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Cornell University Library
PR4174.B56W13
A waif's progress.
3 1924 013 441 435
Cornell University
Library
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http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013441435
A WAIF'S PROGRESS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR,
Crown 8vo. 2S. each.
Goodbye, Sweetheart!
Scylla or Charybdis ?
Cometh up as a Flower.
Mrs. Bllgh.
Joan.
Second Thoughts.
Belinda.
A Beginner.
Dr. Cupid.
Dear Faustina.
Not Wisely but Too Well.
Nancy.
Red as a Rose is She.
The Game and the
Alas!
Candle.
Foes In Law. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Lavlnia. Crown Svo. 6s.
London : Macmillan & Co. , Ltd.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS
BY
RHODA BROUGHTON
Eontion
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1 90s
All rights reserved
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
A waif's progress
CHAPTER I
" Well ? " she asked.
From the other end of the breakfast- table he
returned — " Well ? " and for several minutes this
exchange of monosyllables seemed going to be the
end — it was not quite the beginning — of the con-
versation that had sprung from a letter, and to the
perusal or reperusal of that letter Mrs. Tancred
had returned.
" Here is another instance of Felicity's talent
for laying her cuckoo's egg in other people's
nests ! " she said presently with a dryish smile.
" There never was a woman who did more good
— by proxy — than your sister."
Mr. Tancred gave as much acquiescence as
lay in silence to his wife's indictment. If you
are credited with having married a woman for her
money, and can never for one whole minute forget
it, you must acquiesce in many statements from
which you differ far more widely than he did
from the one in question.
e I B
\y J.XXX- k_/ J. xA.v^ vj jL^j.^i-'k.
" Why cannot she keep the girl herself ? "
" Because Tom has put his foot down."
This time both smiled ; laughed out, indeed.
" That convenient foot ! "
" It does not usually come down very heavily
upon a pretty woman."
" Who says that she is pretty ? " — with a touch
of quickness.
" I thought you did, or Felicity — or — some
one.
" I do not think that there is any allusion to
her personal appearance. Now, what has become
of my spectacles ? " — embarking on that exasperat-
ing chronic chase which becomes in time the only
species of sport left open to the elderly.
" I believe that you can see perfectly well
without them," rejoined he, always irritated by
anything that emphasized the fifteen years of
disparity in age between them. " What was the
use of my giving you those tortoise-shell eye-
glasses, if you never use them .'' "
" Silly, affected things ! " replied she, un-
graciously, yet with a something of contradictory
kindness in her eye ; and at the same moment
discovering her missing spectacles, unaccountably
astride upon her own high well-bared brow, she
searched for, found, and read aloud the following
sentences —
" ' You remember my old acquaintance, Lady
Ransome ? ' "
" Was that the woman who drank eye-wash
and methylated spirit if she could not get anything
else to quench her thirst ? "
" She did it once too often. Do not interrupt
again.
" ' You remember my old acquaintance, Lady
Ransome ? She died under rather disastrous
circumstances three months ago.' "
" Methylated spirits ? " he threw in, disobedient
to his wife's hest, and she avenged herself by
beginning all over again.
" ' You remember my old acquaintance. Lady
Ransome ? She died under rather disastrous cir-
cumstances three months ago. I had done what I
could for her, but it was one of those hopelessly
inveterate cases of degradation for which no
human aid is of any avail ; and she died in a very
distressing way last August. Tom went to the
funeral.'
" I remember hearing that he was the only
person who did, besides the two sham widowers
who followed her in crape and weepers to Kensal
Green." The interruption this time emanated
from the reader herself.
" ' Tom went to the funeral, and came back
full of pity for the girl whom I believe to be
really Lord Ransome's daughter. We may as
well give her the benefit of the doubt, at all
events, though his — Lord Ransome's — family
decline to believe it, and refuse to do any-
thing for her in consequence. As her family
repudiated Claire ' "
" Who is Claire .? "
" Why, the girl, of course ! No, it is not. I
see further down that the girl is Bonnybell. Claire
must be the mother.
4 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" ' As her family repudiated Claire when first
she took to evil courses, the poor child has not
a relation in the world to turn to, nor a roof
to cover her. At the present moment she is with
us, and as far as I am concerned might remain
so indefinitely ; but, then, Tom put his foot
down.' "
Again one of the Tancred couple smiled with
rich amusement.
" ' Under the circumstances it has struck me —
I throw out the suggestion for what it is worth —
thdit you might like to have her as an inmate, at
all events for a while.' "
« We .? "
" Yes, that is Felicity all over ! But let me
finish.
" ' She is as gay as a lark ' (^gay as a lark,
when her mother died three months ago ! ) "
" Died of drink ! " amended he, with that sense
of justice which is always more inherent in man
than woman.
" ' Gay as a lark ' (dear feeling little thing ! ),
'and I thought, and think — indeed, it is one of
my chief motives for making the proposal '
(ahem !), ' that the presence of a bright young
creature would bring a great accession of cheerful-
ness into both your lives.' "
"Are we so uncheerful .? " asked the man, in
a tone whose vexation was coloured with mis-
giving.
" A childless home is never very merry,"
replied his wife, shortly.
Tancred's eyes dropped to the object upon
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 5
which his hand was already resting, the head of
the wire-haired fox-terrier, whom his mistress
spoilt most, but who liked his master best. The
husband had long ceased to wince outwardly,
though never inwardly, when one of the two
great " raws " of his life was touched. He had
married Camilla, and he had not given her the
children for whom she hungered in that passionate
greed, only increased by years and improbabilities,
with which some women crave for offspring. And
now they had been married for fifteen winters, and
Camilla was fifty years old.
" You see that I was right ; there is no allu-
sion to her personal appearance."
" No, it was my stupid mistake."
"Though she is 'as gay as a lark,'" — hark-
ing back rather grimly to the phrase that had
displeased her — " she may also be as ugly as
sm.
He thought it unlikely, but did not say so.
" Bonnybell ! " continued she, derisively.
" "What a cruelly ironical name to inflict^-' Bonne
et belle ' — when she is probably neither the one.
nor the other ! "
"Let us hope for the worst, at all events,"
said he, gently caustic.
" Bonnybell ! She was probably named after
one of the two sham widowers' racehorses."
" I thought you calculated that she dated from
the pre-widower period."
"Ay, so she must have done. Then she was
named after one of Lord Ransome's hounds. If
you remember, he kept the Mudshire for several
6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
years before a barbed-wire fence broke his worth-
less neck for him."
Tancred had known Lord Ransome a litde ;
and the question crossed his mind as to whether
it was worth while saying that his neck was not
more valueless than his neighbours'. He decided
that it was not. If you possess a wife with very
decided opinions and a very trenchant mode of
expressing them, why not let her enjoy them in
peace .'' You may, at least, make her these trifling
amends for the irreparable injury you have done
her.
" If we refuse the girl," he began slowly, after
an interval spent in cogitation by two of the party,
and in mufiled remonstrances at the unusual delay
in brewing his slopbasin of weak tea on the part
of the third — " if we refuse the girl, what is the
alternative ? "
"None, apparently, but the streets."
" Poor little devil ! "
" I do not think that that consideration need
sway us ! " retorted she. " If we let ourselves go,
a blind philanthropy might lead us to try and
unpeople the Haymarket ; and, moreover, it would
not come to that. I have never known Felicity
fail in getting hold of fingers to pull her chestnuts
out of the fire for her, and she will not now."
