaped opening.

"Not at all," he replied, "you're always considerate. What's the news—another of your amazing ideas?"

Vingie gazed at him with blinding directness.

"I doubt if you'll call it a brain-wave when I tell you. I want a job on your paper, Mr. Berriman, please."

(Curious how attractive a name sounds if spoken with a faint slurring of the r's by an extremely pretty girl.)

"What sort of a job?" queried Mr. Berriman with a faint sigh for his wasted life, a wife and three children in Brixton, the unsophisticated cut of his tweed suit, and a few hundred other things.

"Any job that brings me a little money and excitement, I'm broke and I'm bored. Wouldn't I be rather a novelty on your staff?"

"Can you write?" temporized Mr. Berriman like a drowning man clutching at straws.

"Men have told me I write awfully good letters. I'm quite decently educated, and I can ride and drive a car, and I'm not scared of things. And of course, I know everybody."

Mr. Berriman stared out of the window for safety.

"I'll give you a chance at five pounds a week," he said at last, as harshly as possible. "Report at ten-thirty to-morrow morning and ask for Mr. Jennings."

Vingie surveyed him sadly.

"My dear, it would cost me more than that for lunches and taxis and things," she explained. "Besides I should need a lot of new clothes. Mine aren't suitable for a working girl. Do you know the price of a suit like this—a perfectly plain little suit, with just a silk lining to the coat and a few buttons and button-holes?"

"Well, let's say ten pounds, and a month on trial," amended Mr. Berriman, feeling like a man caught putting a foreign coin in a church collection.

"Is that absolutely all my exclusive information would be worth?" implored his visitor piteously. "I should have thought for the society column alone—besides, I've got the Foreign Office at my fingertips. I did want so much to be on your paper, Mr. Berriman, because we're friends, and you've been nice to me. But honestly I couldn't afford it. I shall have to try the Morning Globe. Thank you awfully for wasting so much time on me."

She stood up to take farewell. Her brown suit fell in the straightest of straight lines. Mr. Berriman positively could not resist wondering what that gently curving mouth would be like to kiss, though it was none of his business. Besides, the mention of the Morning Globe irritated him. It did very well to wrap up fish in, but as a newspaper he despised it.

"Then, subject to confirmation by my proprietor, fifteen pounds a week," he said at last. "Remember, ten-thirty to-morrow and ask for Mr. Jennings. Good morning, Miss Lauriston. I hope—er—we shall find mutual pleasure in—er—our professional relationship."

He smiled mechanically, and took again her offered hand. Somebody someday would marry this divine slip of a thing. He remembered that his bank balance totaled fifty pounds, and that his life insurance premium fell due in a fortnight. Probably the new recruit owed hundreds of pounds without a second thought. Somehow life seemed hardly fair—not that he grudged her one grain of powder for her enchanting face.

Vingie tap-tapped gracefully along endless corridors to the lift. At least six men turned their heads automatically to gaze after her retreating form. She passed the driven carcass of Miss Allin, a plain forty-three who wrote paragraphs beginning:

"'Straordinary how we girls thrive on the rush from lunch to dinner and from dinner to dance, and go tearing in our latest frocklets from Ascot to Cowes and from Cowes north after the wee brown grouse. As Lady Fitz-Battleaxe said to me last night at Claridges——"

She issued from the lift on the ground floor and the chief commissionaire, even an ex-Regimental-Sergeant-Major, tucked her with pride into her little ten horsepower Wonderful car, winking in pale gray and silver. Over luncheon she told Sir Charles, with simple pride, the history of the morning's conquest. He shook his head gravely, motioning away a second helping of the entrée.

"No good will come of it, my dear Virginia. The eagle can not mate with the sparrow, and one does not place the thoroughbred in the shafts of a cab. I suppose some people must necessarily provide untruths flavored to suit the taste of the vulgar, but for you it seems a deplorable occupation. However, we all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die, and if you prefer to take yours at one meal I suppose you know best."

"Be quiet, Charles!" she said reprovingly. "First there was William Caxton, then Shakespeare, and now little Vingie. I wonder if Mr. Jennings is youngish and rather good-looking? Even I couldn't do much with some one fifty years old who has a beard."

Mr. Albert Bagford, sitting in his immense room furnished after the Jacobean style, set his square jaw, poised his five feet seven of sinewy dynamite as if he could leap from his chair, and hewed Mr. Berriman in metaphorical pieces.

"Nobody would think I owned this paper!" he stormed. "Nobody would think I rose from nothing to the position of a millionaire in order to give the public news as news has never been given to the public before. Anybody would think you owned it, and could slop out miserable pap in your own knock-kneed style till the cows come home. I s'pose this girl has put it across you—as if sentiment and newspaper work had anything in common. Otherwise how could this sort of tripe get set up and proved?"

He picked up a proof of an article from Vingie's pen, cleared his throat, and read:

"Lady Avis Shillinghoe is engaged to Major Cordigan, M.C., 19th Hussars. This represents the crowning achievement of a long struggle. She was always a wretched little funk as a girl, and a perfect laughing-stock in the hunting field. We can only suppose the major worships the helpless type of female. I saw her dining at the Ritz the other day in one of those insipid gowns that freeze the blood of any woman with blood to freeze. She has written a number of mawkish poems that lack both style and manner. Our congratulations to the happy pair."

"Well," retorted Mr. Berriman, "perhaps you'd like to see her yourself. I can't do anything. She has an extraordinary way with her. Jennings is a pretty tough nut, but he feeds out of her hand. The worst of it is that social stuff of hers brings in hundreds and hundreds of letters. It's so popular I should be prepared to chance a libel action or two."

"Nobody asked for your opinion, Berriman. Send this woman to me, and notice the difference when I've finished with her. That's all."

Mr. Berriman went out wrapping what remained of philosophy about his soul. He sought Vingie in the reporters' room. She sat writing industriously and half a dozen young men watched her covertly as if no girl had ever written before, poised ready to dash forward in her service.

"The chief wants you, Miss Lauriston," said Mr. Berriman sorrowfully; Vingie looked up with distaste.

"What a perfect nuisance!" she retorted. "I'm just in the middle of the Fitzroy-Davenport wedding. However, p'r'aps I'd better see him."

She got up, settled the coat of her brown suit and sauntered out. The half dozen young men held their breath, raised their eyebrows, and stared speechlessly at Mr. Berriman. Mr. Berriman stared back.

"Evidently a public holiday," he observed acidly, and went away, leaving the door open.

Vingie entered the room of Mr. Bagford without knocking. Its vastness left her unmoved, for she was accustomed to vast rooms. She saw a middle-aged man seated at an enormous writing table. He never raised his bent head. He went on writing. A grandfather clock ticked solemnly; not another sound broke the silence. In this fashion Mr. Bagford had subdued scores of men, turning their bowels to water. Vingie merely thought him a trifle ill-bred. She had never known fear in her life.

She wandered across to the vast writing table, and in the absence of a chair seated herself lightly on the table itself, four or five feet from the absorbed proprietor. She felt in the side pocket of her coat, produced a thin gold cigarette-case, chose a cigarette, lighted it, smoked reflectively, removed the cigarette, and said with a great effort of politeness:

"Well, Mr. Bagford, what's the news?"

Mr. Bagford sat up as if some one had struck him. He saw a slim brown figure seated on his table smoking a cigarette. The figure belonged to a girl, thus robbing him of certain expressions adequate to the occasion. Moreover the girl showed no sign of fear, and being accustomed to be feared the fact unnerved him. He picked up the offending proof, glared at her in baffled fury and barked:

"Did you write this?"

Vingie removed the cigarette from between her lips.

"Mm!" she said.

"Are you aware," inquired Mr. Bagford dreadfully, "that it is probably libelous and certainly in bad taste?"

Vingie smiled at him very sweetly.

"My dear," she explained, "you don't know Avis Shillinghoe as well as I do. She'd sell her soul for a paragraph of any sort. As a matter of fact I always trust the sub-editors to save me from libel. It's a pity to cramp one's style. By the time they've done with it there'll be precious little style left. If I started by suppressing myself there wouldn't be anything at all."

"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Bagford, smitten to the heart.

"Well," objected his lovely employee, "what do we have sub-editors for?"

"I wonder," said Mr. Bagford, "exactly how you persuaded Berriman to engage you." Vingie slid gracefully from the table and stood looking at him.

"I have never," she responded slowly, "found it difficult to persuade any man who had ordinary decent instincts to do anything I wanted. He was perfectly right to get an expert for the society column. Before I did it the thing was ridiculous to any one who knew what society's like. You, of course, are the rudest person I ever met. Besides, you're quite wrong."

If she had been a man Mr. Bagford would have dismissed him; if she had been his wife or his daughter, supposing he had had a wife or daughter, he would have stormed at her. As things were he smiled tolerantly and said with a spacious air:

"Better lunch with me and we'll come to some understanding."

The brown boy-girl figure stiffened.

"Thank you. I am engaged for lunch."

"Well, then, to-morrow," amended Mr. Bagford.

"To-morrow also I'm engaged."

"Well, when aren't you engaged?'

"Never, as far as you're concerned," explained Vingie. "I particularly dislike invitations from men I don't know."

No one rises from nothing to the possession of a million without understanding human nature. Mr. Bagford's fighting face softened. He called back in her the lovely April of his prime when he would walk out of a well-paid job into the gutter rather than go back on his principles. He rose and held out a square hand.

"I beg your pardon. You're right and I'm wrong over the lunch, and I'm right and you're wrong over the paragraph," he said. "Won't you forgive me and change your mind?"

A little enigmatic smile curled the lips of Vingie.

"In that case I'm delighted. Perhaps at one o'clock. Thanks ever so much."

