say, were you the other girl behind the gate?"
"I didn't mean you to see me."
"I only caught a glimpse of you. I remember your friend, though."
"She remembered you, too."
"I don't know her name, though."
"Julia Robins."
"Ah, yes – is it? He's about polished off that bone, hasn't he? Is she – er – a great friend of yours?"
His manner was perhaps a little at fault; the slightest note of chaff had crept into it; and the slightest was enough to put Sophy's quills up.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Why not? Every reason why she should be," he answered with his lips. His eyes answered more, but he refrained his tongue. He was scrupulously a gentleman – more so perhaps than, had sexes and places been reversed, Sophy herself would have been. But his eyes told her. "Only," he went on, "if so, why did you hide?"
That bit of chaff did not anger Sophy. But it went home to a different purpose – far deeper, far truer home than the young man had meant. Not the mark only reddened – even the cheeks flushed. She said no word. With a fling-out of her arms – a gesture strangely, prophetically foreign as it seemed to him in after-days – she exhibited herself – the print frock, the soiled apron, the bare arms, red hands, the ugly knot of her hair, the scrap of cap she wore. For a moment her lips quivered, while the mark – the Red Star of future days and future fame – grew redder still.
The only sound was of Lorenzo's worrying the last tough scrap of bone. The lad, gentleman as he was, was good flesh and blood, too – and the blood was moving. He felt a little tightness in his throat; he was new to it. New, too, was Sophy Grouch to what his eyes said to her, but she took it with head erect and a glance steadily levelled at his.
"Yes," he said. "But I shouldn't have looked at any of that – and I shouldn't have looked at her either."
Brightly the mark glowed; subtly the eyes glowed. There was silence again.
Almost a start marked Dunstanbury's awakening. "Come, Lorenzo!" he cried; he raised his hat and turned away, followed by his dog, Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Sophy took up her lettuces and carried them into the kitchen.
"There you are, at last! And what's put you in a temper now?" asked Mrs. Smilker. She had learned the signs of the mark.
Sophy smiled. "It's not temper this time, Mrs. Smilker. I – I'm very happy to-day," she said. "Oh, I do hope the salad will be good!"
For he who was to eat of the salad – had he not forgotten print frock and soiled apron, bare arms, red hands, ugly knot, and execrable cap? He would not have looked at them – no, nor at beautiful many-tinted Julia Robins in her pride! He had forgotten all these to look at the stained cheek and the eyes of subtle glow. She had glanced in the mirror of love and sipped from the cup of power.
Such was her first meeting with Lord Dunstanbury. If it were ever forgotten, it was not Dunstanbury who forgot.
The day had wrought much in her eyes; it had wrought more than she dreamed of. Her foot was near the ladder now, though she could not yet see the lowest rung.
IV
FATE'S WAY – OR LADY MEG'S
The scene is at Hazleby, Lord Dunstanbury's Essex seat. His lordship is striking the top off his breakfast egg.
"I say, Cousin Meg, old Brownlow's got a deuced pretty kitchen-maid."
"There you go! There you go! Just like your father, and your grandfather, and all of them! If the English people had any spirit, they'd have swept the Dunstanburys and all the wicked Whig gang into the sea long ago."
"Before you could turn round they'd have bought it up, enclosed it, and won an election by opening it to ships at a small fee on Sundays," said Mr. Pindar.
"Why are Whigs worse than Tories?" inquired Mr. Pikes, with an air of patient inquiry.
"The will of Heaven, I suppose," sniffed Lady Margaret Duddington.
"To display Divine Omnipotence in that line," suggested Mr. Pindar.
"A deuced pretty girl!" said Dunstanbury, in reflective tones. He was doing his best to reproduce the impression he had received at Morpingham Hall, but obviously with no great success.
"On some pretext, frivolous though it be, let us drive over and see this miracle," Pindar suggested.
"How could we better employ this last day of our visit? You'll drive us over, Percival?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Pindar," said the young man, resolute in wisdom. "I'll send you over, if you like."
"I'll come with you," said Pikes. "But how account for ourselves? Old Brownlow is unknown to us."
"If Percival had been going, I'd have had nothing to do with it, but I don't mind taking you two old sillies," said Lady Margaret. "I wanted to pay a call on Elizabeth Brownlow anyhow. We were at school together once. But I won't guarantee you a sight of the kitchen-maid."
"It's a pretty drive – for this part of the country," observed Dunstanbury.
"It may well become your favorite road," smiled Mr. Pindar, benevolently.
"And since Lady Meg goes with us, it's already ours," added Mr. Pikes, gallantly.
So they used to go on – for hours at a time, as Dunstanbury has declared – both at Hazleby when they were there, and at Lady Meg's house in Berkeley Square, where they almost always were. They were pleased to consider themselves politicians – Pikes a Whig, twenty years behind date, Pindar a Tory, two hundred. It was all an affectation – assumed for the purpose, but with the very doubtful result of amusing Lady Meg. To Dunstanbury the two old waifs – for waifs of the sea of society they were, for all that each had a sufficient income to his name and a reputable life behind him – were sheerly tiresome – and there seems little ground to differ from his opinion. But they were old family friends, and he endured with his usual graciousness.
Their patroness – they would hardly have gibed at the word – was a more notable person. Lady Meg – the world generally, and Sophy always, spoke of her by that style, and we may take the same liberty – was only child of the great Earl of Dunstanbury. The title and estates passed to his grandnephew, but half a million or so of money came to her. She took the money, but vowed, with an outspoken thankfulness, that from the Dunstanbury family she had taken nothing else. If the boast were true, there must have been a powerful strain of eccentricity and perversity derived from elsewhere. All the Dunstanbury blood was Whig; Lady Meg counted the country ruined in 1688. Even Dunstanbury had been a man of sensibility; Lady Meg declared war on emotion – especially on the greatest of all emotions. The Dunstanbury attitude in thought had always been free, even tending to the materialistic; Lady Meg would believe in anything – so long as she couldn't see it. A queer woman, choosing to go to war with the world and infinitely enjoying the gratuitous conflict which she had herself provoked! With half a million pounds and the Duddington blood one can afford these recondite luxuries – and to have a Pindar and a Pikes before whom to exhibit their rare flavor. She was aggressive, capricious, hard to live with. Fancies instead of purposes, whims instead of interests, and not, as it seems, much affection for anybody – she makes rather a melancholy picture; but in her time she made