He agreed with this view of his sister, and
said so ; and then there was a pause for refresh-
ment, the slopbowl claim having become too vocal
to be longer ignored.
" She is probably as full of hereditary vice as
she can hold," resumed Camilla, presently stooping
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 7
to test with her forefinger the temperature of Jock's
tea. " No, my dear boy, you are not telling the
truth, it is not too hot. Drink on both sides,
immorality on both sides."
" I never heard that Ransome was particularly
immoral."
" The presumption is in favour of it ; they
mostly go together."
" And we will not give him the benefit of the
doubt, eh .? "
^' Drink on both sides, immorality on both
sides, selfishness on both sides, extravagance and
folly on both sides," enumerated she, checking off
the unknown's heritage upon her fingers.
" Poor little devil ! " in a tone of even pro-
founder compassion than had conveyed his former
utterance of the phrase. " If your view is correct,
she starts in life pretty well handicapped, doesn't
she .? "
"Poor little devil!" repeated his wife, in a
key of some exasperation. " I think that we
should be the poor little devils if we consented to
receive such an inmate."
" But there is no necessity for us to do so. It
is easy to say no."
" Easy to say no to Felicity ? Easy for you
to say no to any one ^ "
Again he winced, though this time, if every one
had their due, the wince should have been hers.
Had she forgotten, or was she impossibly alluding
to the one pregnant occasion on which he had not
had the strength of mind to say no .'' Her voice,
high and decided, cut into his strangled thought.
8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Whichever way we settle It, must be at once
— to-day. If she does not hear to the contrary
by return of post, Felicity is quite capable of
taking silence for consent, and packing the girl
off by the next train, as she did her pet inebriate
to Mrs. Holmes last summer."
" I will leave you to decide," he answered,
with an effort at flight, contemptible since it was
unsuccessful.
" You will do nothing of the kind," answered
she, seizing him by the lapel of his coat, as he
passed her on his way to the door. " You will
not shift the responsibility of the whole affair upon
me.
" What do you feel like .'' " he answered re-
signedly, not struggling in a clasp which had more
of mastery than endearment in it, " Surely it will
affect you infinitely more than it will me."
Seeing him thus docile, she loosed her hold.
" At my age," she said, " all changes in the frame-
work of one's life seem to be for the worse."
" Then let it be no," he answered, though not
again endeavouring for freedom, since he felt that
one step in that direction would merely mean
recapture.
" And yet," she said, a sort of wistfulness that
he too well knew coming into her hard light eyes,
" the house is very silent ; but for Jock it might
be a house of the dead sometimes."
"We are not very rowdy, I suppose," he
answered, following the ' ups and downs of her
thought with a rueful gentleness.
" We are a dull couple," she returned, veering
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 9
round instantly on the other tack ; " unquestion-
ably we are often dull — childless people must
always be so — but if we admit this equivocal ele-
ment into our lives, we may become something
much worse than dull."
" Then do not let us admit it."
"On the other hand, there would to you at
least be the undoubted advantage of the com-
panionship of some one nearer your own age."
He laughed softly, rallying her. " Felicity is
foisting a young thing of five and thirty on us,
then, is she .'' "
Camilla laughed also, a little unbending in her
own grim way, but recapturing gravity and the
argument almost instantaneously.
" Granting that she is eighteen or twenty in
actual years, she is probably a hundred in expe-
rience of evil."
" In short, you are afraid that she will take
the bloom off our young innocence," returned he,
flying for refuge to irony, and resolutely leaving
the room this time, followed by Jock, who, replete
with tea, no longer saw any object in pretending
that he liked his mistress best.
CHAPTER II
"The last day, and almost the last hour ! T am
thoroughly sorry," said Felicity, and she was
nearly sure that she meant it.
" Sorry Is a weak word to express what I
feel ! " is the heartfelt answer. " Where should
I have been now, I should like to know, but for
you and Mr. Glanville ? "
" Where indeed ! "
The speculation as to Bonnybell's hypothetical
whereabouts silenced both ejaculators for a mo-
ment or two, until a glance at the clock telling
Mrs. Glanville that her typewriter would be back
from luncheon in ten minutes, and that she her-
self would have to return to multifarious work in
her business room after the same time limit,
hurried her Into new final tendernesses.
"You know how much I should have liked
to keep you permanently."
" Oh yes, yes, of course I do."
Possibly the extreme fervour of this reas-
surance was due to a something, if faintly, yet
uncomfortably self-suspicious, In the tone with
which the hostess made a statement In whose
truth that hostess yet almost believed.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS n
" We have not much time, alas ! " — leaving a
branch of the subject dimly felt to be a little
ticklish with some alacrity — " and I want, before
you go, to give you a tiny carte du pays ; you may
find it useful."
" It will be adding an item to your long, long
list of kindnesses."
" In the first place, my sister-in-law is much
older than my brother."
The hearer, with the black hat and inky
gloves of imminent departure upon head and
hand, lifted a tiny face of wistful interest in this
first recorded fact from the pouf at Felicity's
feet, upon which a slim body, limp with affection
and regret, had thrown itself She at once pen-
sively commented upon it.
" If she makes up well, I dare say it does not
show much."
Mrs. Glanville broke into a horrified laugh.
" Camilla make up ! My dear child, wait till you
see her."
" I shall not have long to wait " — very
lugubriously.
" Well, as you have not much time, I must
hurry on. She is, as I say, much older than my
brother."
" Yes."
"And she never could have been handsome."
" Poor, poor fellow ! " replied the girl, in a
tone of the most good-hearted compassion. " But,
no doubt, he has his consolations."
Her hostess looked down upon the peculiarly
innocent face at her knee with an expression
12 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
in which the proportion of amusement to aghast-
ness was considerably less than it had been at some
of her protigSes utterances.
" Bonnybell," she said, very gravely, " I really
dare not ask what you mean ! " Then reflecting
that the few minutes left her would be scarcely
long enough to correct a moral standpoint on
which three months' intercourse had effected so
little real change, she hastened on. " Camilla is
a right down good woman, but her manners leave
something to be desired. In point of fact, she is
a good deal soured — embittered is perhaps the
better word — by having no children. Unluckily,
she is one of those baby-maniacs, who never can
reconcile themselves to being childless. 1 cannot
personally understand the feeling ; there seems to
me something animal about it."
" I am very fond of children," replied Bonny-
bell, thoughtfully ; " but when I marry, I shall
have only two."
"You will have what God pleases to send
you, I suppose," rejoined Mrs. Glanville, sharply.
The other lifted her dove's eyes. " More
than two are destructive to the appearance."
The hostess gave a sort of gasp. Of course,
considering all things, the poor young creature
was not to be blamed ; but would not she herself
have done more wisely to have in some degree
prepared Camilla for the contents of the singular
parcel she was sending her ? Did " gay as a
lark " at all cover the area occupied by this re-
markable young person }
" My dear child," she said, in a tone largely
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 13
tinged with misgiving, " if you open the cam-
paign at Stillington by remarks of that class, I
shall have you back here in London by the first
train to-morrow."
" That will be clear gain, at all events."
Mrs. Glanville did not assent.
" Camilla would be outraged at a girl of
eighteen alluding to her future family at all ; and
if you made her the announcement that you
have just made to me, I am convinced — yes,
I am convinced — that she would take you
by the shoulders and turn you out of the
house ! "
There was a minute's pause, for Miss
Ransome to assimilate this agreeable prophecy.
