The Luck of the Vails. E. F. Benson

was not a man in the world, even less a woman, who would stick to you if you were in trouble. Trouble comes; they are vanished like melting snow; a heap of dirt is left behind. Then he suddenly burst into tears and told me to forget all he had said, for he had given me the outpourings of a disappointed, soured man. I was young; let me trust every one as long as I could, let me make friends right and left; only, if trouble came, and they fell away, then, if I could find consolation therein, I might remember that the same thing had happened to others also."

      Geoffrey was staring absently into the fire; his cigarette had gone out, and his whisky was untasted.

      "By Gad!" he said. "Poor old beggar!"

      And Harry, knowing that the British youth does not express sympathy in verbose paragraphs, or show his emotion by ejaculatory cries, was satisfied that the story had touched his friend.

      Day by day and week by week Harry moved more at his ease in the world of people of whom hitherto he had known so little. The wall of the castle which he had erected round himself, compacted of his own diffidence and a certain hauteur of disposition, fell like the fortifications of Jericho at the blast of the trumpet, and it was a young man, pleasant in body and mind, pleased with little, but much anxious to please, that came forth. His dinner invitation to some new house would be speedily indorsed by the greater intimacy of a Saturday till Monday, and the days were few on which he sat down to a cover for one in Cavendish Square.

      Among these more particular friends with whom previous acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, Lady Oxted, an old friend of Harry's father, stood pre-eminent. Here he soon became ami de la maison, dropping in as he chose, well knowing he was welcome; and such a footing, speedily and unquestioningly gained, was to one of a life previously so recluse a pleasure new and altogether delightful; for Lady Oxted had the power of creating the atmosphere of home, and home was one of those excellent things which Harry had hitherto lacked. He had not consciously missed it, because he had never yet known it, but his gradual understanding of it made him see how large an empty room there had been in his heart. To come uninvited, and to linger unconscionably long; to say firmly that he must be going, and yet to linger, he found to be an index to certain domestic and comfortable joys of life, not lightly to be placed low in that delightful miscellany. His nature, from his very youth, was not yet enough formed to be labelled by so harsh an epithet as austere, but hitherto he had not known the quiet monotonies which can be the cause of so much uneventful happiness. Even for those whose bulk of enjoyment is flavoured with the thrill of adventure and the frothier joys of living, who most need excitement and crave for stimulus, there yet are times for the unbending of the bow, when the child within them cries out for mere toys and companionship, and the soul longs to sit by the meditative fire rather than do battle with winds and stern events. And Harry was not one of those who need home least; simply, he had been frozen, but now, for the first time, the genial warmth of living began to touch him; he was like a plant put in some sunned and watered place, and its appropriate buds began to appear in this time of the singing bird. Here, too, he met romance with tremulous mouth and the things of which poets have sung.

CHAPTER V

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A POINT IN CASUISTRY

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      One evening, toward the end of June, Lady Oxted was driving home from Victoria Station, where she had gone to meet the arrival of the Continental express. By her side sat a girl of little more than twenty, who, by the eager, questioning glances which she cast at that inimitable kaleidoscope of life as seen in the London streets, must probably have been deprived of this admirable spectacle for some time, for her gaze was quickened to an interest not habitual to Londoners, however deep is their devotion to the town of towns. The streets were at their fullest, in this height of the season and the summer, and the time of day being about half past five, the landau could make but a leisurely progress through the glittering show. The girl's cheek was flushed with the warm, healthy tinge which is the prerogative of those who prefer the air as God made it to the foul gases which men shut up in their houses, and, as they drove, she poured out a rapid series of questions and comments to Lady Oxted.

      "Oh, I just love this stuffy old London!" she said; "but what have they done with the Duke of Wellington on his horse? The corner looks quite strange without it. Oh! there's a policeman keeping everybody back. Do you think it's the Queen? I hope it is. Why, it's only a fat little man with a beard in a brougham! Who is he, Aunt Violet, and why aren't we as good as he? Just fancy, it is three years since I have been in London—that's not grammar, is it?—and I had the greatest difficulty in making mother let me come. Indeed, if it hadn't been for your letter, saying that you would let me stay with you, I never should have come. And then the difficulties about the time I should stop! It wasn't worth while going for a month, and two months was too long. So I made it three."

      "Well, it is delightful to have you, anyhow, dear Evie," said Lady Oxted. "And it really was time you should see London again. Your mother is well?"

      "Very—as well as I am; and that means a lot. But she won't come to England, Aunt Violet, except for that one day every year, and I am beginning to think she never will now. It is twenty-one, nearly twenty-two years ago, that she settled at Santa Margarita—the year I was born."

      "Yes, dear, yes," said Lady Oxted, a little hurriedly, and she would seemingly have gone on to speak of something else, but the girl interrupted her.

      "You know her reason, of course, Aunt Violet," she said quietly, but with a certain firm resolve to speak. "No, let me go on: she told me about it only the other day. Of course, poor Harold's death must have been terrible for her, but it is awful, it is awful, I think, to take it the way she does. She still thinks that he died by no accident, but that he was intentionally shot by some man with whom he was out shooting. I asked her what his name was, but she would not tell me. And for all this time, once a year, on the day of Harold's death, she comes to England, puts red flowers on his grave, and returns. Oh, it is awful!"

      Lady Oxted did not reply at once. "She still thinks so about it?" she asked at length.

      "Yes; she told me herself. But I hope, perhaps, that her refusing to tell me the man's name—I asked only the evening before I left—may mean that she is beginning to wish to forget it. She wished, at any rate, that I should not know. Do you think it may be so?"

      "I can't tell, Evie. Your mother——" and she stopped.

      "Yes?"

      "Only this. Your mother is hard to get at, inaccessible. It is almost impossible to know what she feels on subjects about which she feels deeply. I once tried to talk to her about it, but she would not. She heard what I had to say, but that was all."

      The girl assented, then paused a moment.

      "Poor mother, what an awful year for her!" she said. "She had only married my father, you know, a few months before Harold's death, and before the year was out Harold, her only son, was dead, and she was left twice a widow and childless. I was not born for six months after my father's death. How strange never to have seen one's father!"

      They drove in silence for a space. Then the girl said suddenly:

      "Aunt Violet, promise me that you will never tell me the name of the man who was out shooting with Harold. You see my mother would not tell me when I asked her; surely that means she wishes that I should not know."

      Lady Oxted felt herself for the moment in great perplexity. She had the rational habit, now growing rare, of thinking what she was saying, and meaning something by what she said, and, as her answer was conceivably a matter of some importance, she paused, thinking intently.

      "I am not sure that I had better promise you that," she said at last.

      Evie looked surprised.

      "Why