It was a strange dinner party. The guests had been carefully selected in order to make a more than usually genial gathering. Manipulated by Lady Hester they should have mixed excellently. For Aunt Caroline, Lady Hester had invited a particular _protégé_ of the Bishop's sister, an elderly reformed bachelor, who had, of late years, given up wild ways--and drink--for active church work and mothers' meetings, and Sunday school organizations. Mr. Crick was his name, a small, white-haired, pimply-faced person of uncertain age, probably sixty; but with the small, spare figure of a boy. He stuttered slightly--unkind people said as the result of nervous debility following a life of dissipation. This person found himself without a partner now that Aunt Caroline was in charge of the lion of the evening--the elder lion, that is, in the second degree, for of course Jack was the centre of much interest and congratulation among the Bishop's friends, although he soon subsided into a secondary place, for Bannister outshone everybody.

It was a pleasant scene, the gaily decorated table loaded with white flowers, and rare fruits set in dishes of silver gilt, old family plate of which Lady Hester was especially fond, although it only saw light on special occasions. At one end of the long table the Bishop, with a stout lady on his right, the archdeacon's wife; and facing him Aunt Caroline, grim and severe; on her right the thief. Near the Bishop was the reformed character, Mr. Crick, looking down at his plate, and feeling exquisitely uncomfortable. Bannister--who knew several of the men at the table before he met them there--peered across at Mr. Crick with critical, inquiring eyes, in which there was a suspicion of latent recognition. Mr. Crick bowed his head as if prayers were in progress; but at last, in an unguarded moment, caught Mr. Bannister's eye.

A marked expression of severity transfixed Mr. Bannister's features. He paused in his conversation as if shocked to see Mr. Crick at the table of a Bishop, and, when the opportunity came, he bent over Aunt Caroline, and whispered--

"Pray, who is that person at the other end of the table--the man with the red face?"

"That is Mr. Crick. I see you recognize him. He is the gentleman who knew Dick Gordon in Vienna."

"Good heavens, you don't mean to say you got that ridiculous notion about my likeness to--er--what name did you say?"

"Dick Gordon."

"Ah, to Dick Gordon, from poor old Crick?"

"I did."

"Madam," whispered Bannister impressively, "I don't like to criticize my host's visitors; but really that person ought not to be at your table. When did they release him from the asylum?"

"From the asylum?" gasped Aunt Caroline.

"Yes. He was put away. Haven't you heard of it? He comes of good family, I believe; but he drank shockingly; and then he had delusions--that was why he was put away. His chief delusion was that he was being cheated when he lost at cards. He accused Lord Strathmeny of cheating at baccarat, and was promptly kicked out of the club."

"Is that so?" murmured Aunt Caroline, rather disconcerted. The news did not surprise her so much as Bannister's amazing nonchalance and persistence in refusing to be insulted or abashed by his "likeness" to Dick Gordon. She was almost sorry for her haste in making rash assertions on the evidence of so unreliable a person as Mr. Crick. But it was odd that she had not heard of the asylum incident--and unfortunate.

Mr. Crick knew everybody in the great world of London--at least, so he pretended--and to him Aunt Caroline had gone, when she first heard of Jack's engagement, to learn all about Mr. Bannister. The information that Bannister was really an adventurer under an alias was stated with much emphasis by the little man--in Mr. Bannister's absence--and he had once made a similar accusation in a London club, while under the influence of drink. Unfortunately Mr. Crick himself was such a discredited person that--although he had undoubtedly recognized in Mr. Bannister a certain traveling American of years ago who passed as Mr. Dick Gordon, and fleeced him at cards--he was painfully uncomfortable now at having defamed one who was received everywhere, even at a Bishop's table. At the time of Aunt Caroline's inquiry Mr. Crick had no notion that Jack Cardew had engaged himself to Miss Bannister, or he would not have dared to make the rash accusation.

"Madam, you must confront me with that person after dinner," whispered Bannister, pressing home his advantage. "If you have anything to do with him he'll be making libelous assertions concerning your private life. By the bye, that reminds me, I think I've heard him mention you."

"Mention me?" gasped Aunt Caroline.

"Yes. Surely you are the Bishop's sister whom he accused of eloping to Paris with a rascally curate--named Judd, I think--a bad lot who went utterly to the dogs."

Aunt Caroline gave an awful gulp. Mr. Bannister had pitched upon her one and only indiscretion of the past, a silly elopement at thirty with her grandfather's curate many years ago. They got as far as Dover, where she discovered that her lover had no intention of marrying her; on learning which she virtuously returned to her father's roof, and eschewed men and marriage ever after. How on earth Mr. Crick could ever have become possessed of this knowledge was not apparent; and it turned her quite green with faintness.