Then she said in a voice of profound gloom —
" I believe that I shall spend my life in being
turned neck and crop out of houses ; and I shall
never know what I have done ! "
" You will, at all events, be able to give a
good guess in this case," rejoined the other.
" I shall be able to avoid saying that one
particular thing," returned Bonnybell, accepting
her snub with the most perfect sweetness, but in
a rather hopeless tone ; " but I shall, no doubt,
say hundreds of other things which I shall find
out too late that a jeune jille ought not to have
said. 1 have not the least idea what sort of
things the right kind oi jeune fille does say."
This wonder was expressed with apparently
such perfect good faith, and such deferential ask-
ing for light, that Felicity — never very hard-
hearted, and possessed, in this case, by some
14 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
slight inward compunction — abandoned her
judicial attitude.
" Between ourselves," she said, in a confidential
tone, " there is very little that the jeune fille of
to-day does not say ; but Camilla is not of
to-day."
"And is he — Mr. Tancred — not of to-day
either ? "
Felicity thought a moment. " Edward } No,
Edward is not of to-day either. Edward is of
no particular day ; if anything, he has strayed
out of the Middle Ages."
The phrase, as applied to the person in question,
had no particular meaning ; but Mrs. Glanville
admired her brother, and it sounded picturesque.
"We shall make an odd jumble of periods
between us 1 " — still more hopelessly than before.
" Oh " — with a sudden burst of clinging affection
— " oh, how I wish that Mr. Glanville had
allowed you to keep me permanently, as you were
so dear and kind as to want to do."
Miss Ransome's delicate black arm was flung
across her protectress's knee, and her head and
attendant black feathers were flopped down upon
it ; but she lifted her face soon enough to notice
the expression that her aspiration had called up
in Felicity's countenance.
Mrs. Glanville had quite as soon that her
young friend's eyes had remained hidden, being
conscious of a slight shade of confusion on the
dial-plate of her own emotions, and a qualmy
question flashed across her brain as to whether
it was possible that in the very tail of the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 15
despairing orbs lifted to her, full of such un-
mistakable sorrowful gratitude, a tiny spark of
contradictory mischief and mirth could lurk.
Was it conceivable that the child — she was a
terribly sharp child, and her vicious upbringing
had made her still sharper — could have pricked
the bladder, and detected the pious fraud of
Tom's supposed eagerness for her departure ?
" You must not run away with the idea," she
said, with more flurry than approved itself to
her own judgment — "you must not run away
with the idea that Tom dislikes you."
" Oh no, I am sure he does not " — with
courteous hurry.
The little uplifted face was so touchingly,
unresentfuUy sad, that Felicity decided with
relief that the impression of hardly detectable
amusement in it, received by her a minute ago,
must have been an optical delusion.
" We shall both miss you very much," she
said with sincere cordiality. " When you are not
impossible, you are as nice a little girl as one
is likely to meet in a summer's day. I have
given you an excellent character, and all that you
have got to do is to live up to it."
" 'To live up to it ! " repeated Bonnybell.
" Will you mind telling me what you have said
about me ? "
Misgiving as to the height of the moral
plane upon which Miss Ransome was warranted
to move so obviously dictated this inquiry that
Felicity laughed a little.
" I have said that you are as gay as a lark,
1 6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to begin with. By-the-by " — with an air of
bethinking herself — " if I were you I would not
be too gay, just at first. Of course, I thoroughly
understand that it argues no want of feeling on
your part, and that the rebound is perfectly
natural ; but Camilla is very conventional."
Miss Ransome bowed her head submissively
under the blast of these somewhat contradictory
counsels.
" Gay, but not too gay," she said, softly ;
and once again an uneasy faint impression of
infinitesimal mirth went like a whiff through
Mrs. Glanville's consciousness.
" I have told her how invaluable you have
been to me at the ' Happy Evenings.' There
I shall miss you cruelly " — with an unmistakable
accent of sincerity. " Your knack of holding
the girls' attention and keeping them amused is
really very remarkable ; so different from poor
Miss Sloggett " — with a disgusted backhander
at a subordinate fellow-worker in the vineyard
of philanthropy.
" Is Mrs. Tancred like you ? Like you, I
mean, in giving up her life to — to doing good ? "
" She is not as active as she might be," replied
Felicity, with a modest regret at the poor figure
cut by her sister-in-law in the path of mercy.
" Camilla does not come forward as she ought
to do ; she has that silly horror which I cannot
understand " — and, indeed, no one has ever
suspected Felicity of it — "of seeing her name
in print ; but I believe " — magnanimously — " that
in her humdrum way, and with the greatest
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 17
precaution, lest any one should hear of it, she
does a fair amount of good."
" And Mr. Tancred ? Does he do good
too ? "
" Oh yes, of course, whenever he has the
chance. He is on the Stock Exchange 1 "
There was no unconscious irony in the juxta-
position of the two statements.
-" On the Stock Exchange ! " repeated the
hearer, thoughtfully.
" He was determined not to be dependent
on Camilla — to have a profession — so he went
on the Stock Exchange. I do not know that it
suits him particularly well ; but anyhow it gives
him something to do."
" I see," after a short pause ; "Mr. Tancred
is away most of every day, then ? "
« Yes. Why shouldn't he be ? "—rather
quickly.
" Oh, no reason at all ; I was only thinking
how nice and sensible it was ! "
After another pause, " Does he never go to
race-meetings .'' "
" Never."
It took Miss Ransome two or three moments
to assimilate this last, to her, incredible piece of
intelligence ; then she put another question.
" Do they never come up to London ? "
" Oh yes, they are always in town from
Christmas to Easter. They are not people who
do much in the way of society, but in any case
that would not affect you this year in your deep
mourning."
c
1 8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Bonnybell's lip quivered, as if in preparation
for a tear or two, but they were relentlessly
snubbed back by their owner,
" Of course it would not."
" But you shall help me with my Happy
Evenings again," continued Felicity, perceiving
the droop in her young friend's spirits, and with
bowels genuinely yearning over her ; " and the
Fancy Fair for the All England Cataleptics will
be coming off in May. You shall help me with
that too. Oh, I am not joking ; I really cannot
say how much I shall miss my dear little right
hand ! There is the carriage," as the butler entered
to announce that the brougham was at the door.
" This is really too sad 1 How I do hate the
word ' good-bye ! ' "
There were tears of real regret in Felicity's
eyes, and a quiver in her voice, as she explained
that if the wind were not so cold she would
accompany her -protigie to the hall door ; and that
she would say good-bye for her to Tom, who
would be so sorry to have been out at the
moment of her departure. But as it happened
Tom had no need to be sorry. Tom was not out.
As the long black slimness set its narrow foot on
the last step of the stair, Tom emerged from the
smoking-room.
" I am coming to see you off. 1 will jump
into a hansom, and be at Paddington before
you," he said with a carefully lowered voice.
" You will do nothing of the kind," came the
precipitate answer, " I mean " — with a dove-like
gentleness of correction of whatever was harsh
A WAIFS PROGRESS 19
in her first utterance, " that there is no place so
odious for saying good-bye as at a railway-station."
" It shall be as you wish. God bless you,
dear ! "
Tom's heart was as large as his waistcoat, and
there was a tear in his blue eye. It was still
trembling there, as he turned from the street door,
whence the neat green brougham was no longer
visible, to face his wife, who, remembering
a forgotten last word, had run downstairs just
too late to utter it.
