Tristram of Blent. Anthony Hope

and was anxious to see her kinsfolk. The letter was almost gushing, and Lady Tristram, left to herself, would have answered it in the same kind; for while she had pleased herself she bore no resentment against folk who had blamed her. Moreover Gainsborough was poor, and somebody had told her that the girl was pleasant; she pitied poverty and liked being kind to pleasant people.

      "Shall we invite them to stay for a week or two?" she had asked.

      "Never," he said. "They shall never come here. I don't want to know them, I won't see them." His face was hard, angry, and even outraged at the notion.

      His mother said no more. If the barony and Blent departed from Harry, on Lady Tristram's death they would go to Cecily Gainsborough. If Harry had his way, that girl should not even see his darling Blent. If distrust of his mother entered at all into his decision, if he feared any indiscreet talk from her, he gave no hint of it. It was enough that the girl had some odious pretensions which he could and would defeat but could not ignore—pretensions for his mind, in her own she had none.

      The sun had sunk behind the tower, and Lady Tristram sat in a low chair by the river, enjoying the cool of the evening. The Blent murmured as it ran; the fishes were feeding; the midges were out to feed, but they did not bite Lady Tristram; they never did; the fact had always been a comfort to her, and may perhaps be allowed here to assume a mildly allegorical meaning. If the cool of the evening may do the same, it will serve very well to express the stage of life and of feeling to which no more than the beginning of middle age had brought her. It was rather absurd, but she did not want to do or feel very much more; and it seemed as though her wishes were to be respected. A certain distance from things marked her now; only Harry was near to her, only Harry's triumph was very important. She had outrun her vital income and mortgaged future years; if foreclosure threatened, she maintained her old power of taking no heed of disagreeable things, however imminent. She was still very handsome and wished to go on being that to the end; fortunately fragility had always been her style and always suited her.

      Harry leant his elbow on a great stone vase which stood on a pedestal and held a miniature wilderness of flowers.

      "I lunched at Fairholme," he was saying. "The paint's all wet still, of course, and the doors stick a bit, but I liked the family. He's genuine, she's homely, and Janie's a good girl. They were very civil."

      "I suppose so."

      "Not overwhelmed," he added, as though wishing to correct a wrong impression which yet might reasonably have arisen.

      "I didn't mean that. I've met Mr. Iver, and he wasn't at all overwhelmed. Mrs. Iver was—out—when I called, and I was—out—when she called." Lady Tristram was visibly, although not ostentatiously, allowing for the prejudices of a moral middle-class.

      "Young Bob Broadley was there—you know who I mean? At Mingham Farm, up above the Pool."

      "I know—a handsome young man."

      "I forgot he was handsome. Of course you know him then! What a pity I'm not handsome, mother!"

      "Oh, you've the air, though," she observed contentedly. "Is he after Janie Iver?"

      "So I imagine. I'm not sure that I'm not too. Have I any chance against Bob Broadley?"

      She did not seem to take him seriously.

      "They wouldn't look at Mr. Broadley." (She was pleasantly punctilious about all titles and courteous methods of reference or address.) "Janie Iver's a great heiress."

      "And what about me?" he insisted, as he lit his pipe and sat down opposite her.

      "You mean it, Harry?"

      "There's no reason why I shouldn't marry, is there?"

      "Why, you must marry, of course. But——"

      "We can do the blue blood business enough for both."

      "Yes, I didn't mean that."

      "You mean—am I at all in love with her?"

      "No, not quite. Oh, my dear Harry, I mean wouldn't you like to be in love a little with somebody? You could do it after you marry, of course, and you certainly will if you marry now, but it's not so—so comfortable." She looked at him with a sort of pity: her feeling was that he gave himself no holidays.

      He sat silent a moment seeming to consider some picture which her suggestion conjured up.

      "No good waiting for that," was his conclusion. "Somehow if I married and had children, it would seem to make everything more settled." His great pre-occupation was on him again. "We could do with some more money too," he added, "and, as I say, I'm inclined to like the girl."

      "What's she like?"

      "What you call a fine girl—tall—well made——"

      "She'll be fat some day, I expect."

      "Straight features, broadish face, dark, rather heavy brows—you know the sort of thing."

      "Oh, Harry, I hate all that!"

      "I don't; I rather like it." He was smoking meditatively, and jerked out what he had to say between the puffs. "I shouldn't like to mortgage Blent," he went on a moment later.

      "Mortgage Blent? What for?"

      He raised a hand to ask to be heard out. "But I should like to feel that I could at any moment lay my hand on a big lump of ready money—say fifty, or even a hundred, thousand pounds. I should like to be able to pull it out of my breeches' pocket and say, 'Take that and hold your tongue!'" He looked at her to see if she followed what was in his mind. "I think they'd take it," he ended. "I mean if things got as far as that, you know."

      "You mean the Gainsboroughs?"

      "Yes. Oh, anybody else would be cheaper than that. Fifty thousand would be better than a very doubtful case. But it would have to be done directly—before a word was heard about it. I should like to live with the check by me."

      He spoke very simply, as another man might speak of being ready to meet an improvement-rate or an application from an impecunious brother.

      "Don't you think it would be a good precaution?" he asked. Whether he meant the marriage, the check, or the lady, was immaterial; it came to the same thing.

      "It's all very troublesome," Lady Tristram complained. "It really half spoils our lives, doesn't it, Harry? One always has to be worrying."

      The smile whose movements had excited Mina Zabriska's interest made its appearance on Harry's face. He had never been annoyed by his mother's external attitude toward the result of her own doings, but he was often amused at it.

      "Why do you smile?" she asked innocently.

      "Well, worrying's a mild term," he explained evasively. "It's my work in the world, you know—or it seems as if it was going to be."

      "You'd better think about it," Lady Tristram concluded, not wishing to think about it any more herself. "You wouldn't tell Mr. Iver anything about the difficulty, would you?" "The difficulty" had become her usual way of referring to their secret.

      "Not a word. I'm not called upon to justify my position to Iver." No shadow of doubt softened the clearness of Harry's conviction on this point.

      He rose, filled his pipe again, and began to walk up and down. He was at his old game, counting chances, one by one, every chance, trying to eliminate risks, one by one, every risk, so that at last he might take his ease and say without fear of contradiction, "Here sits Tristram of Blent." To be thus was—something; but to be safely thus was so much more that it did not seem to him a great thing to carry out the plan which he had suggested to Lady Tristram. To be sure, he was not in love with anybody else, which makes a difference, though it is doubtful whether it would have made any to him. Had the question arisen at that moment he would have said that nothing could make any difference.

      "Did you go up to the Lodge, Harry?" his mother called to him as one of his turns brought him near her.

      "Oh,