"Don't think for a moment, Miss Cardew, that I credit anything that person alleges," whispered Bannister. "We have both been fooled. I only mention this to show you how absolutely unreliable he is. I should give him the cold shoulder, if I were you; and drop a hint to the Bishop that the man he is entertaining is a rascal, although so very well connected. I'm sorry for his people; the Cricks are a proud family; but lunatics at the dinner table--well, I'll leave him in your hands, Miss Cardew.... Yes, Bishop, I heard what you said. Honeymoons are going out of fashion, but it was a good fashion in its day."

Mabel looked pale and Jack grinned.

"Ah, you are right," cried the Bishop heartily, "I can truly say that the pleasantest weeks of my existence were spent away from the hum and bustle of life in country lanes and green fields--eh, Mabel? What do you think? And you, Jack, you don't veto a honeymoon, surely?"

"I don't know," responded Jack sheepishly; and Mabel dropped her eyes, coloring for the first time. Bannister adroitly changed the conversation, and, between every few sentences, managed to glare with virtuous indignation at poor Mr. Crick, until the helpless little man wanted to crawl under the table with mortification. After dinner he managed to get nearer to the gentleman and whisper that he would like a few words with him in private. Mr. Crick declined the honor timorously, and began a lame apology; but Bannister looked so deadly and devilish that the words dried up in his shrivelled throat, and he almost felt Dick Gordon's fingers clutching him there.

* * * * * * *

Upstairs a wretched woman sat all huddled up on the bearskin rug before the empty grate in her husband's bedroom.

She had wandered there like a restless soul, pacing from room to room, and had dropped down overcome. The awful realization that she had no right under the roof of this house, much less in this sanctum--beloved by the Bishop because it was tended only by her hands--was slowly making itself felt. The flowers in the vases, the carefully dusted row of books by the bed-head, the little table with writing material by the window, on which the clean blotter was always ready, with a new quill by its side, in case he should want to put to paper his burning thoughts; the fine old chest in which she kept his vestments and linen softly perfumed; the big oil painting of St. Saviour's-in-the-East in the gorgeous gold frame presented to the Bishop by his late parishioners; the large Chesterfield lounge in front of the fire--all these brought back with a rush the beloved reality of her life for the last twenty years, the life that was ruined in one crashing collapse.

She had been a good wife and a good helpmeet to the bluff, jolly vicar. He had brought sunshine into her desolate existence, and she had helped to make him a Bishop; yet all the while she had been a miserable dupe, living unconsciously in adultery with a man who would have died rather than take to his bosom another man's wife.

The sting of it all lay in the fact that in part she had consciously sinned--how grievously she now recognized for the first time. It was only in the intimate life following her marriage that she learned the Bishop's peculiar views on marriage, which were almost Oriental in their severity. If he had known that Hester Lennox had been a wife, although her husband had gone over to the majority, she would never have become Mrs. Cardew. That was really why the awful confession was postponed, and postponed, and never made. She had shut down the past, and for the last ten years it had seemed but a dream. No child was ever vouchsafed to her second marriage. Perhaps it was the grief of this that in time roused the demon of recollection in her, so that year by year, up to the time of Jack's meeting with Mabel, the weight of her guilty secret grew and grew, till the need of a confidante was sometimes almost maddening. The pent-up fires flamed out when Jack was going to deceive the Bishop too. Now----

She was completely stunned by the one appalling concrete fact that Dick Gordon lived.

He lived! He was not dead, as his friend the Rev. Silas Judd had assured her. The whole dreadful time of her rash, secret marriage and subsequent supposed release came back as vividly as if it all happened yesterday--the first stolen meetings with romantic Dick Gordon, the wild girlish love that she gave the plausible rascal, and the honeymoon in detachments--a few days at a time; then the brief period of married life abroad under the shelter of a friend's chaperonage, and the discovery of her husband's real mode of life. The horror of that revelation drove her well-nigh crazy at the time, and added to it was another problem looming. Motherhood had claimed her, and she went through all the horror of concealing the birth of a little girl, born in secrecy and knowing no father, and placed in the care of strangers.

Then followed the parting--the release.

In her present dazed condition she could only think of the one vital thing--that Dick was down stairs, Dick, her girlish idol whom she had loved with all a woman's passion even after the mask was stripped from him--loved him because, though he had shamefully dragged her into deep, dark waters, he was always kind, and seemed to have been genuinely sorry for the ruin he had wrought. Yet he had been crueller than the vilest betrayer.