It was the other people at the Carlton who shook Mr. Bagford's confidence. When Vingie arrived in his vast room at twelve fifty-nine, the deference of his secretaries bolstered that feeling of greatness absolutely essential if a man is ever to do great things. The disciplined respect of the commissionaire and chauffeur, the opulent calm of his car all ministered to the idea that he was giving a pretty, mildly-gifted, yet otherwise unremarkable girl, a treat.

Now at the Carlton they were polite to Mr. Bagford, but they worshiped Vingie. The entire staff treated her as one beloved hopelessly yet unswervingly. This fashion communicated itself to the other guests. In particular, Lord Fordingbridge abandoned altogether Miss Letitia Borrodaile of the Omnibus Theater to whom he was purveying luncheon, and bent reverently over Vingie's hand.

"My dear, you look perfect—perfect!" he rumbled. "Charles tells me you're a prop and mainstay of some terrible newspaper. I never read them myself, and it seems impossible to connect you with anything so depraved, but if any one can lift them out of the mire, you will achieve that miracle."

Presently Mr. Bagford sat facing all that loveliness which was Vingie, across her favorite table. He deferred gracefully to her choice of food, acquiesced when she refused wine, and proceeded to mold her to his purpose as he had molded everything as long as he could remember.

"How," he inquired politely, "does the Daily Tale strike you?"

Vingie propped her chin on her hands and gazed into his eyes.

"Lifeless—uninspired—commonplace," she answered sadly. "Hardly any of it interests a woman. All we want is emotional adventure, and all you give us is politics and wars. It's the way you handle everything. You make even a great love-story seem dreary and hackneyed. I s'pose men are a dull lot. They cease to be thrilled after they've married and women go on being thrilled till they die."

"I'm not married," said Mr. Bagford hastily.

"Mentally you must have been born married," retorted Vingie. "The Isaacs-Ferguson divorce case made Antony and Cleopatra look like a village Darby and Joan, but when I tried to read it in the Daily Tale I nearly fell asleep. It's lack of soul, my dear Mr. Bagford. You don't feel; you simply grind out all the old sentiments we're supposed to possess and don't."

"This is very serious," declared her host, his fighting jaw set doggedly. "I never realized it before. Something must be done."

"I loathe anything second-rate," went on Vingie with an adorable sneer. "I'd rather die than be mixed up with a failure. I doubt if I can stand your paper very long. You may have a circulation, but it isn't because you've any merit. It's just that other people are a shade worse—if possible."

"What would you suggest?" asked Mr. Bagford, who felt himself sagging everywhere. Vingie shrugged her shoulders.

"Are you asking me to help, or are you ordering me about?" she demanded.

"I'm asking you to help, if you'll be charitable enough," said Mr. Bagford humbly.

With an inscrutable light in her eyes she offered him one of her very own cigarettes. "We'll put this paper right together," she murmured dreamily. "I'll work my fingers to the bone if you really want me to help."

Mr. Berriman, entering the vast room of Mr. Bagford, his lord, closed the door quietly, paused and stood lost in contemplation. At the Jacobean writing table sat two figures, a girl in a tan suit, molded to her lissom figure, and a square-set man with a fighting jaw. The fair head and the iron-gray bent very close together.

"Well," came in Vingie's clear tones, "I think we've got the woman's side pretty well arranged for to-morrow's issue. There's My Case against Divorce, by the Bishop of Banff, and that Husbands for All correspondence, and an article entitled Down with Men, by Bathsheba Stoat, the feminist creature. She ought to be boiled in oil, but we must try to please every one."

Mr. Bagford frowned.

"It seems to me rather one-sided. How about dropping the bishop, and having something about, say, The Art of Fascination, by a popular actress?"

Mr. Berriman coughed. Mr. Bagford glanced up in annoyance. Vingie, also glancing, flicked one eyelid very faintly.

"Excuse my interrupting," began Mr. Berriman, "but this has just come in over the telephone. The Foreign Minister is taking a firm stand on the Jugo-Czechian question. He is prepared to support the Slogo-Moravians' claim to the province of Tiszch. The First Division has received orders to mobilize, and the Mediterranean Fleet is in readiness to sail at a moment's notice. There is a panic in Jugo-Czechian financial circles, and the lo has fallen to ten thousand to the pound sterling. That, of course, equals forty to a penny, or two thousand to the dollar."

"Well, don't bother me about it," snapped Mr. Bagford. "You know you've got standing orders to oppose the Foreign Minister whatever he does. If he had supported the Jugo-Czechians against the Slogo-Moravians I should oppose him just the same. After all, somebody has to oppose the government. Get Brice to do a leader about wasting the taxpayers' money on wildcat foreign adventures, and go away."

Mr. Berriman sighed, and departed. As the door clicked Mr. Bagford put down his pencil, leaned back in his chair and said:

"Virginia, I love you, will you marry me?"

"My dear Mr. Bagford," responded Vingie, who had often faced this situation, "it's exceedingly kind of you to ask me, but why should I marry you or any one else for that matter? I'm twenty-one and perfectly independent. How would you have liked to be married at my age?"

"That's altogether different. You're a girl and I'm a man," explained Mr. Bagford rather unnecessarily. "You need some one to love and protect you, to provide you with a home—children—all that life means to a woman. You weren't made for the drudgery and hustle of a newspaper. You were intended to reign, a queen, in the house of the man you love."

"I love Charles better than any man on earth, and I've reigned a queen in his house ever since I was twelve. It's perfectly respectable; I'm talking about Sir Charles Gillespie, my guardian. I'm afraid I don't love you at all, and apart from love, you've nothing to offer me that darling Charles hasn't provided over and over again."

"I'd do anything in the world for you, Virginia," said Mr. Bagford rather helplessly for a man in his position.

"Well, then, suppose you stop persecuting Lord Fordingbridge, the Foreign Minister? He's my greatest pal, next to Charles—an absolute angel. Besides, he can't be wrong, because he never does anything without consulting Charles, and Charles knows everything."

"Will you consent to our engagement if I do?" came like a flash from her lover.

Vingie leaned back in her chair, hands clasped behind her head. "That depends how tight a corner Lord Fordingbridge is in. Still it sounds quite bad enough. Would you really care to be engaged to me simply so that I can save an old friend some embarrassment. Do you call that fair, Mr. Bagford?"

The proprietor of the Daily Tale summed up briefly the perfect lines of her bent-back figure.

"All's fair in love and war," he answered grimly.

"Well, as long as there's no kissing and that sort of thing till I give you permission, I agree," said Vingie, so quietly that he started in his chair. "Will you please countermand Mr. Berriman's instructions at once?"

"Of course I will," exclaimed Mr. Bagford, with a somewhat uncalled-for chuckle, and pressed firmly an electric bell....

Through that beautiful friendship which existed between Vingie and Sir Charles it was her custom to confess her triumphs and peccadilloes even as a child confesses at its mother's knee. Therefore, after dinner, since it chanced they were alone, she sat inscrutably among sofa cushions and said in her most innocent manner:

"Charles, would you be surprised if I were to tell you I'm engaged?"

"Normally," replied Sir Charles, "I should not. Nevertheless, since an engagement implies marriage and your views on marriage are unsympathetic, I should consider you a little inconsistent. But then, my dear Virginia, what woman is ever anything else?"

"He is Mr. Bagford, the proprietor of the Daily Tale. He's about fifty, and he's worth at least a million," went on Vingie.

"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Charles with emotion. "I must apologize for the expression, but the idea of your being linked with some nameless journalist is really intolerable. Our world has fallen on evil days, yet while there is still a Fortinbras, a Giffard, a Plinlimmon, or a Rupert Frack, what have I done that you should become Mrs. Bagford, Mrs. Bagford! Did you ever hear such a word! The sound of it is positively ear-tearing."

"Well," replied Vingie with pious humility, "you always told me to marry some one who would put me ahead of all the other girls in my set—a coming man. Rupert may get a peerage, but Mr. Bagford will have one. Besides I did it to help George Fordingbridge. Mr. Bagford consented not to oppose George's foreign policy if I'd be engaged."

A rigid expression overwhelmed Sir Charles' aristocratic face. He passed a hand across his brow to hide an agony of mind.

"Quis tantum de te licuit!" he murmured, for he came of a generation familiar with the classics. "Who has had his will of you so far, my poor Virginia! So beautiful a sacrifice in so ironic a cause! I beg your pardon. My mind is a little astray. Of course, if you are happy, I congratulate you. But Bagford—Bagford! It will be written on my heart, like Calais on the heart of the late Queen Mary."

"Don't you think," asked Vingie with a little sigh, "that we really ought to ask him down to Wynwood for the week-end? Of course, the engagement isn't actually announced, but I'd like you to meet him. He's rather like a lion, Charles, dear. When he roars every one trembles from the editor down to the office boy."

"I will write to him this evening," agreed Sir Charles heavily. "Fordingbridge and Rupert are to be there as well. It will prove a sad holiday for Rupert—a faithful heart if ever there was one!"

XI

At Wynwood, in the deep of the country, Mr. Bagford's material soul went off, half-sobbing, half-uplifted, on a romantic pilgrimage. His own machine-like bachelor flat in Half Moon Street, his pseudo-ancient country cottage near the fashionable golf-links, afforded him nothing like this. Also, as nearly as he could manage it, he was quite definitely in love.

Vingie, with unconscious feminine play-acting, dramatized a very sweet and darling conception of an engaged girl. She led him prettily among all the paths and scenes where she had frivoled as a child. She wandered bareheaded through the sunshine, laying, now and then, appealing fingers on his sleeve, showing him the stables, the rose-garden, the orchards of the home farm, the peaceful sheep and cattle. She staged a perfect idyl for this hard-bitten, commercial man; she played golf simply and naturally, she challenged him on the tennis court. For dinner she added a touch of ceremony, and came down the great staircase to him with some remote touch of her storied ancestors, very fair and stately.

She made herself seem utterly pure and virginal, while he contrasted himself, stained with the mire of conflict. Behind them hovered a bemused background of Sir Charles, Lord Fordingbridge and Rupert.

