in—how many cases, dear?’
Julia shook her head and sobbed behind her veil.
‘Is it one, Julia—nod when I come to the exact number—two? three? four?’
At the word ‘four’ Julia nodded assent.
Merton very much wished that Julia would raise her veil. Her figure was excellent, and with so many sins of this kind on her remorseful head, her face, Merton thought, must be worth seeing. The case was new. As a rule, clients wanted to disentangle their friends and relations. This client wanted to disentangle herself.
‘This case,’ said Merton, ‘will be difficult to conduct, and the expenses would be considerable. I can hardly advise you to incur them. Our ordinary method is to throw in the way of one or other of the engaged, or entangled persons, some one who is likely to distract their affections; of course,’ he added, ‘to a more eligible object. How can I hope to find an object more eligible, Miss Crofton, than I must conceive your interesting friend to be?’
Miss Crofton caressingly raised Julia’s veil. Before the victim of remorse could bury her face in her hands, Merton had time to see that it was a very pretty one. Julia was dark, pale, with ‘eyes like billiard balls’ (as a celebrated amateur once remarked), with a beautiful mouth, but with a somewhat wildly enthusiastic expression.
‘How can I hope?’ Merton went on, ‘to find a worthier and more attractive object? Nay, how can I expect to secure the services not of one, but of four—’
‘Three would do, Mr. Merton,’ explained Miss Crofton. ‘Is it not so, Julia dearest?’
Julia again nodded assent, and a sob came from behind the veil, which she had resumed.
‘Even three,’ said Merton, gallantly struggling with a strong inclination to laugh, ‘present difficulties. I do not speak the idle language of compliment, Miss Crofton, when I say that our staff would be overtaxed by the exigencies of this case. The expense also, even of three—’
‘Expense is no object,’ said Miss Crofton.
‘But would it not, though I seem to speak against my own interests, be the wisest, most honourable, and infinitely the least costly course, for Miss Baddeley openly to inform her suitors, three out of the four at least, of the actual posture of affairs? I have already suggested that, as the lady takes the matter so seriously to heart, she should consult her director, or, if of the Anglican or other Protestant denomination, her clergyman, who I am sure will agree with me.’
Miss Crofton shook her head. ‘Julia is unattached,’ she said.
‘I had gathered that to one of the four Miss Baddeley was—not indifferent,’ said Merton.
‘I meant,’ said Miss Crofton severely, ‘that Miss Baddeley is a Christian unattached. My friend is sensitive, passionate, and deeply religious, but not a member of any recognised denomination. The clergy—’
‘They never leave one alone,’ said Julia in a musical voice. It was the first time that she had spoken. ‘Besides—’ she added, and paused.
‘Besides, dear Julia is—entangled with a young clergyman whom, almost in despair, she consulted on her case—at a picnic,’ said Miss Crofton, adding, ‘he is prepared to seek a martyr’s fate, but he insists that she must accompany him.’
‘How unreasonable!’ murmured Merton, who felt that this recalcitrant clergyman was probably not the favourite out of the field of four.
‘That is what I say,’ remarked Miss Crofton. ‘It is unreasonable to expect Julia to accompany him when she has so much work to overtake in the home field. But that is the way with all of them.’
‘All of them!’ exclaimed Merton. ‘Are all the devoted young men under vows to seek the crown of martyrdom? Does your friend act as recruiting sergeant, if you will pardon the phrase, for the noble army of martyrs?’
‘Three of them have made the most solemn promises.’
‘And the fourth?’
‘He is not in holy orders.’
‘Am I to understand that all the three admirers about whom Miss Baddeley suffers remorse are clerics?’
‘Yes. Julia has a wonderful attraction for the Church,’ said Miss Crofton, ‘and that is what causes her difficulties. She can’t write to them, or communicate to them in personal interviews (as you advised), that her heart is no longer—’
‘Theirs,’ said Merton. ‘But why are the clergy more privileged than the laity? I have heard of such things being broken to laymen. Indeed it has occurred to many of us, and we yet live.’
‘I have urged the same facts on Julia myself,’ said Miss Crofton. ‘Indeed I know, by personal experience, that what you say of the laity is true. They do not break their hearts when disappointed. But Julia replies that for her to act as you and I would advise might be to shatter the young clergymen’s ideals.’
‘To shatter the ideals of three young men in holy orders!’ said Merton.
‘Yes, for Julia is their ideal—Julia and Duty,’ said Miss Crofton, as if she were naming a firm. ‘She lives only,’ here Julia twisted the hand of Miss Crofton, ‘she lives only to do good. Her fortune, entirely under her own control, enables her to do a great deal of good.’
Merton began to understand that the charms of Julia were not entirely confined to her beaux yeux.
‘She is a true philanthropist. Why, she rescued me from the snares and temptations of the stage,’ said Miss Crofton.
‘Oh, now I understand,’ said Merton; ‘I knew that your face and voice were familiar to me. Did you not act in a revival of The Country Wife?’
‘Hush,’ said Miss Crofton.
‘And Lady Teazle at an amateur performance in the Canterbury week?’
‘These are days of which I do not desire to be reminded,’ said Miss Crofton. ‘I was trying to explain to you that Julia lives to do good, and has a heart of gold. No, my dear, Mr. Merton will much misconceive you unless you let me explain everything.’ This remark was in reply to the agitated gestures of Julia. ‘Thrown much among the younger clergy in the exercise of her benevolence, Julia naturally awakens in them emotions not wholly brotherly. Her sympathetic nature carries her off her feet, and she sometimes says “Yes,” out of mere goodness of heart, when it would be wiser for her to say “No”; don’t you, Julia?’
Merton was reminded of one of M. Paul Bourget’s amiable married heroines, who erred out of sheer goodness of heart, but he only signified his intelligence and sympathy.
‘Then poor Julia,’ Miss Crofton went on hurriedly, ‘finds that she has misunderstood her heart. Recently, ever since she met Captain Lestrange—of the Guards—’
‘The fourth?’ asked Merton.
Miss Crofton nodded. ‘She has felt more and more certain that she had misread her heart. But on each occasion