She gave no thought to Mabel at present. She only existed in the demented woman's mind as Jack's sweetheart. That the beautiful girl was Dick Gordon's daughter, perhaps her own daughter, alive and grown to womanhood, was not yet a solid idea. Stupefied and stunned, it was Dick, and Dick only, that filled her horizon. She cared not how he had lived, or what ties he had contracted since their parting; he was not dead, and living he was a menace, and a terror. How often she had wept--even after her marriage--over the recollection of the reckless, contrite lover-husband, who had sworn before heaven that, if she no longer respected him, he would release her, because he loved her. Dick Gordon in those days was tender-hearted wherever a woman was concerned. He had a little pride too. He saw the futility of clinging to the beautiful girl whom he had ruined but could not degrade, and devised his own cunning, plausible scheme to release her. It cost him something to give her up. Their child was put out to nurse; but its baby fingers had tightened upon his, its eyes had smiled innocently upon him, and the rogue realized the existence of a passion hitherto undreamt of, the passion of paternity. In his despair at the failure of all his plans to secure a dashing, beautiful, reckless mate to help him prey upon his victims, he was faced with the necessity of giving up both his wife and child.

And Dick Gordon was never good at giving up anything.

It was a wonderful triumph over self that made him relinquish Hester. But the child was his; she could not take it back to her friends. He advised her to conceal it and go back to spinsterhood. She wanted to have it near her, but he had no desire for the child to be reared by a bitter, disappointed woman, and taught to hate him. It jarred upon his idea of what was nice and charming. His vivid imagination had depicted the child growing up into a little thing with golden hair, decked out in white and toddling after him; and later as a romping school girl--still picturesque and delightful; then as a daughter grown to womanhood, an ornament and comfort to his old age--for Bannister, who loved youth and hated grey hairs, dreaded old age, and, unlike most rascals, stuck rigidly to a banking account.

He was clever enough to know that he could not be a rascal all his days, and that money easily made was just as easily saved. He never considered himself as having anything in common with the white-haired, sponging, pathetic wrecks who were the grandfathers of his profession; and he had urged this fact upon his wife when she scornfully spurned him, as an inducement to wait until he could turn respectable.

Dick Gordon parted from his beautiful wife in the full flush of sentimental grief; and he wanted to do what he considered the right thing. The only service he could render her was to die and free her completely. That was inconvenient; but the renegade curate Judd was paid to tell the plausible tale of Gordon's and the child's death. The thing was carried through, like everything attempted by Dick Gordon, artistically, and with no loose edges.

At that time the sentimental rogue thought he would never enter England again, having made it rather hot for himself in one or two directions--and as Hester had violently declared that she, on her side, would never again leave English soil, the supposed death and a new alias seemed likely to answer all purposes. It left her free to live what life she chose; and at the same time give him complete liberty with safety, for she had threatened to expose him, and he was never quite sure what she might do.

They had met again, and she could not expose him now.

Little by little all that she had heard of Mr. Bannister from Mabel and Jack came back to her; the description of his luxurious rooms in Bond Street, his fastidious ways, his love of glitter and color and fine clothes, his love of art, his priceless collection of etchings--all these things belonged to the old Dick Gordon. He was more flourishing than ever, apparently, for he had motor cars now. For one brief moment she allowed herself to believe and hope that it might be an honorable life he was living, on wealth that had come to him by some lucky and legitimate channel.

There was not much time to speculate. The flood gates of memory were open, and a torrent of recollections swept onward, beating down all the barriers set up during the years of her second marriage. In her first panic and clear realization of the truth the present was as nothing, a background only for the past, all the details of which showed with startling distinctness. She even found herself recalling the gowns she wore on different occasions during her brief married life abroad; and especially one which Dick had always admired; and some orchids he had bought her to wear with it; magnificent blooms of flaming yellow. She looked down at the mass of billowy chiffon with which her fingers were playing. Yes, they were almost the same shade as the velvet on the gown she was wearing. A ghastly smile dawned in her eyes; to vanish again on the instant as consciousness of her surroundings brought into prominence the present, with its overwhelming crisis.

It was of herself that she must think. What line of action must she take?

Dinner over, the Bishop, she knew, would make an excuse to come and see how she was. She would have to face him, and look into those steady and kindly eyes and--lie.

She was not his wife now. The situation was wild and fantastic. As she compelled her mind to contemplate it, a wave of cold terror swept over her. It was as if the solid ground from beneath her had given away, and she had become the sport of some new element, with powers that she could neither gauge nor control.