Nevertheless, when Vingie had passed bedward to her girlish dreams a boundless change came over the scene. Sir Charles glanced absently at his watch.

"Shall we," he suggested, "take a final whisky-and-soda in the library?"

"An excellent idea, Charles," declared Lord Fordingbridge blandly. "I always say there's nothing like a night-cup, especially at our age. Rupert, of course, couldn't stay awake if he tried, could you, my dear fellow?"

They grouped restfully in four stalwart armchairs. Mr. Bagford, teeth clamped on his cigar, wondered why the love of a young girl could make him so regret many enjoyable episodes in his checkered past. The calm voice of Sir Charles broke gently on the silence.

"Virginia tells me," he began, "that you have decided to support our foreign policy in Jugo-Czechia. I imagine she is making a mistake, but one would like to be reassured."

"Virginia is quite right. I gave her my word to support it. That was a condition of the engagement."

"But my dear Mr. Bagford," rumbled Lord Fordingbridge, "pardon my remindin' you that in return for certain facilities I gave your correspondents in various parts of the world you undertook always to oppose my policy in every particular. Y'see, you've put me in a very distressin' position. We went a good deal further in this Jugo-Czechian matter than we really wanted to go. Afterward, in response to the clamor of the press we proposed to modify our demands. Unfortunately, my dear fellow, you haven't even squeaked, let alone clamored. The press is unanimously in our favor. I haven't been so distressed since the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1871."

"Excuse me, sir," besought Rupert. "War was declared between France and Germany on October the sixth, 1870."

"I accept the amendment: since October the sixth, 1870," acquiesced Lord Fordingbridge.

Mr. Bagford shook his head wearily.

"To tell you the truth I had an idea she might be a spy of yours or something of the kind," he explained. "Then, finding she was not, I fell in love with her. She made my support of the government's foreign policy a condition of the engagement. There are some things in my life which I regret, but this is not one of them, and never will be. I promised Virginia to support Lord Fordingbridge's foreign policy, and I shall continue to do so, even if it drives him out of office. As a matter of fact she thought she was doing him a good turn. I didn't think. I was in love."

"My dear Mr. Bagford," said Lord Fordingbridge very solemnly, "the man who would break his word to a woman is not worthy of the name of an English gentleman."

"It is one of a gentleman's greatest handicaps," observed Sir Charles, "particularly as a lady may break hers all day and all night, and still preserve her social standing."

A strangled sound which he was totally unable to suppress burst from the throat of Rupert. He rose, murmured good night, and staggered rather than walked from the room.

"Poor lad, he's hard hit!" declared Lord Fordingbridge solemnly. "How true it is that one man's meat is another man's poison. Well, I suppose I must go hurtling to my political doom, supported by the undivided applause of the newspapers. I beg you to understand, however, Mr. Bagford, that my reprieve would be dearly bought at the price of your peace of mind. In the circumstances, if I were given the choice of victory or Westminster Abbey, I should begin instantly to discuss the form of my tombstone with the Dean and Chapter."

The firm, clean-shaven lips of Mr. Bagford curled in contempt.

"So you'll take it lying down," he taunted, "owing to the traditions of the ancient name and all that sort of thing. Thank God I was born in the gutter! I'd rather die than give in. I've fought and snarled and bitten, and gone down and got up again, and gouged people's eyes, and lied, and stolen, and schemed, and in the long run I've won. Either the other man or I has got to turn up his toes if he comes up against me. This is a rough world, gentleman, and needs rough handling. How could I protect Virginia if I were prepared to chuck up the sponge at any minute for the sake of my fine feelings? When we have a son, if he shows any of this aristocratic taint, first I'll lam the hide off him and then I'll give him a job as a packer in the warehouse to cure him of soft hands."

"Have some more whisky, Mr. Bagford?" suggested Sir Charles dreamily. "I can recommend it. My father laid it down many years ago, and there isn't a headache in a hogshead of it. By the way, George, what do you fancy for the Sheffield Stakes? Personally I have an entirely open mind."

"Charles," began Vingie thoughtfully, one evening, when, having bathed away the outer grime of journalism, she delighted his eyes at dinner in his small Park Street town house, "I think to permit illusion is one of the greatest crimes, don't you?"

"I consider it a debatable point whether one should or should not destroy the fool's paradise of another person," responded Sir Charles. "By some it is maintained that only fools are happy. On the other hand the sight of some one persisting in his foolishness becomes pathetic after a time. To the intelligent there is much pathos in life, my dear Virginia."

She smiled across at him with devastating charm.

"I was thinking of Jim—Mr. Bagford, you know. Of course, Jim's all wrong. He's bearable at present because he wants to keep me in a deceived state, but his whole life has been spent having his own way. If we were married he'd treat me like an idiot child. I should never be supposed to possess a mind of my own. I think it's only fair, don't you, to show him from the first the kind of life I expect to lead? After all, if a man isn't your slave, what on earth is the use of him?"

"That," declared Sir Charles, "is very true. Man is never happy in complete freedom. He ceases to be the slave of one woman merely because he has become the slave of another. He hugs his chains, or rather his jailer. Variety in slavery is the best he can ever hope for."

"You see, Charles, I've put up the circulation of his paper, or rather shown him how to do it. I think it's time he did something for me. Jim needs bullying; so far nobody's ever done it. Don't you agree that he ought to hear the crack of the whip?"

"Be temperate in your chastisement," implored Sir Charles, much against his will. "Remember that the young are merciless by nature. After all, he is nearly as old as I am."

Vingie, nibbling a salted almond, looked at him with dove's eyes.

"My dear, you're so wonderful. You've got such breadth of mind—sympathy, and you understand. Very few people understand, Charles. Still, sometimes one must be cruel to be kind." Her teeth crunched ominously on the savory, innocent morsel.

Thus it happened that next day, at the council table in his vast room, Mr. Bagford found her cold and distraite.

"I agree with you that to-morrow's paper's pretty good," she said slowly. "The point is, Jim, you're neglecting me frightfully. I didn't get engaged to you simply to double your circulation for the large salary of fifteen pounds a week. You take everything and give nothing. Except for a few beastly lunches when you talk about yourself all the time I might be a typist or even a girl messenger. You haven't any imagination. It may amaze you to be told that an engaged girl expects a little romance, a love-affair, some of the perfume and bath-salts side of life."

"But, my dear——" he interrupted feebly.

"You take me about in a filthy three-year-old Rolls Royce that smells of company-promoters and shady politicians, and buy me lunch in some grill room, and talk my head off in this office, and sponge on me for ideas, and once you gave me the sort of gold wrist-watch my own maid wouldn't be found drowned with. We might—good heavens, we might be married!" stormed Vingie.

Mr. Bagford leaned back in his chair, and perspiration beaded his brow.

"I beg your pardon, Virginia," he said in a voice of awe. "Perhaps I'm not accustomed to a girl of your type. I thought you were as absorbed as I am in the paper. I should have remembered your age, and how pretty you are, and the sort of interests a young girl has."

"You'd better get a 1924 Rolls salon," commanded Vingie. "You needn't give me things; I've got all the jewelry and odds and ends I care about, but I insist on your entering into my social life. What on earth's the use of being engaged to some one nobody ever sees? Do you suppose this damned rag of yours means anything to any one who matters? My dear, they only buy it for the servants to read!"

She got up and walked toward the door. "I'll send you a list of engagements for the next fortnight," she ended icily. "I expect you to go with me to every one of them. I refuse to be engaged to a ghost. You needn't come down with me. The commissionaire knows how to look after a girl much better than you do. He used to be in a good regiment."

On her way out she glanced into Mr. Berriman's room.

"Pass the word for every one to be very careful," she said pleasantly. "You'll find the chief in an extremely bad temper. I've just been speaking a very little piece of my mind, and he isn't used to it yet."

There began in those days an era of suffering for Mr. Bagford. Vingie took him from great things and made him to be like a tawny tiger confined in a larger edition of a squirrel's cage, turning the petty social wheel when his mighty mind clamored for great schemes and colossal enterprises. He became like a bloodhound turned into a lady's lap dog, like a racing Sunbeam condemned to take a lady shopping.

He was to be seen at first nights and dance-clubs, barbered, tailored and groomed to a satin polish, fretting his nerves to pieces, attendant on a soulless, artificial Vingie, a mere manicured and maquillée silhouette wound up to dance and chatter. One met him at drawing-room concerts given by great ladies to launch twittering Polish musicians. There came not a horse show, a flower show, a polo tournament, or a fashionable race-meeting, but he attended. He even suffered the degradation of political receptions, he who had toyed with politicians and pulled political wires these twenty years.

The Duke of Birmingham, encountering him leaning against a pillar, dull-eyed and morose, at the Marchioness of Cricklewood's banquet on the eve of the Bill for the Further Enfranchisement of Adult (Female) Persons, put up his eye-glass and said in a cultured monotone:

"Bored, what?"

To which Mr. Bagford, goaded beyond measure, made answer:

"So would you be if you had the brains of a rabbit."

"Oh, quite, quite!" responded His Grace sympathetically.

Rupert, moving amid the throng with an expression of political wisdom on his face and a broken heart throbbing in his chest, paused for a moment beside Vingie.

"You look very beautiful to-night," he said, with a lover's sad intensity of feeling.

She turned on him a flippant smile.

"I shine for my fiancé," she explained. "He's being schooled in the society arena to make him a good husband. Why do you look so unhappy, my very dear?"

"I'm dying of a hopeless love, and the government's dying of a hopeless foreign policy. Neither is a cheerful business for me," he answered sorrowfully.

She drifted on almost into the arms of Lord Fordingbridge, who surveyed her with a wistful smile.

