The Wicked Marquis. E. Phillips Oppenheim

I go, I shall go to a tiny little boarding house, or take a villa in one of the quiet places—San Raphael, perhaps, or one of those little forgotten spots between Hyères and Cannes. Phillis Grant would go with me. She isn't going to act again until the autumn season."

      Her visitor's expression was a little blank.

      "In the case of your departure from London," he announced, in a very even but very forlorn tone, "I will instruct Mr. Wadham to make a suitable addition to your allowance. At the same time, Marcia," he added, "I shall miss you."

      His words were evidently a surprise to her. She threw away her cigarette and came and sat on the sofa by his side.

      "Do you know, I believe you would," she murmured, resting her hand upon his. "How queer!"

      "I have never concealed my affection for you, have I?" he asked.

      This time the laugh which broke from her lips was scarcely natural.

      "Concealed your affection, Reginald!" she repeated. "How strangely that sounds! But listen. You said something just now about my allowance. If I allude to it in return, will you believe that it is entirely for your sake?"

      "Of course!"

      She rose from her chair and, crossing the room, rummaged about her desk for a moment, produced a letter, and brought it to him. The Marquis adjusted his horn-rimmed eyeglass and read:

      Dear Madam:

      We feel that some explanation is due to you with regard to the non-payment for the last two quarters of your allowance from our client, the Marquis of Mandeleys. We have to inform you that for some time past we have had no funds in our possession to pay this allowance. We informed his lordship of the fact, some time back, but in our opinion his lordship scarcely took the circumstance seriously. We think it better, therefore, that you should communicate with him on the subject.

      Faithfully yours,

       WADHAM, SON AND DICKSON.

      The Marquis deliberately folded up the letter, placed his eyeglass in his pocket, and sat looking into the fire. There was very little change in his face. Only Marcia, to whom he had been the study of a lifetime, knew that so far as suffering was possible to him, he was suffering at that moment.

      "You mustn't think it matters," she said gently. "You know my last novel was quite a wonderful success, and for that article in the Nineteenth you were looking at, they gave me twenty guineas. I am really almost opulent. Still, I thought it was better for you to know this. The same thing might refer to other and more important matters, and you know, dear, you are rather inclined to walk with your head in the air where money matters are concerned."

      "You have been very considerate, but foolishly so, my dear Marcia," he declared. "This matter must be put right at once. I fear that a younger element has obtruded itself into the firm of Wadham, an element which scarcely grasps the true position. I will see these people, Marcia."

      "You are not to worry about it," she begged softly. "To tell you the truth—"

      Marcia was a brave woman, and the moment had come up to which she had been leading for so long, which for many months, even years, had been in her mind. And when it came she faltered. There was something in the superb, immutable poise of the man who bent a little courteously towards her, which checked the words upon her lips.

      "It will be no trouble to me, Marcia, to set this little affair right," he assured her. "I am only glad that your circumstances have been such that you have not been inconvenienced. At the same time, is it entirely necessary for you to manipulate that hideous machine yourself?" he enquired, inclining his head towards the typewriter.

      "There are times," she confessed, "when I find it better. Of course, I send a great deal of my work out to be typed, but my correspondence grows, and my friends find my handwriting illegible."

      "I have never found it difficult," he remarked.

      "Well, you've had a good many years to get used to it," she reminded him.

      His hand rested for a moment upon her shoulder. He drew her a little towards him. She suddenly laughed, leaned over and kissed him on both cheeks, and jumped up. The trim little parlourmaid was at the door with tea.

      "Yes," she went on, "you have learned to read my handwriting, and I have learned how you like your tea. Just one or two more little things like that, and life is made between two people, isn't it? Shall I tell you what I think the most singular thing in the world?" she went on, pausing for a moment in her task. "It is fidelity to purpose—and to people, too, perhaps. In a way there is a quaint sort of distinction about it, and from another point of view it is most horribly constraining."

      "I interrupted you this afternoon, I imagine," he observed, "in the construction of some work of fiction."

      "Oh, no!" she replied. "What I write isn't fiction. That's why it sells. It's truth, you see, under another garb. But there the fact remains—that I shouldn't know how to make tea for another man in the world, and you wouldn't be able to read the letters of any other woman who wrote as badly as I do."

      "The fact," he remarked, "seems to me to be a cause for mutual congratulation."

      She stooped down to place a dish of muffins on a heater near the fire, graceful yet as a girl, and as brisk.

      "I can't imagine," she declared, "why it is that my sex has acquired the reputation for fidelity. I am sure we crave for experience much more than men."

      The Marquis helped himself to a muffin and considered the point. There were many times when Marcia's conversation troubled him. He was by no means an ill-read or unintellectual man, only his studies of literature had been confined to its polished and classical side, the side which deals so much with living and so little with life.

      "Are you preparing for a new work of fiction, Marcia," he asked, "or are you developing a fresh standpoint?"

      "Dear friend," she declared, lightly and yet with an undernote of earnestness, "how can I tell? I never know what I am going to do in the way of work. I wish I could say the same about life. Now I am going to ask you a great favour. I have to attend a small meeting at my club, at the other end of Piccadilly, at half-past five. Would you take me there?"

      "I shall be delighted," he answered, a little stiffly.

      She went presently to put on her outdoor clothes. The Marquis was disappointed. He realised how much he had looked forward to that quiet twilight hour, when somehow or other his vanity felt soothed, and that queer weariness which came over him sometimes was banished. He escorted Marcia to the car when she reappeared, however, without complaint.

      "I see your name in the papers sometimes, Marcia," he observed as he took his place by her side, "in connection with women's work. Of course, I do not interfere in any way with your energies. I should not, in whatever direction they might chance to lead you. At the same time, I must confess that I have noticed with considerable pleasure that you have never been publicly associated with this movement in favour of Woman's Suffrage."

      She nodded.

      "I should like a vote myself," she admitted simply, "but when I think of the number of other women who would have to have it, and who don't yet look at life seriously at all, I think we are better as we are. Is it my fancy," she went on, a little abruptly, "or are you really troubled about the return of—of Richard Vont?"

      "As usual, Marcia," he said, "you show a somewhat extraordinary perception where I am concerned. I am, as you know, not subject to presentiments, and I have no exact apprehension of what the word fear may mean. At the same time, you are right. I do view the return of this man with a feeling which you, as a novelist, might be able to analyse, but which I, as a layman, unused to fresh sentiments, find puzzling. You remember what a famous Frenchman wrote in his memoirs, suddenly, across one blank page of his journal—'To-day I feel that a great change is coming.'"

      She smiled reassuringly.

      "Personally," she told him, "I believe that it is