Of what account were the years that were gone, those years that she and the Bishop had spent together, planning good works and building up a grand reputation? It had been a life lived upon the thin crust of a morass. She had married Dick Gordon and loved him, and he died--but he was now alive. She recalled every word of the curt announcement of his death in the papers, her first sense of relief, and later a kindlier feeling and regret that she had not been with him at the end, to say at least that she forgave him. And now a vengeful God had brought him back--back to her. It seemed like a punishment for her wicked deception of the man who now loved and trusted her.

Dick Gordon alive! And Dick Gordon was the father of Mabel, the girl Jack was going to marry! Mabel was Dick Gordon's daughter!

His daughter!--Dick's daughter!

By whom?

Her own child had died, else----

She sat up suddenly, rigid and pale, every nerve and pulse in her body held tensely in the grip of a new thought. Her lips grew dry and dropped apart, and a thin scream came from beneath them; a cry scarcely human, save for its note of agony. Then her hands went up to her throbbing temples, and closed across her face, which was distorted and agonized. For a few minutes she remained in this position, then dragged herself towards the divan, where she knelt and tried to pray. She could not compose her thoughts. No words came. She rose to her feet and rushed from the Bishop's room to her own as though chased by fiends, her strangled sobs almost choking her.

A maid servant who was in the corridor hurried towards her; but Lady Hester passed quickly into her room, shut the door and bolted it.

One idea alone possessed her. No one must see her like this. All self-control was gone, and she feared for her terrible secret. All she desired was time to steady herself and think out the situation in all its bearings.

The story of Dick Gordon's death was a lie and a fraud. Why not the story of the child's death, too? How she had wept over the lost babe, cursing herself for her weakness in letting them take it from her! And she had believed them when they told her it was dead. She let the child go--the precious gift vouchsafed to her by Heaven under circumstances of supreme trial, but none the less given into her sacred care, a trust from God. And how had she discharged this trust? She had let Dick take it away, and accepted a stranger's word that it was dead.

Mabel!--his daughter!

Mabel Bannister. She repeated the name to herself again and again. Perhaps Dick had taken a second wife. Yes, that was the solution of it. Then she remembered the Bishop's comments on Mabel's likeness to herself.

"My daughter!" she cried wonderingly. "Mine! He calls her his--she must be mine too--mine!"

Why did he hide the child away? He had spoken of it as an incumbrance to be got rid of; yet Mabel's life was a record of innocent girlhood and an indulgent father's love.

And Mabel was to marry Jack. It was amazing--maddening. Who was she?

It was Farce grinning through Tragedy's mask. Jack, the Bishop's son, was to marry Mabel, the daughter of the adventurer, Dick Gordon, knowing nothing of her antecedents, and believing her to be the child of a gentleman. And Bannister was going to buy Dingle Hall and settle a thousand a year upon his daughter.

That must be all a fraud. He could not be rich. Yet he used to boast that, by the time he was forty, he would have amassed a fortune, and would be independent of his precarious, adventurous existence. He had a way, too, of achieving everything he set his heart on with real determination. It was just possible that he had grown wealthy; that he was now what he seemed to be. She had lived down the past--why not he?

She laughed at the absurdity of it; but her laugh ended in a scream the sound of which sobered her; and she hid her face in the lace coverlet of her bed, striving to stifle the choking hysterical cries. Reason seemed to be tottering. Like many self-contained and seemingly undemonstrative women, Lady Hester was extremely emotional. Circumstances had, in a great measure, altered her disposition, and now, when the guard arm was down, she shrank back, appalled at her own weakness. But she was not a weak woman, and she was supremely conscious that her only hope lay in self-control. She must pull herself together and meet Dick Gordon face to face. There must be no faltering, no hesitancy. One false move on her part, and she might bring ruin upon the life of the man who had given her the only peace and true happiness she had ever known, the man to whom honor was as the breath of life. She wanted, and must obtain at all costs, a respite from immediate ruin and exposure. Dick Gordon must be bribed or silenced somehow.

She owed the Bishop much before; she owed him more now; his good name must not be besmirched or his honor dimmed. She could die--she must die, if death would wipe out all offences; and by her own hand, if need be, to save him.

The necessity of uttering her thoughts to some one else was overmastering her. Her brain was racing, teeming with ideas; but they were nebulous, needing speech to make them concrete. She talked aloud, but her voice sounded harsh and discordant, and she clapped both hands over her mouth, and bit the flesh in her struggle to master her hysteria. It was the sight of her own reflection in the mirror at last that steadied her; for the face that looked into hers was haggard and drawn, a tablet on which any one could read that which she would hide.