"I beg you to elope with me when I am flung out of office," he said, betraying all the cheerfulness of a condemned man who catches the warder cheating him at a game of draughts. "I shall depart to the north of Scotland and write my reminiscences in the snow. The trouble is I spell so disgracefully, but I dare say I can hire some clever fellow to put in the commas and full stops afterward. I'd like a lovely companion in exile. We must ask Charles about it. I insist on asking Charles!"

On a Sunday in the sunshine Mr. Bagford's 1924 Rolls Royce salon conveyed Vingie, delicious in sports clothes, and himself to a quiet country inn where they lunched upon the kindly fruits of the earth, taking coffee subsequently in a rose-embowered summer-house all among the earwigs. As the smoke of her cigarette curled lazily roof ward, Mr. Bagford unburdened his soul.

"Virginia, dear," he began, "I've been consulting my conscience very seriously, and I have very grave doubts whether I'm fit to marry you."

Vingie, giggling internally, recognized a point in the game for which she had been playing. Outwardly grave she replied:

"My dear Jim, whatever do you mean?"

"There have been other women in my life," confessed Mr. Bagford, fixing a stern brave gaze upon the far horizon. "If you were a widow, or at least ten years older, I could overlook my past. As it is——"

He left the sentence unfinished. Sometimes it is better so.

Vingie sighed in regretful resignation.

"I suppose no man is exactly a Sir Galahad at fifty," she replied. "Still, Jim, all that's over now. After all, a girl who moves in society recognizes that men are—well, what they are. Even darling Charles has kissed several women in the course of his life. I don't suppose you've been noticeably dreadful, have you?"

Mr. Bagford shook his head.

"I remember a girl at the Hilarium Theater when I was twenty-five. That flirtation lasted six years. We fell desperately in love. I thought my pulse would never beat faster for any woman again, until I met a lady-in-waiting to the then Queen of Greece when I was special correspondent at Athens. These Greek women are terribly temperamental. One of the equerries did his best to shoot me over that."

"How interesting!" murmured Vingie, looking at him with a new respect in her eyes. "Were there any more?"

"Olga Petrovskaya, at Petrograd, in 1913, when I attended the Grand Maneuvers of the Russian Army was another. I'm afraid we should actually have eloped only the grand duke returned very suddenly. The sleigh was actually at the door, and she had packed her jewels."

"What happened?" demanded Vingie eagerly.

"She unpacked them and sent the sleigh back to the stables, and I wrote a very nasty criticism of the grand duke's handling of his brigade," said Mr. Bagford with morose relish.

"But," suggested Vingie, "those are peccadilloes of the past. Surely there's been nothing lately?" Mr. Bagford shook his head.

"Actually when you came to the office I was rather deeply involved in what I believed, until I met you, was the love of my life," he answered slowly and painfully. "She is about thirty. They take things very seriously at that age. She represents the gentle, affectionate type—the primeval mother-woman, a brown-eyed, soft-voiced creature—very restful in her ways. To be quite candid, I'm afraid she may break her heart."

Vingie linked her fingers in his with a little sigh.

"Jim, you've been very wicked, haven't you! I shall have a frightful job to keep you, I suppose. I'm awfully sorry for the brown-eyed woman—thirty you said she was, didn't you?—but she'd never be happy with you even if you married her. Your soul would be always calling to mine, and she'd know, and go through hell—simply hell! I'm glad you've told me all this because it shows you're very honest." She held up an oval cheek and looked away from him. "Kiss me—just once," she ended, and obediently Mr. Bagford's lips brushed lightly her fragrant skin.

In the car as they fled homeward he sat lost in thought, hunched in his corner against the taupe upholstery. Finally he said with an air of deep regret:

"I may be compelled to visit the United States very shortly. There are rather delicate negotiations with a New York paper over a series of articles. If I have to go the voyage may do me good. Lately, since we've been going out together so much I don't get a great deal of sleep."

"Poor Jim," murmured a soothing voice. "You won't forget our list of engagements for next week, will you? and you'll hurry back to me from America if you really do go? You might travel to and from Cherbourg by air. I believe it saves quite several hours. Of course, I'll wireless to you every day. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Jim?"

"The comedy is nearly played out," she told herself in the serene calm of her Park Street bedroom, standing thoughtfully before the mirror in a suit of very inspired silk undies. "Soon I must take pity on poor Jim and release him. After all I only got engaged to save George Fordingbridge from an attack by the Daily Tale. I'd better find out how soon it will be safe to let Jim go. As for marrying him—poor thing, if he only knew!"

She stood meekly while Mary slipped an evening frock over her head, and went down to find a brief note from Rupert, beseeching her to lunch with him next day at the Ramillies Club. "It may be the last opportunity for some time, and you would give me very great pleasure," she read in his excessively neat handwriting.

"And what," she inquired when he smiled upon her in melancholy pleasure across a secluded table, "is the hidden mystery you hint at, Rupert, darling? You look like one who is about to take farewell of all familiar things."

"I am," answered Rupert Frack dolefully. "I shall ask you presently to come and help me choose hot-weather kit. I sail shortly for South America."

"But, my dear, in heaven's name why?"

Rupert leaned back in his chair and summed up the situation.

"The government will have to resign on the Jugo-Czechian question. You see, Fordingbridge had an understanding with—with—with the man you're engaged to, which was that the Daily Tale should always oppose our foreign policy. Sometimes we like to commit ourselves too deeply, and then popular clamor in the press enables us to retreat in deference to public opinion. But you made Bagford promise not to oppose us as a condition of your engagement. Thus we were completely undone. He couldn't withdraw, and Fordingbridge quite rightly refused to wreck your—er—happiness to save his political reputation. We shall be defeated on the Debate to-morrow night. He has very kindly obtained a post for me in one of our South American Embassies as a last act of friendship. He himself will retire to Scotland to write his reminiscences."

"And I shall only have Charles left," murmured Vingie.

Rupert shook his head.

"Uncle Charles, completely dissatisfied with the turn of political events, is making a trip round the world. He feels that in a few years age will prevent further travel, and as you will be happily married he proposed to seize the present opportunity."

Vingie ate her last spoonful of ice, and spoke slowly through the locked barrier of her pearly teeth.

"I think," she said, "men are the most pure and holy fools in all creation. If you'd only told me, if you hadn't gone about mumbling your silly mumbo-jumbo, and being mysterious in smoking-rooms, and saying to one another: 'Hush! Here comes the poor girl! We must keep it from her at any cost!' I could have saved you long ago. As it is I have just time. Do you suppose I want to marry that impossible man, Rupert? Do you imagine I had any intention of marrying him? I merely toyed with him for the sake, as I thought, of George. This comes of George trying to play a double game. I'm not surprised, but that Charles should be deceived grieves me."

"I fail to see what you can do," responded Rupert heavily.

"I shall prevent you wasting money on hot-weather kit. Take me in your car to the Daily Tale instantly."

"But how——" he began.

Vingie stamped her slender foot.

"Do I sit here and lecture to you on journalism, or do I not? 'From information which only now reaches us'—the leader writer will say. For heaven's sake hurry. There's such a thing as time, my dear man."

In the vast room of Mr. Bagford her delicious frock struck a pleasant note of charm. She walked slowly across the terrific sea of carpet in which he sat enisled and placed a hand affectionately on his arm.

"I am sailing for New York next week in the Aquitania," he began, but she halted him with a gesture.

"You needn't, Jim," she said gently. "I've seen you fretting at your chains for weeks. I'll let you off on one condition. You must come out with a violent attack on Lord Fordingbridge to-morrow morning, otherwise he'll be defeated in the debate on Jugo-Czechia to-morrow evening. I've just been told the curious situation between you and him. I thought I was helping him, and you let me make a fool of myself. That, my dear Jim, is unforgivable. Unless the attack to-morrow morning is perfectly scurrilous you will be compelled to marry me and keep me for life."

A wan yet happy smile spread slowly over the face of Mr. Bagford. "Naturally, this breaking of our engagement is a great blow to me," he murmured. "Still you know best, Virginia; I will give Lord Fordingbridge the splash column and write the leader myself. Nobody else would dare to be sufficiently unpleasant."

At midnight after the debate on Jugo-Czechia, Lord Fordingbridge supped at Sir Charles' house. Vingie ministered to him with her own slender hands, which first he kissed in the old-time manner.

"My laurel-wreath is a little awry," he confessed, "but I have escaped the wilderness. We carried the day by a very narrow majority thanks entirely to you, my dear Virginia. This morning's Daily Tale was marvelous—marvelous. I am almost thinking of a libel action against them."

"My dear, why did you let me put you in such danger? Why didn't you trust me?" she murmured, pouring champagne into his glass.

Lord Fordingbridge sipped reverently.

"A wonderful wine!" he declared, glancing respectfully at Sir Charles. "It gives me strength to confess. Y'see, my dear, I would have explained the whole thing long ago, but Rupert wouldn't let me. He's a trifle more fond of you than you imagine, and this engagement of yours—from the most worthy motives I admit—positively lacerated him. So what does he do but get out the Machiavellian scheme of letting you continue in ignorance. 'The change, when it comes, will be so dramatic we shall win hands down,' says Rupert.

"'But how can you guarantee to put everything right at the last moment?' says I.

"'Leave it to me!' says Rupert."

Lord Fordingbridge moistened his parched lips, and continued:

"That little story he told you at luncheon yesterday wasn't quite accurate. I'm not writing my reminiscences, Charles isn't going round the world, and Rupert doesn't sail for South America. But your action on hearing it, my dear Virginia—masterly, Napoleonic, indescribable. The government owes you a debt of gratitude it can never repay."

The smile hovering round Vingie's mouth might have graced the lips of Torquemada at the grilling of a heretic.

"I will give you an opportunity to try," she observed sweetly. "You shall lend me Rupert to-morrow afternoon. I would like him to return in person the gold wristlet watch which Mr. Bagford gave me while we were engaged. I understand these young men of the Foreign Office pride themselves on their tact."

Sir Charles poured her a glass of champagne and came forward.