" You are not out ! How silly of you, with
your bald head, to expose yourself to an east
wind."
" I wish that you would not rub my bald
head quite so freely into me before the servants,"
returned he, with less gratitude than exasperation,
retreating into his lair.
" And I wish," retorted she, " that you had
not compelled me, by your silly sentimentality
about her, to banish that poor dear homeless little
creature."
And then they both felt better.
CHAPTER III
" I CANNOT think why she is coming by such an
early train," said Mrs. Tancred, referring to a
note less blackly bordered than she thought it
ought to be.
" Perhaps Tom has put his foot down," re-
turned her husband.
" She spells brougham phonetically, as if it
were a besom." After a moment, " What on
earth shall I do with her between tea and
dinner time ? "
" Tell her to ' rest.' Is not that the proper
thing ? "
" Pooh ! at eighteen they never want to rest."
" Shall you only send to meet her at Swinston,
or go yourself ? "
He had tried to make the question as colour-
less as possible, but had not been able quite to
keep out of his tone a slight indication of bias
towards the more welcoming course.
" I shall send. I have no wish to be seen by
any chance member of my acquaintance who may
happen to be on the platform with a young
member of the demi-monde sobbing in my arms."
Edward Tancred received this fiat in silence ;
A WAIF'S PROGRESS ii
even the shrug with which he greeted it was an
inward one of the spirit alone, and in which the
shoulders took no part. Perhaps the rebuke
implied in his muteness or the stings of her own
conscience might have suggested to Camilla that
she had rather overdone the brutality of her last
speech, for though her next utterance was not
amiable, the key in which it was pitched was
distinctly less trenchant than its predecessor's,
" I hope she will not think it necessary to kiss
me. Of course she will not wish to do so " — Mrs.
Tancred had no illusion as to her own destitute-
ness in the matter of charm ; her husband some-
times thought that life would be rather easier if
she had — " but she may think I expect it."
" If she does, and it happens indoors, so that
nothing compromising is involved, I hope you
will be equal to the occasion."
There was that something of lightly mocking
in his tone which, as Camilla knew, implied the
nearest approach to disapproval he ever permitted
himself of any of her words or actions.
" Perhaps you would like to go to meet her
In the brougham yourself.'' "
" I shall not be back from London."
The matter-of-fact answer to a question in-
tended to be a scoff took the wind out of Mrs.
Tancred's sails, which for a moment or two
flapped idly against her masts. But presently a
new zephyr swelled them.
" It is a leap in the dark, if ever there was
one ; and at my age the taste for such agilities
is pretty well extinct."
22 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
There was such a sombre misgiving in her
tone, that his own changed at once to that of
the kindest, patientest reasoning.
'* Don't you think you are making rather a
mountain out of a molehill ? The girl comes as
an ordinary visitor. Supposing the worst, that
you — we " (correcting himself) " do not care much
about her, the visit ends, she goes, and whose
bones are broken .'' "
Mrs. Tancred shook her head. *' Having
once undertaken her, I shall put it through,
unless, of course " — with her little dry laugh —
" you set your foot down, like Tom."
"The comparison jarred upon him. She had
meant it to do so, as a relief to her own ill
humour, but not being one of those fortunate
people who can indulge in pet vices, like indiges-
tible dainties, without after ill eiFects, she expiated
her ebullition by an instantaneous remorse, which,
being unexpressed, did neither of them any
good.
" Felicity gave one absolutely no data to go
upon " — drawing from her pocket the brief note
inserted in Miss Ransome's letter by the war-
ranter of that young lady's general soundness,
" ' Gay as a lark.' " She paused after the quotation,
and Edward had a nervous dread that she was
going to add the oft-repeated gloss, " When her
mother died three months ago," but for once
she abstained. " ' Gay as a lark, and has been
of invaluable assistance to me in my "Happy
evenings." ' Not a word else ! not a hint as to
her character, her tastes, her faults ! "
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 23
" Perhaps she will be of invaluable assistance
to us in our happy evenings."
It was said in a perfectly innocent voice, as
offering a plausible suggestion ; but his wife
knew that it was his revenge for Tom's foot.
" B-r-o-o-m ! Yes, there can be no mistake
about it ! " said Mrs. Tancred, recurring to and
carefully verifying poor Miss Ransome's stumble
upon the path of orthography, and forcing her
husband to verify it too.
He laughed with contemptible male leniency.
" Do you think she will arrive riding upon it,
like a witch ? " His slight mirth was not
infectious.
" I think that to our other treats we shall
have to add that of educating her."
" Oh, I would not bother about that ! " replied
he, departing from his golden rule of never
offering advice to that consort, who had had so
much longer a time to learn wisdom in than had
been his portion. "I would not bother about
that. Let her ride through life upon her broom,
if it amuses her."
"That may be your happy-go-lucky way,"
replied she, crisply, " but it is not mine."
Happy-go-lucky ! He repeated the epithet
over to himself several times, in the dogcart, as
he sent his horse along the flat old coach road,
liberal of margin, to Swinston station ; while the
idle question put itself to his intelligence, whether
a compound word, of which neither of the com-
ponent parts was true, could be true as a whole ?
Happy-go-lucky. He was neither " happy " nor
24 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" lucky." Could he, therefore, be truly said to be
happy-go-lucky ?
There was another traveller on the same line
of railway, in the afternoon of that day, who
made the hour's journey from Paddington in a
train that preceded the express which brought
Mr. Tancred back from the City, and whose
reflections, despite the lark-quality with which she
was credited, were not much more rosy-tinted
than his own.
" I wonder," she said to herself, as her great
eyes, that were no longer under any compulsion
to look grateful, or affectionate, or docile, in the
matchless freedom of an empty railway-carriage,
followed the yellow-brick squalors of the sliding
slums. " I wonder how long it will be before
Edward puts his foot down in the same way that
Tom did ? Will it be a matter of months or
weeks ? Judging from the portrait good old
Felicity drew of her sister-in-law, I should say
it might be minutes ! If old Tom had not been
such an ass, I might have stayed with them for
ever and a day, and it was not a bad berth !
What asses most men are ! and all what brutes !
No, not all I Old Tom is not a brute ! How
kind he was on the day of the funeral during
that horrible drive to Kensal Green ! But what
an ass ! 'I shall be at Paddington before you !
God bless you, dear ! ' "
She chuckled a litde, and the lark — a very
sophisticated town lark — began to re-awake in
her.
Presently, having the carriage to herself, she
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 25
left her seat and flitted to the opposite window,
then back again, standing up to command the
landscape better. Not that she had any taste for
landscape, an appreciation of the beauties of Nature
being as much a matter of education as spelling or
ciphering, and possessed as little by the peasant
as the dog. She knew that Italy or Switzerland
expect to be admired ; but that the tame, Alpless,
templeless Berkshire, through which the G.W.R.
was carrying her, could command any approbation
would never have occurred to her, even though
November seemed reluctant yet to tear from the
pleasant countryside its red and sombre garment
of autumn.
But though gifted with no love of the pictu-
resque, Miss Ransome was endowed with plenty of
alert curiosity, which grew sharper as the little
diamond -set watch at her wrist told her that she
must be nearing her destined station, and caused
her to scan with a keener interest the " country
seats " — in advertisement phrase — which here and
there were indicated by a lodge visible from the line,
or a gable peeping through red woods. She had
not been informed as to the distance from Swinston
to Stillington Manor. Any one of those half or
quarter revealed houses might therefore prove
to be her future home. If not, it might prove to
be the home of a neighbour and acquaintance.