Again she thought of Mabel--Mabel, who might be her own daughter, the babe taken from her, the child she had mourned as dead, accepting death as Heaven's punishment for her desertion. It was here, beside her, grown to womanhood. The long arm of coincidence and the remorseless chain of circumstance bound her with iron shackles from which she could not escape. She was tethered, no matter in what direction she struggled to get free.

Some one rapped at the door.

A definite and clearer appreciation of her difficulties came to her with appalling clearness. She expected the Bishop, yet dreaded to see him; and while she hesitated a moment, uncertain of the command of her reason, Aunt Caroline's voice made itself heard--a potent and cruel reminder of the vengeance at hand.

The Bishop, unable to leave his guests, had sent his sister to inquire after the invalid, and to see whether Lady Hester had dined. He had heard from the butler, who was devoted to her ladyship, that the tray sent to her boudoir had come down untouched, and that her ladyship had locked herself in her bedroom. The sound of Aunt Caroline's hard, clear voice gave back to the terrified woman the courage which had deserted her.

"What do you want?"

"It is I, Caroline. My brother wishes to know if you are any better. Let me in, Hester. I don't expect to be kept waiting on the mat like a housemaid."

"I'm sorry I can't let you in. I'm coming down shortly, but I want to be left quiet a little longer." She spoke slowly, like a weary invalid. She was weary enough, God knows; but Aunt Caroline's voice and manner raised all the spirit she had in her. She would have given the world to shout at her and tell her to go away, for Aunt Caroline of all people would be the first to triumph at her downfall.

In this she did the old lady an injustice. As Bannister knew--and as his old colleague the Rev. Silas Judd knew--Aunt Caroline had, in her day, risen to amazing heights of indiscretion, and was only saved from a villain by her own level-headedness. If Lady Hester had only known, she would have been a valuable ally in the present awful crisis; for Caroline Cardew was one of those queer old women who go through life with an unreasoning suspicion of their own sex, and absolute distrust of the self-contained woman; but let them loose in the middle of a real tragedy and arouse their sympathy, and they will champion a woman against their better judgment, and, if need be, against the world. And such a woman was Caroline Cardew.

"If you don't want me to come in I'm sure I don't want to. But if you're ill, somebody ought to see what's wrong with you; and if you're not ill it's very bad taste on your part to select this particular evening to make a scene, when the house is full of all sorts of horrible people who are here at your invitation. I shall send your maid to you."

"No, no--go away," groaned the wretched sufferer, and her misery must have crept into her voice, for Aunt Caroline's voice softened.

"You'd better have some one with you," she persisted.

"Then send Miss Bannister to me, please--that is, if she can come without being missed."

"Of course she'll be missed. But I'll tell her you want her."

The rest of Aunt Caroline's muttering was lost as she walked away with an angry frown that meant no good to any one.

Lady Hester rose quickly from the couch, where she had thrown herself, and lighting the candles on her dressing table, peered anxiously at the woman in the mirror. She was deathly pale, and there were heavy shadows about the eyes; but no signs of weeping.

She opened her bedroom door and looked into the corridor. Aunt Caroline was standing at the landing window gazing intently at something in the yard below.

"You needn't trouble to ask Mabel to come up, Caroline; I've decided to come down."

Aunt Caroline did not reply; a usual habit with her when she was displeased; but she had not, as a matter of fact, heard the remark. She was too intent in watching a man in the yard below, a servant who was apparently counting the windows, indicating them one after the other by the aid of a pencil in his hand. She could neither see the color of his clothes nor his face, but he looked like Mr. Bannister's solemn faced man.

"Queer," she muttered, as she walked slowly down stairs.

Somebody was singing in the drawing room, and she waited till the song was finished; then, passing in, went up to Mabel, saying icily, "Lady Hester requires your presence upstairs."

Mabel rose to go, quaking with apprehension.

The men in the drawing room were almost merry; they had warmed up after dinner; but, as usual, with the hostess absent, they had drawn together in a knot, and the women were left very much to themselves, with only Mr. Crick to entertain them.

Bannister was amusing the Bishop and the archdeacon and a very youthful curate with some good stories particularly appealing to churchmen, and they were laughing heartily. The Bishop forgot to be frigidly polite. He applauded all his guest's sallies with gusto; while Mr. Crick, on the other hand, was not at all brilliant or amusing, and a silence fell upon the women which had gradually made itself felt. Aunt Caroline, who had been very much disconcerted by Bannister's amazing knowledge of her past--learned by him from the rascal Judd of course--found that she could not talk herself or listen to other people. She sat glued to her chair, ever and anon turning her eyes upon Bannister with amazement. One moment she admired his incomparable sangfroid; the next she doubted whether after all he was a villain and a rascal. Then she glanced at the stammering, idiotic Mr. Crick, who was making feeble jokes and giggling over them to the point of suffocation, and wondered which of the two it was safest to trust to keep her awful secret.