"You and I, Virginia, are still bachelors," he said with triumph, "Let us drink to our freedom. Long may it last!"

With a superb gesture Vingie drained the golden wine, cast the glass on the floor, and crushed it beneath her heel.

"Amen, Charles," she replied fervently. "You needn't look so alarmed. It isn't one of our best glasses."

XII

Within the delicate shelter of her own sitting-room at Wynwood, Vingie, her slender loveliness supine on a black satin divan skilfully reinforced with cushions, gazed pathetically at Sir Charles. Her eyes held infinite depths of sadness; the touch of artificial color on her wan cheeks, the pallor of two slender hands might have wrung a heart plated in triple bronze.

With a little sigh, she put all her woe into words.

"Charles, darling, you make genuine angels look like selfish pigs," she began. "You sit here on stupid girl's furniture you don't like and dine off iced consommé, a wing of chicken, mousse aux framboises, a scrap of cream cheese and half a bottle of Perrier-Jouet just to cheer up a wretched invalid like me, when you might have enjoyed a respectable meal down-stairs. They don't breed men of your sort nowadays. I do realize how lucky I am to have you. Give me a cigarette, there's a dear. It's another nail in my coffin, but who cares?"

Sir Charles rose benignly and proffered fragrant Egyptians in an onyx box.

"You dispense charming hospitality, Virginia. With the exception of the Marchesa di Santa Lucia at Firenze in 1881, and she has been dead these many years, I have never known a more perfect hostess. Personally, I found the wine nectar and the food ambrosia."

"I don't want to bore you with the whinings of a peevish hag of twenty-two," continued Vingie, "but this influenza leaves one absolutely spineless. It may be the reaction, but, Charles, I see before me only a long and profitless life. I feel convinced I shall never marry or achieve a great love. My declining years will be spent patronizing charity concerts and feeding Pekinese dogs."

"These are morbid symptoms," declared Sir Charles anxiously. "We must ask Sir Thompson Johnson to prescribe a reliable tonic. In addition, possibly a cruise in the yacht of some wealthy friend might assist matters."

Vingie shook her fair head sadly.

"I am a born flirt, Charles. I've frittered away the years and toyed with men and dabbled in emotions. Now I shall pay the price, because I haven't got a heart left."

"That is not the opinion of Rupert, Virginia. He cherishes the most supreme devotion for you. When age compels George Fordingbridge to lay aside the cares of state, Rupert will undoubtedly become Minister for Foreign Affairs."

Vingie threw out her white arms despairingly.

"I, if I perish, perish, but to marry Rupert would be living death," she cried. "He does everything well and nothing wrong. He's the most insipid thing on earth. How could I endure him after you, Charles? How can I give up the most delicious hors d'œuvures for an eternal diet of rice pudding? If I were to marry I should need some fascinating scoundrel who might whip me black and blue on Friday, but would certainly provide a wonderful adventure on Tuesday."

Sir Charles gazed at her thoughtfully.

"As you know," he observed, "I never married. I have always been a sprinter rather than a stayer. A brilliant five furlongs held a greater appeal for me than a mournful three miles. If I had met in my young days a woman with your tact and brilliance and beauty it might have been otherwise. Nevertheless I have observed the married, and it occurs to me that regular meals, a settled home, an adequate income and a brilliant if steady husband have their attractions. A delightful young married woman need never lack admirers in addition to her lawful spouse. After all we do not live in the eighteen-forties."

She put out a hand and touched his sleeve.

"Darling, you've perfectly sweet to poor little Vingie, but for heaven's sake don't sit there and match-make. The very idea of men wearies me just now. If all the Brigade of Guards, and all the best-looking actors, groveled at my feet I should merely writhe and turn away. Please, Charles, will you be an angel and lend me your little Dorset cottage and let me go down there with just a maid, and be alone except for the flowers and the birds and things. I think if you don't mind, I want to try to find my soul."

Sir Charles shook his gray head despondently.

"You may have everything I possess in the world to do as you like with, but your remarks leave me very perturbed. I should like Alastair McMenzies, the nerve specialist, to see you in consultation with Sir Thompson Johnson before you go away. You are very far from your normal state of health, my dear Virginia."

She scarcely heard him. She murmured on dreamily:

"No men, no restlessness, no love; only green leaves and tender grass, and blue sky. Perhaps later on I might enter a convent. They say you have to dig a little piece of your own grave every day——"

"I shall telephone to McMenzies at once," interrupted Sir Charles, with concern in his voice. "It is declared that he achieves wonderful results with the new gland treatment. I reproach myself for not consulting him even earlier."

Standing beside Sir Charles at the great entrance of Wynwood, Lord Fordingbridge betrayed joy and solicitude in equal measure; he had known Vingie since she was a child, and the faint traces of her late illness distressed him. He conducted her personally to the driving seat of a little ten horsepower Wonderful car within which a maid and luggage were already disposed.

"Bon voyage, and a complete recovery, my dear!" he exclaimed earnestly. "May the air, the peace, and the good cream of Dorset restore you to your former health. It grieves me to see you even slightly indisposed."

Sir Charles, also bareheaded, waved a beneficent hand as the car glided away.

The two elderly gentlemen watched it till it disappeared, and returned slowly to the library. They had reached that perfect friendship born of common interests, identical training, a similar outlook on life, and congenial sins. Sir Charles indicated the cigars and rang for whisky-and-soda.

"How is Rupert progressing?" he inquired after a long silence.

Lord Fordingbridge shrugged his shoulders.

"My dear Charles, he works. He takes just sufficient exercise to keep himself fit, and a damn' forlorn sight it is to see him do it. These women have a great deal to answer for. As far as he's concerned, the sun rises and sets in Virginia's eyes, and since she won't look at him, he remains permanently in the valley of the shadow so to speak. A dear boy, too. Equally, she's a dear girl. Charles, did you and I really take these things quite so seriously in our time?"

Sir Charles raised his eyebrows very faintly.

"I think you and I were a little more ruthless and the women of our day a little more kind, George. The most obstinate girl I remember came rapidly to her senses after I had thrown my rival—a German attaché I believe—into an ornamental pond. She and I were then inseparable for quite three months. In these days, men are too forgiving and women too difficult."

"You're a clever fellow, Charles," declared Lord Fordingbridge in frank admiration. "You put it all so clearly that even a foolish person like myself can understand. It takes me back to the old days—it must have been in 'eighty-eight—when I put Mary Canterbury, court train and all, on a particularly high mantelpiece in one of the drawing-rooms at the Imperial Palace of Schõnbrunn, and made her stay there till she promised to kiss me. You can't imagine Rupert doing that to Virginia."

"No, George, but if only he would he might find her a very different girl, if I may say so."

"He loves her too much, Charles. He'd be afraid of breaking her heart."

"If he were riding a race he might just as well shrink from putting his mare at a jump for fear of breaking her neck," declared Sir Charles with infinite contempt. "I have long made up my mind that Virginia ought to marry Rupert. Any one but themselves can see they are absolutely suited to each other."

"Oh, quite! quite! But if a stupid old man may be forgiven the question, how are you going to bring it about?"

Sir Charles drank thoughtfully, set down his glass, and lighted a fresh cigar.

"They are both green recruits, George, and therefore they must be taught. In training recruits we employ experienced non-commissioned officers. Consequently in the case of Virginia and Rupert we must choose people as nearly of our own day as is consistent with the necessary attraction. In my own circle of acquaintance there is a certain delightful widow, Mrs. Trevor-James, who would use her good offices with Rupert on my behalf."

"And still," murmured Lord Fordingbridge, "I don't think I quite understand."

"My dear George," elaborated Sir Charles with patience, "these deluded young people must be made to fall in love, separately and individually, with some one older, wiser, more unscrupulous, more experienced, than herself or himself. Do not, I beg of you, say it is impossible, for that would reflect on your intelligence. Mrs. Trevor-James would have Rupert at her feet in less than one hour. She is only forty-three, and indescribably charming. After she has tormented him to the edge of madness, she will dismiss him, and he will turn instinctively to Virginia for comfort and revenge, using against her the tactics he has learned from Mrs. Trevor James. It only remains to find a man who will afford Virginia similar treatment. That I admit is slightly more difficult. She has a certain subtlety not found in Rupert, or most men for that matter."

Lord Fordingbridge half closed his eyes.

"It needs a horse-soldier," he said at last, speaking as an ex-subaltern of the Thirtieth Hussars, more affectionately known as the Poppy-Shirts, from their habit of swimming in gore when on active service. "As a matter of fact I know the very man, and he's back from India on leave at this actual moment. His name is Geoffrey Forrester—one of the Sherwood Forresters, y'know. He's a major in the Guides Cavalry, but he's also been A.D.C. to the Viceroy, and Simla still talks about him, though it's years ago. He's only forty, and as good a polo-player as India has turned out since the mutiny. Shall I let him loose, Charles?"

Sir Charles shook his gray head.

"It would be better not to do that openly. Speaking from experience, I should say that Forrester, directly he landed, came up to London and began to rediscover the joys of his youth. By this time he will be ripe for a little quiet relaxation and the pursuits of the country. I suggest that you offer him, from me, the shooting at my Dorset place. You'd better explain that I can't offer to put him up because my ward is staying at the cottage to recover from an illness, that she is alone, practically unchaperoned, and is seeing no one at present. They will, however, make him very comfortable at the village inn. Short of casting him into Virginia's arms I can think of no more reliable scheme to make them acquainted. Solitude and natural curiosity will do the rest."

"My dear Charles," said Lord Fordingbridge simply, "upon my word I don't know how the diplomatic service exists without you. I should never have thought of that in a thousand years. I take it that you will arrange personally the little matter of Rupert and Mrs. Trevor-James?"

"I shall do myself the honor of calling on her to-morrow, George. Heigho! If only I were ten years younger!"