Any one of those neighbours might possess an
eldest son.
" Marriage is the only possible outlet for
me," she said to herself, relapsing into gloom, as
her eye rested appraisingly upon the brand-new
26 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
machicolations of a pretentious mansion on a low
hillside. " It is an odious one, yet there is no
other ; but whatever old Felicity may say, I will
not have more than two children. If I have not
a very good settlement, I will have none. Why
should I bring any poor creature into the world
to be a wretched little adventurer like myself? "
" Miss Ransome."
Never had the voice of her butler made an
announcement less grateful to Mrs. Tancred's
ears. They were prepared for it, as the sound
of the horses' hoofs had penetrated to the morning-
room, where she sat alone before her tea-table.
But that sound had not been permitted to lift her
spectacles — the pair most hated of Edward's soul,
with the thickest rims and the largest goggles —
from her book. She would do her duty by the
expected imposition when once it was laid on
her shoulders, but that she should manifest
empressement or pleasure in assuming the burden
so brazenly shifted by Felicity from her own to
Camilla's back would be an offence at once against
truth and decency.
Though Bonnybell had heartily dreaded and
disliked the idea of her change of milieu, it had
never occurred to her that the introduction to her
new patroness would make her feel shy. Felicity
kissed her upon arriving. A fortiori, Camilla
would wish to kiss her, since in Miss Ransome's
experience the less attractive a human countenance
was, the more anxious it was to approach itself to
one's own. She must be prepared for this, must
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 27
appear willing, if possible more than willing, to be
embraced.
This had been her plan of campaign during
the five-mile drive in the brougham, while clank-
ing under the stone portico of the hall door, while
passing through the evidently much-sat-in large
hall, and being ushered into the morning-room
opening out of it ; but no sooner had her feet
crossed the threshold of this latter, and seen the
tall gauntness that faced her slowly rising from
its seat and deliberately replacing its spectacles
in their leather case, and awaiting her without
one conciliatory inch of advance towards her,
than, with lightning speed, she realized the im-
possibility of her project. Attempt to kiss that
icy mask ! Her buoyant step faltered, her ideas
grew confused, only a hazy notion that her plan
was a good one, and that she must carry out as
much of it as was possible, still occupying her brain.
With merely this dim guide for her conduct,
and becoming aware that she was now quite
close to the grey-haired iceberg ahead, she
dropped a little French curtsey, and laid a small,
respectful, butterfly kiss upon the bony fingers
held grudgingly out to her.
Mrs. Tancred snatched away her hand, though
more in a sort of ferocious mauvaise honte than
from any more hostile motive. It was so very
seldom, throughout her fifty years, that any one
had kissed Camilla's hand. Edward had done
so, fifteen years ago, as a graceful unmarried lad
of twenty, in innocent acknowledgment of long
hospitalities, and she had thereupon straightway
28 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
proposed marriage to him — that marriage which
he had been too young, too grateful, and too
much taken aback to decline.
Was it any wonder that, having such asso-
ciations with the courtesy in question, Mrs.
Tancred should mark her disapprobation of it
with what, to the uninitiated, might seem needless
emphasis ?
To Bonnybell this miscarriage of her plan of
action at its very outset brought a momentary
paralysis, and she stood dumbfounded, while an
awkward remorse for her reception of what,
though a silly and misplaced, might have been
a well-meant civility, impelled CamOla to make
a conciliatory remark to the effect that she was
afraid the tea was cold.
" I like it cold," replied Miss Ransome,
with the sweetest promptitude and the most
instantaneous rally.
" You like it cold ? " repeated Camilla.
The repetition of the polite assertion was
merely because that ferocious shyness of hers did
not suggest to Mrs. Tancred any more original
observation ; but the tone in which it was conveyed
made Miss Ransome say to herself that " the old
woman was even more terrible than she had
expected." No sign of this reflection appeared,
however, on the dial-plate of her innocent face.
" I mean that I do not mind its being cold.
I like to take it just as it comes."
" Is that the way in which you like to take
things generally } " asked the other, unstiffening
into an involuntary smile.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 29
It was difficult to look at anything so small,
so dewy, so palpably made of rose-leaves as
Bonnybell's face without smiling ; and in addi-
tion to this impulse shared by the generality
of her species, Mrs, Tancred had for her own
portion that extravagant admiration of beauty
which, unmixed with any tincture of spite, is the
doubtful appanage of the frankly ugly and really
good among women.
" I think one has to, more or less, don't you
think ? " replied the rose-leaf with a pretty diffi-
dence, as one not competent to hold an opinion
with any tenacity in the presence of a person so
far superior in wisdom to herself.
With a passing shudder at the slipshodness
of the grammar displayed in the answer, coupled
with a slight sense of approbation of the defer-
ence of its tone, and an inward reflection — some-
what the reverse of that lately made by its object
— that the new arrival was not quite so impossible
as she had expected, Mrs. Tancred thawed a little
further, and put an almost friendly question as to
the welfare of the couple whom her visitor had
just left.
" Mrs. Glanville has a slight cold," replied the
other, with the glad glibness of feeling herself
on safe ground, " but taking care of it, and I
do not think it will be much. She caught it as
we were coming out of the ' Happy Evening ' last
Thursday."
For a moment Mrs. Tancred hesitated.
Should she seize this early opportunity for be-
ginning the projected education of her charge,
30 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
and point out to her that it is grammatically
impossible to come out of a " Happy Evening,"
or should she let the slip pass ? Her rejoinder
showed that she had chosen the weaker-minded
alternative.
" Felicity tells me that you have been in-
valuable to her at the Recreation Hall."
" I was so glad to be able to do any little
thing to show my gratitude to her."
The statement was certainly not untrue, but
as certainly that was not the reason for its utter-
ance. Veracity being a goddess who had never
occupied a very high position in Bonnybell's
Pantheon, she said it because she thought that
the jeune fille, up to whose character she was in
these surroundings bound to try to live, should
and would say it.
"Felicity would have liked you to prolong
your visit to them indefinitely ? "
There was a faint accent of asking in what
would otherwise sound like the assertion of a
fact, and Miss Ransome stole a wily glance at
her hostess. Did she know about Tom, or was
she trying to find out ?
Twenty-four hours later the girl would not
have put this question even to herself, having
long ere the expiration of that time learnt how
little the indirect or circuitous entered into
Camilla's methods. Here was need for wary
walking.
" She said so."
" Then the objection came from Tom ? " —
with an accent of very thinly veiled incredulity.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 31
But the cautious young stranger was not to
be surprised into any such admission, nor did
the fact that Felicity's version of the circumstances
departed somewhat widely from strict accuracy
make it at all less easy to her young protigh to
back it up.
" Of course, it must be a nuisance for any
man to have a third person always en tiers with
him and his wife," she replied with a judicious
generality. Then, divining from something in
Mrs. Tancred's face that the ground was not
very firm under her, she skipped off it with a
masterly agility. "That was what made it so
overwhelmingly kind of you and IVIr. Tancred to
let me be sent here."
The humility of the wording, with its plain
implication that the speaker could never be re-
garded except as a burdensome parcel to be
transferred from one pair of reluctant hands to
another, and the guilty feeling that such had been
precisely her own attitude of mind towards her,
combined to mollify yet further the person at
whom they were aimed.