As a matter of fact poor Mr. Crick had never said a word to Bannister concerning Aunt Caroline's early peccadilloes, and knew nothing of them; while she, of course, could not question him on the point.

The old lady's suspicions might have died a natural death but for the extraordinary conduct of Lady Hester herself, and her dramatic recognition of Mr. Bannister earlier in the evening. Hester must be very ill indeed to keep away from her guests and surrender the reins of government to her sister-in-law. Under ordinary circumstances she would crawl down if she were dying, rather than disappoint her friends and ruin a festive gathering like this. But fresh surprises awaited Caroline when Hester, pale as marble, calm and self-composed, entered the room, and walked up to the nearest guest as though nothing had happened.

"Oh, my dear--you're better? I'm so glad," cried the archdeacon's wife, impulsively going to meet the pale, calm looking woman.

The others of course crowded round. The Bishop jumped up, and hurried over to his wife, whom he seized by the arms gleefully, like a big school boy. "Ah, my darling--that's right. You're better now. You're looking pale, though. I hope you're not overdoing it."

"Oh, no, no--only a faint. When I caught my foot in my dress and fell, the shock was greater than I thought."

"If it hadn't been for me she would have fallen the whole flight," chimed in Bannister.

"Yes, Mr.--er--Mr. Bannister. I haven't thanked you."

"It was my privilege to be of service," replied Mr. Bannister, with a queer, complacent smile that was not lost upon Aunt Caroline and struck terror to Lady Hester's soul. He adjusted his eyeglass critically and almost rudely. Anger rose in the wretched wife's breast because he was obviously only amused. He was unabashed, perfectly self-possessed, and playing the polite guest in the house of his own wife as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a woman to have two husbands--and one of them a Bishop.

"Sit down and rest, my dear," suggested the Bishop.

"Yes, don't tire yourself," echoed the women.

"This chair is extremely comfortable, Lady Cardew," said Bannister softly; and he drew forward a big lounge chair, setting it beside a standard lamp.

She accepted dumbly, and tried to keep her eyes from his face. Curiosity, fear, hauteur, anger, all in turn flashed from her eyes; and Mabel, sitting by Jack's side at the other end of the room, turning over a pile of music for the benefit of a stout lady with vocal accomplishments who was going to the piano, looked across and saw the furtive glances passing between her father and her friend. They mystified and at the same time frightened her; for she guessed that the faint upon the stairs was due in some way to the meeting with her father. Lady Hester must have had some previous knowledge of him--and was it to his credit?

Bannister had carefully put Lady Hester's chair under the light that he might talk to her and look at her well--she was so changed; and the alteration made on a beautiful woman by the passage of years is always interesting--if it is not painful. The amazing novelty of it grips the attention. The woman is the same, yet not the same. The old ego is behind, but the outer shell breathes a different atmosphere. The eyes--those fine eyes!--moved in exactly the same way; the lips had the same curve; the cheeks were a little fuller, yet so slightly altered as to defy the minutest examination. The hair was differently dressed; the superb neck and shoulders were fuller, giving a new dignity to the torso, yet the graceful proportions were the same. The modern fashion in hair dressing had perhaps made the greatest change of all in the woman of twenty years ago. Dignity of design had taken the place of girlish curls; the amazing, beautiful, and unusual color was the same, and the complexion retained the old peach-like bloom, except for the heightened pallor of to-night, which he knew to be unusual.

Bannister's attempted _tête-à-tête_ with Lady Hester was interrupted, and again he became the centre of a group. The men begged him to tell some more stories; and called the women to listen; but he begged to be excused, and protested that it might jar on Lady Hester. If she could have found it in her heart at that moment to thank him, she would have been grateful.

The stout lady having settled at the piano, with Jack on duty by her side Mabel was free to drop back into the cushions of the lounge and watch the issue of the tragedy.

So far the girl had been able to evade any direct questioning by Jack, who was burning with curiosity and eager for enlightenment. She had avoided sitting out with him in the hall, and carefully kept within earshot of the other guests. When he muttered sulkily about her want of feeling, she whispered that they must be more distant and avoid the watchful eyes of Aunt Caroline.

He was incensed at his aunt's manner of glaring at Mabel when they first met, as though she were a reptile, and he had an uncomfortable suspicion that she might have guessed her to be the lady discovered at his chambers. That, of course, would account for a good deal; yes, it was wiser to disarm her suspicion.