"My dear fellow, in that case you might be running your own neck into danger. As it is you're probably enjoying the exquisite bouquet of a delicate flirtation without the risk of a headache afterward," comforted Lord Fordingbridge.

The truth of this became manifest when Sir Charles sat, a very courtly figure, in the drawing-room of Mrs. Trevor-James' charming flat overlooking the park. She turned upon him caressing eyes and the witchery of a sinuous figure, allowing him a far greater indulgence because in his case she felt it did not matter in the very least. She found the situation most soothing in consequence.

"My delightful Charles," she said, in the golden voice which had ravished at least three generations, "if the young man must be lacerated I will use the knife according to my accustomed skill and bind up his wounds with tender fingers. In spite of that I shall send him away before they are healed. It is the healing that counts, as you and I know only too well."

"Agatha, you are incomparable," declared Sir Charles, smiling his admiration, dashed with a hint of pathos. "If only it were possible how gladly would I offer myself for vivisection!"

"I am convinced of it," replied Mrs. Trevor-James, daring to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for the first and last time in her varied and interesting career.

To the little ears of Vingie, lingering at ten-thirty A.M. in her bed according to the license of a convalescent, came the far-off explosion of a shotgun. She paused with a teacup half-way to her mouth and glanced inquiringly at Mary who arranged deftly a simple country kit.

"That would be the strange gentleman, miss," commented Mary.

"What strange gentleman? There are no men here, Mary. That's the unique charm of the place. It allows us to be our dreadful natural selves."

Mary shook her pretty head meaningly.

"The gardener's wife told me, miss. Sir Charles has lent the shooting to a gentleman from India, a Major Forrester. He's staying down in the village at the White-Faced Goat. It does seem lonely for him, doesn't it?"

Vingie put down the teacup with a slight crash.

"How dare Charles do such a thing, when I came down here for peace, especially without telling me?" she demanded. "We brought the very oldest clothes I possess. Put out the knitted silk stockings, Mary. I loathe wool day after day. At any rate we need see nothing of this interloper."

"He generally goes home along that path that runs up from the wood at the back of the house, miss," said Mary casually.

"How do you know?"

"Well, miss, it's a bit lonely down here, and I thought it wouldn't do any harm just to look at a gentleman. I hid behind that hedge of wild-roses. You can see quite well from there."

Vingie glanced up from a careful scrutiny of her face in a hand-mirror. "You don't think this influenza has made me look any older, do you?" she inquired anxiously. "Be very careful not to attract the man's attention, Mary, and if he calls say I'm far too tired to see any one."

Roughly twenty-four hours later, Major Geoffrey Forrester, D.S.O., M.C, returning from the wild in pleasantly battered shooting kit, an old briar pipe skewed in the corner of his mouth, one of Belgium & Belgium's inimitable guns in the crook of his arm, beheld a curiously ravishing female figure sauntering toward him along the path that runs up from the wood at the back of the house. He thought he saw a dryad divorced from her selected tree, or Artemis weary of the chase, but it was merely the boy-girl figure of Vingie in a sports coat and brief tweed skirt. Even her knitted silk stockings, as the major observed with hawk eyes trained in the warfare of Waziristan, could not destroy the lovely lines of two slender legs.

The major removed his pipe from his mouth and his battered hat from his head and smiled a smile that has become legendary in Simla and Mussoorie.

"I beg your pardon," he said in his pleasant easy voice. "I shouldn't like you to think I'm trespassin'. Sir Charles Gillespie lent me the shootin' through George Fordingbridge, a dear old pal of mine. May I be allowed to hope that this beautiful air is doin' you good?"

Vingie looked at him with the slight pathos of an invalid and the mute suggestion that Providence might have sent her something better, except that she was too weak to care either way.

"Charles didn't mention the matter, but I'm quite sure it's all right. The air, as you say, is beautiful. I hope the fine weather will continue," she responded, and made as if to pass on.

"My name," pursued the major with placid perseverance, "is Geoffrey Forrester. I imagine you must be Miss Lauriston. It's a darned shame you had such a nasty touch of influenza. I was very distressed when George told me. I've kept well away from the house so that the noise of the gun shouldn't worry you. Is this your first day out-of-doors?"

"No," said Vingie listlessly. "Thank you for being so kind about the gun. I don't think I ought to stand talking——"

"Certainly not," declared her acquaintance firmly. "Extremely tryin' to stand about when one's rather under the weather. If you'll allow me I'll see you safely back to the house. I wish I could offer you the spoils of the chase, but it only amounted to a couple of bunnies."

"If there's one thing I loathe more than another it's rabbit in any shape or form," confessed Vingie, looking at him sadly. "I suppose you're staying at the inn. I believe the cooking is plain but satisfying. I'd ask you to luncheon only I don't suppose there's enough for two, and you'd hate invalid food, and I look like nothing on earth and I'm too tired to be amusing."

"Even a crust of bread with you would eclipse a banquet at the White-Faced Goat. If that's an invitation I'll do my poor best to amuse you," he answered with gentle humility, or so it appeared.

They passed together within the low-roofed dimness of Sir Charles' cottage. Vingie sank into an armchair and waved him toward the bell. "Mary," she commanded when that maiden appeared, "two cocktails, please, and tell cook Major Forrester is staying for luncheon." A little gleam lurked in her eyes. Major Forrester offered his cigarette-case with a faint sigh of satisfaction. She was, he thought, an adorable thing. Thank God his ripe experience would allow him to do her justice.

It came to pass that in those days Mary began to lift up her voice in thanksgiving, the atmosphere of intrigue and romance being incense in her nostrils. Also, pursuant to instructions, she wired to London for new frocks. Vingie had come simultaneously to the beginning of a campaign and the end of her wardrobe.

A week or so later she sat collapsed in an attractive heap on the cliff edge, gazing idly at the sunlit bay; beside her Geoffrey Forrester lay like a good-tempered dog, chewing, dog-like, a blade of grass. The pleasantly drowsy brain of Vingie revolved little problems: "Shall I make him kiss me and then beat him for it, and see what he's really like, or shall we drift on as we are? Do I really care what he's like? Am I sufficiently interested to make the effort? Isn't the sun heavenly? Shall I have my gold evening frock altered or leave it alone?"

"She's thinking what a delightful fellow I am—just thrillin' enough, but not too much. Some men are so aboriginal," reflected the major. "A nice little girl; sufficiently intelligent to appreciate one at one's modest value."

"Geoffrey," said Vingie suddenly, "why are you content to lead such a futile life?"

"Prettiest of pretty ladies, whatever do you mean?"

"I mean your little clockwork round: so many years in India, so much leave at home; a bit of shooting, a bit of racing, strictly limited flirtations with the women in whatever station your regiment's in; paying court to the general's lady; filling in your time inspecting horses' hoofs and men's buttons. What an existence!"

"It doesn't seem so bad sometimes," murmured the major. A little glint came into his eyes.

"'Oh, it drives me half crazy to think of the days I
Went slap for the Ghazi, my sword at my side;
When we rode hell-for-leather, two squadrons together,
And didn't care whether we lived or we died——'

sort of idea, you know. Common, but excitin' in a way."

"George Fordingbridge has influenced half Europe before now."

"George was brought up in the Poppy-Shirts—my old regiment. Many a time he's gone into the horse-trough after a guest night. We train up the children in the way they should go."

"At the best you'll never be more than an Inspector General of Cavalry—a sort of glorified veterinary surgeon and sergeant-major. You know, Geoffrey, a really pretty, ambitious girl would always have to refuse you. The prospect of sitting in some dusty Indian garrison losing her complexion and watching you play polo isn't wonderfully tempting, is it? Did you ever think of all that?"

"It isn't my way to go about askin' pretty girls to sacrifice themselves for me," explained the major with calm. "If they want to, and I want 'em to too, there isn't any sacrifice and there we are. If any wife of mine wouldn't turn up at a polo match I should just spank her because she'd belong to the regiment same as me."

"Unfortunately the modern girl doesn't permit herself to be spanked," said Vingie loftily.

"I ain't modern; I'm a soldier; one of the two oldest professions in the world," said the major.

"Do you suppose——" she began. He rose, took her two hands and lifted her gently to her feet.

"We will go for a little walk," he asserted. "You're tryin' to quarrel with me. It's your liver, and you need exercise. You ate too many chocs after luncheon. Come on—Walk-march!"

Somewhat to her own surprise, Vingie obeyed. The novelty brought quite a thrill. Besides this strange person seemed hardly to care whether she was pleased or not.

In her drawing-room, most intimately furnished, Mrs. Trevor-James surveyed Rupert Frack as some medieval craftsman might have surveyed a large lump of wood he proposed to carve into a historic mantelpiece. Her black gown loved every line of her sinuous form, her cabochon rings were large and wicked and her pearls were real. She possessed a skin of the shade often compared to a magnolia, and eyes alleged to be unfathomable by many who ought to have known better. The late Mr. Trevor-James had fathomed them quite easily because he used a string of pearls for a sounding line.

Rupert gloomed opposite her, and with the tiniest shrug she decided that his hour had struck.

"Rupert, my poor friend, you make me very sorry for you," she murmured. "You say that you love a girl, that you'll never love any one else, that she doesn't care two straws about you, and that you'll go on loving her till you die. I don't think your life is going to be very amusing."

"Men are like that," replied Rupert with sorrowful pride. "Women take everything and give nothing. If the positions were reversed I couldn't be so hard-hearted as she is. Besides, I should realize that such persistent devotion, unselfishness, and so on couldn't be surpassed by any other man. As things are, I must just be resigned. There's always my work."

"You wouldn't wish her to pretend, or be insincere," reproved Mrs. Trevor-James, and this hackneyed old phrase glided from her tongue with the ease born of infinite repetition. "At least she's honest with you. At least——"

"I don't care a damn if she's honest or not, as long as she won't let me kiss her and will let some other man some day," snarled Rupert. "Is any woman honest if it comes to that? You talk as though I were engaging a cashier! What has honesty got to do with it? She's only honest because it suits her. If she wanted me, and it were necessary, she'd lie like blazes!"