" Edward and I are too old married people to
have Tom's eagerness for a tite-a-tete" she said,
with a hint of what Bonnybell suspected to be
irony, " but " — with a smile that, though, like
everything else about her, was unbeautiful, was
yet not hostile — " I think it was kind of us ! "
CHAPTER IV
"They must have a chef^'' said Bonnybell after
dinner to herself, as she and Camilla began to
tread back their path through the long enfilade
of rooms that led from the dining-room to the
library, where, accompanied by ceiling-high books,
the small family apparently spent its evenings.
"The cuisine is better than the Glanvilles'. I
fancy that philanthropic women very seldom have
good cooks. Yes, they have a chef I What a
fool he must be to spend two-thirds of the year
in the country ! "
As she and her hostess stood by the fire. Miss
Ransome's reflections took another turn.
" What a gloomy room ! Not a single photo-
graph about ! How much better those old ancestors
would look taken out of their frames and draped
in light-blue velvet, as poor Claire did ours before
she sold them ! "
Mrs. Tancred, with an evident intention of
industry, sat down by a green-shaded electric
lamp, and drawing a roomy work-basket towards
her, extracted from it a large piece of homely
plain sewing.
" Ought I to set a footstool for her, or is she
32
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 33
the kind of person who likes to do everything
herself? Ah, it is as I thought," as the diffi-
dently offered support was rejected with the
words —
" Thank you, my dear ; but my legs are long,
and I have no wish to have my knees knocking
against my nose."
" I am so sorry," returned Bonnybell, humbly ;
" it is a silly habit that I have got into ! Claire
never could bear to be without a footstool ! "
Mrs. Tancred's seam remained suspended in
mid air, the needle arrested in its journey, while
through her spectacles her eyes, which looked
far too penetratingly keen to need them, flashed
in shocked displeasure at her visitor.
" Claire ! " she repeated in an awful voice,
"Who is Claire?"
" Claire was my mother," replied the girl,
quailing, and crying to herself in a passion of
self-reproach that she had made a colossal blunder
on the very threshold ; that, of course, the jeune
fille does not allude to her mother by her Christian
name.
" And you speak of her as Claire ? "
"It was her own wish. She could not bear
me to call her mother ; she thought it dated her
— of course, it did."
Mrs. Tancred was silent for a minute or two.
It would be unseemly to address to the daughter
of the departed the vigorous epithets which alone
sprang to her own lips in connection with that
lady. Presently a suddenly risen hope set speech
free again.
D
34 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" If those were Lady Ransome's views, she
probably did not care to have you much with
her."
" Oh yes, she did — sometimes," replied the
girl, slowly, and with a painful weighing of each
word by the jeune fille standard. " She liked us
to be taken for sisters ; and when the light was
not strong there really looked very little differ-
ence in age between us."
Again there was a pause, the potent reasons
of her deadness and her motherhood being
scarcely potent enough to keep within the barrier
of Mrs. Tancred's lips the expression of her
estimate of the scandalous author of Bonnybell's
being. Her next question in the constraint of
its tone evidenced the violence done to her
inclinations.
" You were educated at home } or were you
sent to school ? "
" I was at school in Paris for a while."
" For long ? "
Bonnybell hesitated slightly. In point of fact,
her sojourn in the Pension de Demoiselles in
question had not outlasted a month ; but " Toute
v6rite n'est pas bonne a dire."
"For some time."
" And then Lady Ransome found that she
could not get on without you ? "
Reprobation of the implied selfish disregard of
her daughter's welfare had forced itself uncon-
querably into Camilla's voice ; and Bonnybell,
who, with all her numerous faults, was not devoid
of generosity, found herself unable to leave her
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 35
questioner in what would be for herself an
advantageous error.
"It was not CI — my mother's fault," she
explained slowly ; " Madame le Roy asked her
to take me away."
" Asked her to take you away ? "
Again for a moment Bonnybell hesitated.
Should she " give away " her parent, whom, after
aU, nothing could now harm, and tell the truth,
seeing that it was on getting wind of that parent's
antecedents, and the estimate in which she was
held by her countrymen and countrywomen, that
Madame le Roy had requested the removal of
her daughter } It was clear that at the present
moment the girl's new patroness was labouring
under the perfectly natural error that it was for
misconduct of her own that the young creature
before her had been ejected.
" She thinks that I was kicked out for
some amourette ! Well " — the hesitation had not
lasted more than five clock-ticks — " let her go
on thinking so. If I had stayed another month,
I dare say I should have been, and poor Claire
is dead, and cannot take up the cudgels for
herself."
" Asked her to take you away ? " Mrs. Tancred
had laid down her spectacles ; but though their
glowering roundness had been frightening, the
unshaded rebuke of the eyes behind them was
distinctly more so.
The repetition of the sentence had taken so
plainly interrogative a tone that it must needs be
answered. In this case the jeune fille idea was of
36 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
no help. The jeune fille could never have been
turned out of a boarding school, and Miss
Ransome must be guided by her own lights.
Since truth was never a sine quA non with her, she
might as well make out as good a case as she
could for herself.
" I believe that Madame le Roy thought I
was not making much progress — that another
system of education might suit me better."
A long practice in the art of fibbing had given
Bohnybell a high degree of proficiency, and no one
that heard this unhesitating utterance, and saw
the unflinching though modest directness with
which her eyes met those of her catechist, would
guess how much larger a draft upon the girl's
imagination than her memory the explanation had
made.
Camilla listened, uncomfortably puzzled. The
reason given sounded ludicrously inadequate, yet
the child's whole air and manner was that of one
telling the simple truth.
Mrs. Tancred had never had the advantage
of living with a really good liar ; and so dismiss-
ing all doubt of the unlikely fact recorded, her
mind made a transition to the cynically amused
speculation as to what the alternative system of
education could be that taught its pupil to spell
the word " brougham " as poor Miss Ransome
had so lately been innocently guilty of doing,
Bonnybell's thoughts meanwhile resolved them-
selves into the two distressed self-queries, " If she
goes on like this much longer, shall I be able to
help contradicting myself ? " and, " Is it possible
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 37
that Edward is going to have the brutality to leave
us to ourselves for the whole evening ? "
It was not possible ; or, at least, the dreaded
contingency did not happen, and Edward himself
followed soon, though saunteringly, upon the heels
of his guest's fears.
He stood for a few minutes with his back to
the fire, not looking particularly at either of his
ladies, but rubbing his foot gently over Jock's
reverse, that dog sharing the belief of many of his
race, that the really civil way to receive a friend
is to roll over on your back, and flourish all your
four legs in the air at once, like waved hands, at
him.
Bonnybell drew a breath of relief. How much
lighter the atmosphere had grown since he came
in ! and one might relax the strain to remember
what one's last sentence had been, and to be sure
that it did not contradict one's last but one ! Yet
it seemed destined to be an evening of tete-h-tites.
Though the one whose prolongation she had
dreaded was happily at an end, JVIiss Ransome
so'on found herself involved in a second one with
her host himself.
Mrs. Tancred having been given a low-voiced
message by the butler, from which the words
"water-bed," "gratitude," "invaluable" dimly
emerged, a message whose tail was brusquely cut
off by the recipient of it, but which resulted in
her hastily leaving the room, a peril of a different
kind from her former one must await the visitor.
" Of course, now that she is clear ofi^, he will
begin to make love to me ! Was I ever alone in
38 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
the room for five minutes with a man without
his beginning to make love to me ! Tom began
the first evening. Happily I am a good way
ofl^!"