All her interest was now concentrated upon Mr. Bannister. Mabel had noticed this at dinner, and strained her ears to catch a little of her father's conversation with the old lady, but not a word had she heard, although she saw that Mr. Crick was under observation, and that Miss Cardew got up from the dinner table looking flurried and uneasy.

Finding it impossible to talk privately to his wife, Bannister joined the party who were at the other end of the room ostensibly listening to the lady at the piano; but his eyes were greedily devouring his wife, the new and more wonderful Hester. Mabel watched him in fascinated amazement. She had never seen him look like that at any woman, although she had seen many a woman try to win his approval. As he gazed at his wife's familiar, yet unfamiliar, charms, his color came and went, and his eyes glittered with an exultation that was unusual, disconcerting, and terrible to the woman.

A constraint fell upon the company after the arrival of Lady Hester. No one seemed quite at ease; conversation flickered and died, and at times there was a sudden hush in the great drawing room that was depressing.

Lady Hester felt it, and made a supreme effort, calling all her natural instincts as hostess and mistress of the house into play. But her faculties seemed numb and unresponsive. Yet nothing was really changed. All that was here was hers--except Dick Gordon. He was an interloper, an outlaw, a vulture.

He too had changed with the passing of years, but not for the better. His eye was keener, his cheeks thinner, his beard with the foreign point a novelty that offended. He looked harder, crueller, and more sinister. And, after all, he was as much in her power as she in his. She was no longer the impressionable, easily cowed, easily swayed girl of twenty years ago. Now was the time for her to show what she had learned by suffering, and let Dick Gordon see that she had developed character and courage, and a recklessness almost as daring as his own.

"I'm really feeling much better, and you're all so absurdly quiet," she cried, jumping up. "You're all thinking about me instead of amusing yourselves. Mr. Crick, you don't know Mrs. Harkaway, do you? I ought to have introduced you. Come over here. And Mrs. Bennett, you sing, don't you? That duet I heard at your house was charming. Won't you sing it now with Mr. Bennett?"

Mrs. Bennett explained that it was only a frivolous little thing. A cold had robbed her of her voice. Wouldn't somebody else step into the breach? Didn't Mr. Bannister sing? She was quite sure that he did--he looked like it.

Mr. Bannister smilingly disclaimed any talent in that particular direction, and said that he expected his daughter to take on her shoulders the burden of her father's share of the entertaining.

"Miss Bannister sings," exclaimed two or three people at once.

Jack, who had never heard Mabel sing, jumped at the idea. It was a novelty, and he was quite excited about it. Mabel gulped down an inclination to sob. How could she sing to-night, with Jack there--ruined, and Lady Hester shaking with terror at the sight of her father--and the Bishop blissfully unconscious that anything was amiss? The old gentleman was carrying on a rather heated argument in whispers with the archdeacon over Clause IV. of the Education Bill. To focus attention upon herself was the last thing she desired. But Jack drew her forward playfully, determined to dispel the clouds somehow.

Lady Hester had forgotten Mabel's existence in these dazed moments of panic and mental confusion. She forced herself to attend, and smiled a mechanical smile.

His daughter!

This was the girl--the Mabel that she had taken to her heart of late in a way quite unusual with her, the girl whose voice and face had always seemed familiar as half-forgotten music--Dick Gordon's daughter. After all, maternity must be a divine instinct akin to inspiration.

Her daughter! Her own child!

The girl seated herself at the piano, and ran her trembling fingers over the keys. The music brought back a little courage. She began in a quavering voice an old Italian convent song which few of those present could understand, except the Bishop and Bannister. The former applauded vigorously at the end, and, turning to his wife, with beaming countenance exclaimed--

"Hester, for a few moments, when she began, I could have sworn it was your voice. How is it we never knew that she sang?"

"Yes, Lady Hester sings too, and we had forgotten it," cried Mrs. Bennett, who was very eager to be asked again. "Ah! how well I remember your singing in the anthem solo at St. Saviour's ever so many years ago. Dear old Saviour's! where you were married, too, wasn't it?"

Dick Gordon coughed behind his handkerchief, and reddened to the eyes. He was laughing. It roused the demon of resourcefulness in Hester, and her fear dropped away. She could have struck him. Her voice rang cold as steel and her eyes flashed as she demanded--

"What amuses you, Mr. Bannister?"

"Oh, nothing--nothing," he replied, and darted an answering glance to her challenge. "The name of St. Saviour's recalled to my mind an old friend of my youth, a curate, a sad dog in his day. I remember his going to take duty at St. Saviour's, and he wanted me to come too. I'm sorry now I didn't. A queer fellow, but never intended for the church. He had a weakness for elopements"--Aunt Caroline choked--"he was in love at least once a week, and always drowned his disappointments in strong liquor. A black sheep. He went utterly to the dogs; but he was an amusing fellow."

