“Doesn’t Mr. Parkes——”
“Pooh!”
There was silence. Cries came from the tennis players, who were just out of sight, and a hum of conversation from nearer groups.
“What are you going to do when you get back to town, Miss Meres?” Vincent asked, regarding her again.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” she answered vaguely. “Live as usual, I suppose; unless I take some decided step.”
“Decided step? By Jove, how it refreshes me to hear you speak like that! What decided step?”
“I don’t know. I’m very much in your own position, you know; I shall have to earn a living somehow.”
She said it very simply, looking down, and making marks on the grass with the handle of the racket.
“A living? Women don’t make a living; that’s all done for them.”
“Is it?” said Rhoda, and, as soon as the words were spoken, she rose, averting her face.
“There’s our set called!” she exclaimed; “I must go.”
He made a slight gesture as if about to exert himself to detain her; but she was gone. His eyes followed her dreamily.
“Oh, here you are, Vincent!” cried Mrs. Bruce Page, close at hand. “Have you really a headache, now? Poor boy! you don’t look well. Come along with me, I want you to talk with Mr. Asquith, Mrs. Clarendon’s cousin, you know. He knows all about the Civil Service.”
Robert received the young man with a look critical indeed, but good-humouredly so. He did not seem to be able to take Mr. Lacour quite seriously, yet could not refuse a certain admiration.
“You are thinking of the Civil Service examinations?” he began.
“Well, I can’t say I’ve thought much about them,” Vincent replied, in his manner suggestive of easy achievement. “I suppose they’re very much a matter of form—the elements—and—and so on?”
“Not quite that. And competition, you remember.”
“Yes. The truth is, I haven’t looked into the thing. What do they expect you to know?”
Asquith gave an outline of the attainments looked for in a candidate for the higher clerkships.
“By Jove, that’s pretty strong!” was Vincent’s comment.
“The competition,” remarked Asquith, “makes it about the severest examination you can undergo.”
“Then that’s all up!” exclaimed the young “What would the screw be?”
“You would begin with a hundred a year, and by slow degrees rise to four,” said Robert, curling his moustache.
“The deuce you would! Then I may with honour withdraw from so ignoble a competition. You can’t suggest any way of making the four hundred at start? I dare say Mrs. Clarendon’s told you all about me. I don’t mind who knows. There’s a great deal of false shame in the world, it seems to me; don’t you think so? But I really think it’s time I turned to something, and what’s the good of one’s friends if they can’t suggest a plan? Of course the social structure is radically wrong. A man like myself—I have brains, I beg you to believe—oughtn’t to find himself thrown out of it in this way. I shall be infinitely obliged to any one who suggests something.”
It seemed to Robert, as he listened, that this young man had a turn for affecting an imbecility which was not in truth part of his character; in the matter and manner of his talk, Lacour appeared rather to yield to physical inertness than to disclose natural vacuity. It might be that he was, as he professed, suffering in body; it seemed more probable that he found a luxury in abandoning his mind to sluggish promptings, even as he showed a pronounced disinclination for activity in the disposal of his limbs. His disastrous circumstances displayed their influence in the whole man. The rate at which he had lived for the past two years was no doubt telling upon him, and nothing tended to counteract, everything rather to foster, the languor which possessed him. His vanity, doubtless, was extreme; the temptation to indulge it no less so. Mrs. Bruce Page, with her semi-sentimental coddling, her pseudo-maternal familiarity, was alone enough to relax the springs of a stronger individuality than Vincent’s. Reflecting thus, Asquith maintained silence; when he raised his eyes again he saw that Ada Warren had drawn near.
Lacour gave the girl his hand, and, in a tone of almost ludicrous dolorousness, asked her how she was.
“I think I should rather ask you that,” she said, with a laugh; “you have a woful countenance.”
“You, at all events, are in excellent spirits,” he returned.
It was true, comparatively speaking. A sudden access of self-confidence had come to her, and her manner was at moments almost joyous.
“Have you observed Ada?” Isabel took an opportunity of saying to her cousin apart.
“I see now how wrong and selfish I have been.”
And to Ada herself she spoke, finding the girl standing aside whilst general attention was being given to tea and ices.
“You feel well to-day?” she said, with her kindest smile.
Ada murmured something unintelligible and turned away. Mrs. Clarendon reddened slightly and, passing on, met with Vincent Lacour, who was pacing with his hands behind his back.
“Won’t you have an ice?” she asked.
“Ice? Great heavens! I should die of dyspepsia. But, Mrs. Clarendon, what is it? Why do you speak and look at me in such an unfriendly way?”
“I am not conscious of doing so. Sit down, and tell me what you have been talking about with Mr. Asquith. Has he given you useful information?”
“Decidedly useful; he’s effectually knocked all those plans on the head.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What is the difficulty?”
“There are just seventeen, one for every minute of our conversation. But very seriously, I want your advice. You know, Mrs. Clarendon, I think a good deal more of your advice than of any one else’s; pray don’t begin to be rusty just when I’ve most need of you.”
“Go on; I promise not to be rusty,” said Isabel, laughing.
“But you are a little rusty, for all that. You’re not so free and easy with me as you used to be. I suppose you’ve heard something new. I can’t get on with people—especially women—who won’t take me just as I am. You’re beginning to disapprove of me, I can see that.”
“My dear Mr. Lacour, I have always disapproved of you—in a measure.”
“Of course; but the measure is extending. There’s something in your tone I don’t like. I always say yours is the one woman’s voice I would walk a mile to hear, and to-day it has lost something of its quality for me.”
“I