But apparently the manners and customs of
the shady debauchees to whom Miss Bonnybell's
upbringing had acclimatized her, and from whom
she generalized, formed no criterion for the conduct
of the gentleman in whose company she now
found herself. He did not change his attitude
or his occupation by an inch, his foot still gently
rolling the beatified Jock slowly to and fro, after
the method that experience had taught him to be
most acceptable. Neither did he speak.
Edward Ransome had never much flow of
small talk, going mooning through that life whose
circumstances forbade his ever giving open ex-
pression to his real feelings or true thoughts, in a
sort of dreamy twilight of silence and self-sup-
pression. He ought to say something to the
dazzling anomaly that had seated itself by his
dull hearthstone, but for the life of him he could
not think what.
It was the anomaly who, surprised and
relieved at his entire apparent innocence of the
kind of enterprise with which she had credited or
discredited him, saved him the trouble of initiating
a subject.
" Am I sitting in your chair ? " A movement
just sketched with hasty grace towards leaving the
seat she occupied accompanied the question.
" Oh dear, no ! " in courteous distress at the
suggestion. " I have not got a chair."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 39
" You do not say so ? "
The words were nothing, but the tone carried
such a delicate implication of interest in anything
relating to his habits, coupled with a still more
delicate fear of carrying that interest into intru-
siveness, that Edward felt vaguely gratified.
" I mean that I have not any special chair
which makes me inclined to growl as Jock does
when another dog approaches the sacred confines
of his basket.
" Thank you for relieving my mind ! " she
answered gratefully. " I thought I might have
taken it without knowing — one makes such
stupid mistakes out of ignorance ! "
There was a meek but not exaggerated thank-
fulness for his reassuring information in her whole
air ; and as if encouraged by his indulgence to
gain further enlightenment, she went on —
"But Mrs. Tancred has ?"
" Has what ? " He had lost sight of her
queries in a dreamy enjoyment of her prettiness.
" Has a special chair ? "
" Has she .? "
" Hasn't she .? "
Both were smiling ; he at the inquiring turn
of her mind, she at his vagueness. Both looked
at the lately vacated seat, and Bonnybell said
with hesitating solicitude —
" I hope it was not anything annoying that
took Mrs. Tancred away."
He shook his head. " It often happens.
The village and the parson are perfectly con-
scienceless in their calls upon her."
40 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
There was what sounded like a regretful and
rather affectionate admiration in his voice. Was
it possible that he could like his old Gorgon ? It
was, at all events, safer to go upon the supposition
that he did, and to shape one's remarks accordingly.
" Mrs. Glanville spoke with the deepest admi-
ration of Mrs. Tancred's work," the girl said in
a very respectful tone, and executing her piece of
embroidery upon Felicity's real utterance with the
deftest speed and readiness.
" Did she indeed .'' " replied he, in a key of
high surprise, while his lazy eyes flashed a look
at her, of whose keenness she had not supposed
them capable, and which would not have dis-
graced Camilla's own. " And yet their methods
are not much alike."
"You mean that Mrs. Tancred does not get
up on platforms — does not speak in public ? "
In her perfect darkness as to which mode of
influencing the human race, his wife's or his
sister's, most recommended itself to the husband
and brother. Miss Ransoihe stole out her feeler
with cautious colourlessness.
"No, my wife does not get up upon plat-
forms."
There was no emphasis laid on the denial of
Camilla's claim to puffed and self-advertised use-
fulness, and the answer might seem as colourless
as the question, yet after its utterance no vestige
of doubt remained in Bonnybell's mind as to
which of his female philanthropists' methods
Edward preferred. Perhaps he did not care much
about either. Perhaps he was indifferent to or
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 41
averse from philanthropy at all. She might as
well ask him. Men were so much easier to ask
questions of than women.
" You do not do anything of the kind your-
self ? "
"Of what kind?"
" Oh, good works — that sort of thing."
She expected his answer with a flattering
hanging on his words, but a slight frown creased
his forehead as he replied —
"No, I do not do any good works — or bad
ones either. 1 am a mere cumberer of the
ground."
There was a slight pause ; she commenting
inwardly upon his phrase, or rather upon a part
of it — " no bad ones either." I know how much
of that to believe. " Qui s'excuse s'accuse ! "
Her amiable rejoinder, when it came, was gently
playful.
" I see that 1 must not take you at your own
valuation."
The want of an answering smile, and the
averting of his eyes, told her that the topic was
not a gratifying one to him ; that here was one
of the men — almost unknown in her experience
— who did not wish to talk about themselves ;
nor did she suspect that the gravity of his recep-
tion of her feeler was due to the slight sense of
discomfort that one of her late carefully prepared
sentences had produced. Why did she tell that
unnecessary lie about Felicity's admiration of
Camilla's work ? She must have known that
it was one !
42 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
He was glad, and Bonnybell was not as sorry
as she would have expected to be, when the door
opened to admit Camilla. The latter was shortly
followed by men-servants, who laid out a tea-
table— an evident survival from the, to Bonny-
bell, incredible period of Mrs. Tancred's girl-
hood ; and Jock, ceasing to make a fool of himself
on the hearthrug, and knowing that the hour of
pet-dog biscuits had come, trotted confidently
up to the board. He did not know that in the
unprecedented novelty whom he had carefully
sniiFed over, and finally acquiesced in, lay an
enemy to his own peace.
" You do not mean to say that you let him
have it for nothing ? " cried Bonnybell, in ani-
mated remonstrance. "We never allowed our
little Mimi to eat a mouthful without barking
for it."
" Was * little Mimi ' your dog ? " asked
Camilla, in a voice that, though carping at the
silliness of the name, had yet a ring of true fellow-
feeling in it.
" Yes, she was such a beauty. I do not know
what Sir Alg — one of CI — my mother's friends —
did not give for her."
Thorny is the path of virtuous conversation.
People did not talk of Sir Algernon, and she
was within an ace of Claire-ing her departed
parent again, and her audience was strictly silent ;
it expected her to go on, so she evidendy must
continue her narrative, trusting in whatever parody
of Providence had hitherto guided her steps to
steer her safely through it.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 43
" Mimi was twin-sister to the little dog that
always drove in the Bois with Lolotte, sitting up
in the victoria beside her, and dressed in the same
colours and jewels as her mistress."
There was a slight sound as of somebody-
gasping, then a pause, then a question.
" And who, pray, is Lolotte ? "
Upon this query there followed another gasp ;
but this time it came from the causer of the first.
Was it possible that there existed in the civilized
world a benighted being who had not heard of
Lolotte ? — an establishment where she was as
unmentionable as Sir Algy ? The poor young
creature, who became suddenly conscious of the
terrible faux pas which her beautifully shod feet
had taken, threw an agonized glance of entreaty
for help at Edward. " Tou know Lolotte," it said
dumbly ; " for goodness' sake say something, and
get me out of this horrible entanglement." But
Edward maintained a masterly, if cowardly, in-
action.
CHAPTER V
Though early hours — except in the topsy-turvy
sense of seeing the sunrise overnight — had never
entered into the scheme of Miss Ransome's
existence, and she was as little indebted to the
lamb as to the lark for an example, yet never
had clock uttered a more welcome sound than
that single stroke of half-past ten, which made
Mrs. Tancred, as if by machinery, fold up her
large seam, restore it to its basket, and rise from
her chair. The clocks at Stillington struck all
together, for all were true to Greenwich as the
needle to the pole.