The Bishop coughed and looked uncomfortable, and darted a glance at Jack, who looked another way.

"He fell on bad days at last and died miserably, I heard. Did you ever know of such a person, Lady Hester, while you were at--I forget the name of the church?"

"St. Saviour's," murmured the wretched woman. "I never heard of any such person."

"I once met a curate of that name," observed Aunt Caroline coldly, and with wonderful self-possession. "He was a friend of that Dick Gordon of whom we were speaking at dinner."

At the name of Dick Gordon Lady Hester gave a great choke and a gulp that was something between a scream and a sob. She clutched at her full, white throat.

"Hester, my dear Hester! You're really not well. You shouldn't have come down," cried the Bishop, running to her. "Caroline, my dear, take her upstairs."

Everybody crowded round full of sympathy, and Bannister glared savagely at Aunt Caroline. But Lady Hester would not give in. She protested that she would be better presently. And Aunt Caroline was satisfied that she had probed a certain distance into the mystery. Hester had known Dick Gordon, and Crick's assertions were not far wrong after all.

Lady Hester's mental suffering was as plain to Mabel as if interpreted by spoken words. She saw that her father was stabbing her friend with invisible darts. While the others imagined that mere physical weakness was the trouble, she knew that the woman was being cruelly broken. She stepped quickly up to her father, and, going close to him, flashed a look into his eyes that he had never seen there before.

"Why did you do it? You're a coward! You--you----"

"Tut-tut, be quiet, child. Don't make a fool of yourself," he whispered between his grinding teeth. He looked as though he could have struck her; but Jack came towards them, and his features were instantly wreathed in smiles.

"Mabel, my darling," he purred, "I'm sure Jack would like to talk to you. He hasn't had five minutes alone with you since we came down. Go over there and amuse him. I have much to say to the Bishop."

Jack was only too glad to get his wife into a corner, and, taking advantage of the interest aroused by Lady; Hester, he tackled her seriously.

"You haven't written to me, Mabel."

"I had no time. Everything was so hurried."

"And I want to know what you meant by talking of good-bye."

"I can't explain now--not here," she replied almost absently, watching Lady Hester and her father all the time.

"Never mind my mother, attend to me, little girl. I want to know why----"

"Ah, she's laughing now. She must be feeling better."

"Oh, yes, your father is taking her in hand. He'll amuse her and bring her round. It was only a little faintness. She'll be all right after a night's rest. You needn't be so alarmed. You look as though you thought your father would eat her."

It was true; the girl's eyes watched the pair as if fascinated. She saw her father seat himself at his hostess's side and talk commonplaces; and Lady Hester forced an artificial laugh, and kept up the farce until the interest which had been concentrated upon her was withdrawn; then with a stealthy glance to left and right to be sure that she was unobserved, she talked swiftly and earnestly.

"Mabel, attend to me. Have you lost all interest in my society? Have you forgotten?" whispered Jack petulantly.

"No, Jack, but don't talk to me just now, not to-night."

"Oh, if you are bored or annoyed with me----"

"I'm neither, Jack, dearest. I've much to say to you that can't be said with all these people near. And I can't say it--just yet. I must have time."

"I'll come to you to-night after they are all gone and the others are in bed; then we can talk in privacy."

"To-night--here? Oh no, no, I've changed my room. It would be madness."

"Nonsense. I can get to your room all right. And who is to know? They'll be asleep by midnight."

"No, not here. You terrify me."

"Well, I seem to have become a regular bogey of a husband already," he growled, tugging at his mustache. "What do you think I came down for but to see you?"

Very much the same sort of conversation was in progress on the other side of the room, where Lady Hester was masking her excitement by a pretence of showing Bannister a Japanese mirror and talking _sotto voce_.

"I must see you--I must talk to you alone," she whispered. "You must go away at once."

"Nonsense," he replied, "I am coming down to buy Dingle Hall and live near you."

"You will do nothing of the kind."

"I shall. There are the young people to consider--my daughter."

"Yours?"

There was a world of query in her voice.

"Yes, mine--_and yours_," he whispered, with a cynical smile.

"I knew it--I guessed it--I felt it. Oh, Mabel!"

She rose with an impulsive movement, and walked swiftly across to Mabel, who rose quickly, just in time to catch her sobbing mother in her arms.

"I knew it--I knew it! She ought not to have come down," cried the Bishop helplessly. "Caroline! Caroline!"