"And you propose to forego all kisses for ever and ever because one girl refuses to kiss? Well! well! What are those heavenly lines—

"'Oh, was it down in Samothrace
Beside the great Greek sea
That first I saw thy dreaming face
And swore thy slave to be?'

"You must be a wonderful lover, Rupert. Give me those cigarettes from the mantelpiece, there's a darling."

She motioned him to sit beside her on the Chesterfield, held up her face to the match, and smoked pensively. The mockery died out of her eyes, and a little sigh parted her lips.

"I s'pose it hurts like hell," she murmured, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. Her left hand drifted sidelong to his wrist. The soft contact appeared to soothe him. He made no effort to release himself.

Presently those lazy, trailing white fingers stole upward until they rested lightly on his dark head. She remained thus, smoking thoughtfully. He seemed very tired and sad. Her touch expressed sympathy and whether he knew it or not all his nerves cried out for it. He never perceived by what infinite degree her arm stole round his neck and drew him gently against her. His cheek brushed hers infinitely soft and fragrant, her hair held some intoxicating scent, she was very near, very lovable, very kind. She seemed the antithesis of all women who refused everything. She had the perfect gift of giving.

Rupert Frack realized her dark eyes looking into his, a great stillness, and the appeal of her lips. His resolution broke. He drooped his mouth against hers and kissed her with a sort of despairing passion. In a sense he did not kiss her at all; the mouth was hers and the kiss another's; but the second kiss, the third, and the rest belonged solely to Agatha Trevor-James. Presently she put a hand against his mouth and pushed him away. He sat up flooded with a childish lightness of heart. He could have sung and shouted. Some weary spell had been lifted.

"Oh!" exclaimed the golden voice in exquisite irony, yet not unkindly, "Oh valiant and consistent young man! What are those other lines, attributed to the same forgetful Crusader——

"'The Knights went forth upon the wave
To Christ, his sepulchre;
But I was traitor to the Grave,
Oh breast of rose and myrrh!'

"Now I think you'd better go. It's getting late, and you've stirred up my emotions. If I'm not careful I shan't sleep."

"My dear——" began Rupert, utterly contrite. She smiled back at him half wistfully; women are so greedy of romance and he was a very delightful boy.

"You shall do a penance for your sins and motor me down to Charles' Dorset cottage one day soon. I'm thinking of taking it for the autumn."

"But——" said Rupert, and flushed crimson.

"Am I so old and ugly that you refuse me the first request I ever made?" she demanded, and that clay which was man, modeled into a brute or an angel at her will, took the shape of repentance and acquiescence.

When he had gone she rose, touched her ruffled hair, went slowly to the telephone and rang up Sir Charles.

"He's cured from this hour," she announced. "Never more will she have quite that power over him. But oh, Charles, the kisses of these love-racked boys—(Did he kiss me? Of course he did. How could I save him otherwise?)—are very disturbing. I thought I was proof against all that, but is one ever? I wonder!"

She rang off, and Sir Charles also hung up the receiver. He stood for a moment, shook his head sadly and sighed. He sought again his armchair, picked up his book and stared into space.

"No!" he said at last, "one never is—never!"

"Charles," murmured Agatha Trevor-James to her soul, "wished me to take this rather attractive boy to Dorset and be seen in his company by the hard-hearted young woman who scorns him. I don't think it'll do any good and I shall feel like a baby-snatcher, but it's as Charles wills."

The car spun between summer hedges. Rupert's eyes wandered over the countryside and came back to Agatha.

"You're awfully good to me," he said. "I think that's what a man appreciates most in a woman—if she's good to him. It's so easy for them because we don't want very much, but they never are. I s'pose Virginia will be at the cottage?"

"Virginia—Charles' ward. Very charming I believe. Never met her. Yes, I suppose she will. Why?"

"Oh, nothing."

"If she holds up her little finger he'll run to her like a needle to a magnet, not because she's good to him but because she isn't," mused Agatha. "He looks on me as a fountain of perpetual goodness, flowing from a rock of ages to shelter him when these arrogant chits stab him with knives. My God, do I seem as old as that?"

They found Vingie and the major seated on the lawn. To Rupert she appeared baffled, and he had never known Vingie at a loss. The major wore that serene air peculiar to small boys who have done wrong and got away with it. Their expressions arose out of recent dialogue. To Vingie's plaint: "You don't care two-pence about my feelings; you just sit there and amuse yourself!" he had replied with gentle mockery: "Vingie, you're a darling, but a dreadfully spoiled darling. Sometimes I feel you weren't smacked enough as a child."

From this situation she raised her eyes to behold Rupert accompanied by a beautiful and sinuous woman armed with the prestige of a thousand past conquests. Over this apparition Rupert fussed a little self-consciously.

Calling up in herself all the valiant blood of the Lauristons, Vingie came forward to give a rendering of the perfect hostess. She even approached Agatha with a little air of deference, the tribute of the young girl to the elder woman, a grateful thing to both.

She did not, however, miss the glint which lighted the major's reckless blue eyes nor misunderstand when, later, he wandered with Agatha to the far side of the lawn.

"Dearest lady," he began, "do you remember those golden days when you were a guest of His Excellency at Simla?"

She tapped her white brow with a slender finger.

"I recall a certain somewhat attractive A.D.C. whom I had the grace not to marry."

"And now?"

"Now, I'm an unwanted widow."

He made a scornful sound. "Why do you waste yourself on that boy-cub full of green-sickness?"

"Because an old friend asked me to. Why are you idling with a wilful maiden young enough to be your daughter?"

"Because an old friend asked me to, and because I didn't know you were in town. Now I shall leave her to mew alone in the country."

"I've got to take my boy-cub back, but if you do return and he doesn't frighten you away I'll be awfully pleased to see you."

"Frighten me! Oh, pish!" said the major joyously. "Where in the whole of London will you be so adorable as to dine with me to-morrow night?"

Divided from them by some yards of turf, a generation or so, and a great deal of worldly wisdom, Vingie and Rupert sat side by side on a garden seat.

"My dear," began Vingie with simulated grief, "why have you stolen the only woman darling Charles ever really loved? They were so suited to each other!"

"She's been an absolute brick to me—more decent than any one else ever was. If it comes to that, why are you down here trying to conduct a flirtation with an elderly gentleman?"

"Simply a man to whom Charles lent the shooting. He called and one has to be civil. At least he was sympathetic about my illness. After all, my dear Rupert, there can be such a thing as friendship, between a man and a woman, little as you seem to think so."

Their eyes beheld Agatha and the major oblivious of all earthly cares, basking in each other's society. Vingie turned to Rupert and Rupert to Vingie. Their young natures demanded mutely the answer to the riddle.

"Well," said Rupert heavily at last, "I suppose Agatha and I ought to start if we mean to reach town in time for dinner."

XIII

In the golden light of the morning, Mary bringing tea fired also a mine destined to scatter Vingie's peace to the four winds. The gray envelope addressed to her in painstaking soldierly writing contained so little and so much. His brief note thanked her for many pleasant hours, explained that an urgent summons to London prevented his calling in person. He remained hers very sincerely.

"My dear Mary," adjured her beautiful young mistress, "tell me frankly, am I getting old, are my looks fading, or have I become particularly stupid? I seem equally unpopular with men of all ages."

"I dare say it's the influenza, miss," comforted Mary. "Besides, this country life don't suit every one. I feel about a hundred myself. Are we going back to town now the major's left, miss?"

"Damn it, do you want me to run after him?" stormed Vingie. "I shall stay here at least another fortnight."

Nevertheless, in three days the letter of Eve Dufferin-Solmes made valor the better part of discretion.

"My dear old thing, why do you rot in Dorset during the height of the season? The world is most exciting and I haven't been to bed before three A.M. for a whole fortnight. Jack Plinlimmon is still very thrilled. He never goes near that girl at the Omnibus Theater now and he flew into a frightful passion the evening before last when I refused to let him kiss me. Don't you love it when they go all scarlet and trembly with rage?

"Sir Charles dined with us the other night. I think he misses you. He has an unloved look. P'r'aps it's because Mrs. Trevor-James neglects him. She is engaged in controlling a violent pursuit by Rupert Frack (I thought he was yours for the asking, darling?) and a soldier man, a Major Forrester. The atmosphere around her must be indeed volcanic. Piggy Vereker is making a book on the event—the major at evens and three to one against Rupert, with five to one against any marriage in less than two months.

"Do hurry back. You're missing ever such a lot!

"Yours,
"Eve."

"Mary," commanded Vingie, "you may pack, and tell Roberts to fill up the car with water and petrol. We return to town immediately after breakfast."

A happy smile curved the mouth of Mary. She was heard singing along the corridor.

That afternoon Vingie took tea in the small Park Street town house of Sir Charles, very appealing by reason of an entirely new frock. He beamed upon her with the instructed smile of a man who has lived, yet there lurked anxiety behind the smile.

"You do not need to be told how delighted I am to see you, my dear Virginia," he observed. "Physically a vast improvement is indicated; spiritually I detect a certain unrest. Youth has ever suffered from a serious lack of philosophy."

"My darling Charles, the very stars in their course fight against me; I am on the eve of a climax. If I die, I die going to meet it," she answered with the somber gloom of twenty-two.

Alone, she lighted a cigarette, and asked herself: "Do I really want Rupert? Isn't it just pique on account of this Trevor-James woman?" The answer came without hesitation: "If I want any one in the world, I do. I've known him since we were kids. There's no one else I'm so at home with. I believe if he'd only let himself go, he'd make a wonderful lover. That's up to me, of course. 'Toute femme doit être la maitresse de son mari.'"

She went across to the telephone and rang up Rupert at the Foreign Office. "Rupert," she said with honey in her tone, "I'm back from the country and I want you to take me out to dinner. Will you come along at about seven?"

Indeterminate sounds of confusion quivered from the other end of the wire. "Awfully glad to hear you're back," replied a guilty voice. "I'd love to only I'm booked."

"Ah!" countered Vingie. "Any one I know?"

"I'm dining with Mrs. Trevor-James."

"Well, go along and nurse the unconquerable hope and clutch the inviolable shade," cooed Vingie, digging her finger-nails into her palms with fury.

"Any other night I'd love——"

"My dear Rupert, one can never love on any other night. It's always a case of now or never. I'm engaged for the next six weeks and after that I go to Scotland. Good-by!"

"'And that was her end, and the end of that hunting,'" she quoted miserably, staring at herself in a mirror. "My dear, you've asked for it and now you've got it. Charles told you to marry Rupert. Charles was right. Now you can't have him you want him. Silly fool, Vingie. Silly, silly fool!"

A solitary tear trickled down one cheek. She dabbed it away as Sir Charles entered.

"I'm dining out with the wildest man I know. It's like that," she declared.

"Get him to give you champagne. It puts heart into a woman like nothing else," advised Sir Charles.

When she had gone he picked up the receiver and asked for Mrs. Trevor-James' number.

"If you have an opportunity, strike!" he besought her. "The moment is propitious."

"Rupert dines here to-night. I will strike instantly," she replied.

"And, oh, Agatha," went on Sir Charles pathetically, "what is this I hear about you and Forrester? He was merely to do for Virginia what you have done for Rupert. Surely I have deserved better——"

"For you in your capacity of guardian I have performed much at great cost to myself, Charles," said an inexorable voice. "In no other sense can I do anything at all. If it were necessary I would ask you not to break your heart, but it isn't. Night-night!"

Sir Charles hung up the receiver and rehearsed the pose of supreme grief. Then a faint smile crept into his level eyes.

"It is nerve-racking, brain-searing, altogether damnable. I would have married her to-morrow," he reflected. "Still, there is no doubt I have escaped again. I enjoy the most consistent luck of any man I know."

In the morning Vingie, soothing in her sycamore-wood bed the soul-bruises of the hectic night before, received with some astonishment a telephone call from Rupert. She rose wearily, wound a silken wrap about the inadequacy of her nightgown and staggered rather than walked to the telephone.

"Well!" she asked coldly.

"I must see you," exclaimed a deathly voice.

"You haven't dragged me out of bed to tell me that, have you?" demanded the exasperated Vingie. "I explained I was engaged for six weeks——"

"That was for dinner," objected Rupert with equal irritation. "I'm going to see you this morning if I have to tear Uncle Charles' house down to find you. When will you be dressed?"

"Oh—well—make it half past eleven," said Vingie, suppressing a giggle. "G'by." She turned away deep in thought. "Never in his life has the lad spoken to me in such a tone. Generally he is my doormat, my foot-stool. Can that elderly widow have taught him anything?"

At eleven forty-five she came down languidly to find Rupert pacing the drawing-room. He glanced up at her with ominous eyes.

"Either one of two things must happen," he began. "Either you marry me instantly or we part and never see each other again. I've been humiliated enough. First you treat me like a dog, simply using me as a convenience to fetch and carry for you, laugh at me when I speak of love and then drive me to that other woman——"

Vingie moved across to him like the ripple of wind over a field of wheat and put a gentle hand on his arm.

"My dear," she said tenderly, "has she been a brute to you? Tell me, if it helps."

"One doesn't talk about one woman to another. When I arrived at her flat last night there was the usual perfect dinner in the usual perfect setting. Afterward in the drawing-room I attempted to take Agatha in my arms, but she eluded my grasp.

"'My dear boy,' she said in a voice quite new to me, 'please don't. There is a time for embracing and a time for refraining.'

"'But when I dined with you before——' I began.

"She leaned back in her chair and looked at me out of those wonderful golden eyes, narrowed like a cat's.

"'I don't love you. When you were here before I set before you an ideal in the matter of kisses. You don't expect me to live up to my own ideal—that would be too tiresome. You are a child to me, Rupert, dear; I've played with you, as grown-ups do sometimes play with children, and now playtime is over and you must find a play-mate of your own age.'"

"And you've got the nerve to tell me all this?" demanded Vingie, her eyes blazing in her pale face.

"I have," retorted Rupert with the bland assurance that marked him as a future Cabinet Minister. "And why have I? Because your heartless manner toward me made possible this episode with Agatha. Because this other woman has been equally unfeeling. Because in future I will do as I please, not as any woman pleases. I propose to take everything and give nothing henceforward, and you and those like you have only yourselves to thank."

He stood before the fireplace, feet apart, hands behind his back, husband written all over him.

A curious little smile played round Vingie's adorable mouth.

"You've only kissed Agatha; you've never kissed me. You don't know what kissing is, and now you never will know." She stretched out her arms in a beautiful gesture. "These, my dear, will never draw your head down to the only place where a man's head belongs, just because you've dabbled in love and grown hot and grown cold, and simply mucked everything. You only learned half your lesson from Agatha. She let you kiss her and you did; she wouldn't let you, and you didn't. Oh, Rupert, you're a most estimable young man. Did I say man? No, that's wrong. You're not a man; you're a perfect little gentleman."

"Am I?" queried Rupert in a low growl. He stepped from the high plane of the hearth rug and moved toward her. His arms went round her in a grip of steel.

Vingie fought him like a tigress. Finally she spread her two hands over her face, and it took all his strength to wrench them away. At last her fair head lay back in the crook of his left arm and he won relentlessly to her mouth.

"And still," she gasped between kisses, "it—wouldn't mean a thing—if—I didn't want you to. But I do!"

"I wish," observed Vingie, arranging her hair before the mirror, "we could go out and be married now, like they do in the United States. Still it can be arranged very quietly. You'd better get a license, and we'll be done down in Dorset. I shall return there and you can follow as soon as possible. We won't even tell Charles or George Fordingbridge. I'd like it to be a surprise for them."

"What a lot you know about getting married, darling," murmured Rupert.

"Women do. They have to, my dear," she answered absently.

XIV

Sir Charles glanced furtively at his watch. Lord Fordingbridge examined wistfully a print on the library wall representing a gentleman coming to grief in the hunting field.

"They should be here by now," observed Sir Charles. "Are you absolutely sure of the day?"

Lord Fordingbridge smiled reassuringly.

"Rupert put in for a month's leave of absence commencin' yesterday, my dear fellow. Virginia was clingin' to your Dorset cottage, and so I wrote to Arthur Scrope, the vicar down there. You know him, of course—stroked the Cambridge boat in—let me see, what year was it? He wrote back that he'd been sworn to secrecy, but if I ordered a special luncheon for the twenty-eighth I shouldn't be far wrong. So I let you order the luncheon, Charles. They should be here very shortly."

Even as he spoke a 30-98 Vauxhall with Rupert at the wheel glided along Park Street and drew up outside the front door.

A radiant Vingie descended followed by her husband. They entered jovially a minute later.

"Hullo, darlings! We've got a surprise for you. We're married," exclaimed Vingie, kissing Sir Charles lightly on the brow. "Would you like to look at little Vingie's marriage lines? I carry them about everywhere."

"Congratulations, my dear Virginia. Of course the shock of the surprise is very great," declared Sir Charles, glancing at Lord Fordingbridge, who was busy slapping Rupert on the back. He then relinquished this occupation in order to kiss the bride.

"You must tell us your story over luncheon," went on Sir Charles, as the door opened to admit the butler.

They found the dining-room a mass of roses. By Vingie's plate lay two intriguing cases. One proved to contain a long jade necklace from Lord Fordingbridge, the other a diamond and sapphire bracelet from Sir Charles.

Rupert was staring in amazement at a receipted bill and a check of comforting proportions.

"That's the receipt for the car I 'lent' you, my boy," chuckled Lord Fordingbridge. "I hope you find her to your liking."

"The check is a humble offering from myself," added Sir Charles.

Vingie sat gazing at them with sparkling eyes. "But we never breathed a word. We meant to surprise you. We never gave the faintest hint——"

Lord Fordingbridge regarded her solemnly.

"What did the Duke of Wellington say in 1800?" he observed. "'The great thing is to find out what's going on at the other side of the hill.' Laugh at me if you like, but respect my secret service. Why, the very wine is iced to the psychological temperature!"

"George," interrupted Sir Charles solemnly, "I give you the toast of the bride and bridegroom!"

When the triumphal car had finally departed on its honeymoon journey to Scotland the two old gentlemen returned to the library. With pardonable pride, Sir Charles indicated a bottle of 1815 brandy.

"The last in the cellar, George," he said. "I kept it for Virginia's wedding, God bless her."

"Well, here's to youth and love!" observed his lordship, sipping reverently.

Sir Charles allowed a wise expression to modify his well-cut mouth.

"In a sense, yes, George. Youth and love are remarkable possessions. Nevertheless, give me the understanding of age. In youth one flies into mad ecstasies, but age in the background holds the reins. These two young people are a case in point. Every step of their careers has been ordained by you and me. For the time we let them rejoice and then, from what would seem the most unlikely circumstances we engineered this marriage. We led them, my dear George, by devious routes to meet at the altar. Now that is a thing they could never have done to us, for all their youth."

Lord Fordingbridge placed the tips of his fingers together and a tolerant smile irradiated his rubicund face.

"There is much in what you say, Charles, as even I can see and I'm only a foolish old man. But to-day is a day of rejoicing when the cautious spirit of age seems out of place. Let us therefore, my dear fellow, emulate the glorious recklessness of youth and each take another glass of this excellent brandy."

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Table of Contents

- VIRGINIA'S WILD OATS
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- V
- VI
- VII
- VIII
- IX
- X
- XI
- XII
- XIII
- XIV
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