" You are probably tired," said the hostess ;
and the guest was reduced to such a jelly-like
state of tremor and self-distrust that she did not
know whether to acquiesce in or disclaim the accu-
sation. If she admitted fatigue, Camilla would
probably despise her ; if she denied, it would
very likely — -judging by her past experience of
husbands and wives — be looked upon as a
manoeuvre for procuring a tite-h-tete with Edward
in the smoking-room. So she answered, with
deferential hesitation —
" Just pleasantly ; nothing to speak of.
Thank you so much."
44
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 45
" Thank me for what ? For telling you that
you are tired ? "
It was a discomfiting way of taking a little
meaningless courtqsy, but at least it ended in
landing Bonnybell in the blessed security of her
own bedroom. For, except that there was nothing
to speak of in the way of eatables and drinkables
provided for the night — Mrs. Tancred being of the
antediluvian race who suppose that people after an
admirable eight-o'clock dinner do not need cold
cutlets or quails to sustain them till morning —
she found herself extremely, roomily comfortable ;
and having got into a dressing-gown, with more
lace and openwork about it than Camilla would
think quite moral, threw herself into an admir-
ably stuffed armchair, to take stock of her own
blunders, and ask herself whether they were
quite irreparable.
" Oh, what would I give for a cigarette ! but
I suppose that that would about finish me.
However many miles off her rooms may be, she
would be certain to smell it, and it is too cold to
smoke out of the window."
Her thoughts went back regretfully to the
many little pleasant evening smokes in old Tom's
den in Hill Street, when Felicity was safely away
at some committee meeting. " It shall be as you
wish. God bless you, dear ! " She laughed out
loud again, as she had done in the train.
Then her reflections took a graver turn. If
it were possible to avoid it, she must not be
turned out of Stillington, as she had been —
however poor, good-natured old Felicity might try
46 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to gloss it over — turned out of Hill Street. To
avoid this undesirable result, one of the first and
most urgent postulates was to ascertain, with
the least possible delay, what topics of conversa-
tion were permissible and what tabooed in this
extraordinary atmosphere of Puritanism and
prudery. If she could make a friend of
Edward, and quietly put her case before him ?
She dismissed the suggestion with a shrug. " If
you try to make a friend of a man, he tries to
kiss you ! " This was a syllogism whose accuracy
she had never had any reason to doubt. Valuable
as enlightenment from a person who had had
fifteen years' intimate experience of Camilla would
be, it was therfefore wiser to abstain from seeking
it, and to work out the problem by one's own
individual lights.
With elbows propped on the old chintz-
covered arms of her chair, and eyes exploring the
fiery caves of a grate as generously roomy as that
chair. Miss Ransome made pass in carefully
scanned procession before her mind's eye the
topics likely to present themselves on the morrow,
sifting and winnowing the few thoroughly sound
ones from among the wilderness of subjects likely,
apparently, if treated with the ease and freedom
which came natural to her, to lead to her speedy
expulsion. " Felicity and Tom ? H'm ! doubtful.
Felicity safe enough ; but Tom ? "
A process of elimination, conducted with a
strictness of which this first beginning was an
example, ended by leaving only three themes
upon which the seal of complete security could
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 47
be set — the weather, the contents of the news-
papers, with the exception of the Divorce Court,
and Jock. Even in his case a rider had to be
added, that under no circumstances was he to
lead up to reminiscences of Mimi. But of the
innumerable multitude of the tabooed, a trio were
four- lined and three-starred. ' Claire,' her own
past : especially anything referring to her educa-
tion, and the demi-monde en bloc.
Having completed, at a late hour of the night,
these dispositions for her future guidance, she
betook herself to a high, wide, and admirable
bed, while still sighing for a cigarette, and vainly
hunting for sandwiches and whisky and soda.
If Bonnybell's conversational infelicities had
disquieted herself, they had produced a certainly
not inferior effect upon one at least — and the
most important — of her two auditors. It was
not often that Camilla reappeared after retiring
for the night, but the occasion was one worthy of
the exceptional, and Edward was not much sur-
prised by her advent in the smoking-room shortly
after he had assumed his smoking-jacket, and
established himself in his accustomed surround-
ings, to face a problem almost as difficult as that
which was engaging Miss Ransome's attention
upstairs. He had rather that his wife had not
broken through her usual habits, having a dim
feeling that he was not ready to cbpe with her,
and a less dim impression that her dishabille was
unnecessarily unbecoming.
Camilla was not one of the women who are
48 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
coquettish with their husbands, nor did she use
any of the little pardonable juggles often in-
dulged in by women who have wedded men
greatly their juniors. Rather did she seem de-
termined to underline and dash the fifteen all too
obvious years that parted her from Edward. In the
early days of their married life he had been wont
gently to remonstrate, but it was now long since
the hair, ruthlessly torn back from the already too
high and bare forehead, and the tasteless, laceless
woollen wrapper, had found and left him anything
but silent and acquiescent.
To-night, the forehead seemed more naked
and the peignoir woollier and drabber than usual.
Mrs. Tancred did not sit down. Evidently no
ease of posture could beseem such a crisis.
" What have we done ? or rather what has
Felicity done for us ^ "
He had risen, with habitual politeness, at her
entrance.
"Is she worse than you expected .? "
" I suppose that I am not imaginative. I
wait for my eye and ear to inform me, before
I realize things."
"Your eyef" His judgment disapproved
the protest, but the impress of BonnybeU's beauty
upon his brain was too strong and recent for him
to be able to help it.
" Oh, I grant you that she is extraordinarily
pretty ! " — with a reluctant note of pleasure in
the fact admitted — "prettier than a person has
any business to be ! " stamping relentlessly upon
that weakness of hers for physical beauty which
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 49
her husband had always felt to be pathetic. " But
what a girl ! "
'■'■Fin de Steele f he asked, snatching at a
phrase which in 1901 had lost its significance,
but which he hoped expressed enough disapproba-
tion to meet the requirements of the case.
" 1 never could see why the end of a century
should justify immorality more than the beginning ;
but what a girl ! what a plane of thought she
moves on ! what a moral standpoint ! "
The man expressed no dissent. He could not
conscientiously take up the cudgels in defence
of Miss Ransome's system of ethics, and to say
anything in palliation of it would do her only
disservice.
" What a girl ! what a milieu ! Sir Algernon
Skipton ! and Mademoiselle Lolotte ! — unnam-
able men and unfortunates ! "
This last well- seasoned sentence did elicit an
" Oh ! " but it was as involuntary as the sneeze
produced by an over-mustarded devil.
" Well, what else can you call Mademoiselle
Lolotte, when she is translated into plain English ? "
Edward did not call Mademoiselle Lolotte
anything else, though a secret flash of amuse-
ment crossed his mind at the application of
the homely word to the magnificent monarch of
the Parisian Half World, as he had last seen
her whizzing past in her motor brougham to
Longchamps.
" You must remember that she has not had
much chance," he said, making his plea with
temperate carefulness.
50 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"Who ? Mademoiselle Lolotte or Mademoiselle
Bonny bell ? "
The juxtaposition of the two names made him
unaccountably angry ; but the habit of self-
government was strong, and did not now fail him.
" I meant Miss Ransome."
Something, however smothered, of what he
was feeling must have pierced through his tone,
or else her own inward monitor rebuked her, for
Camilla rejoined in quite a different key —
" That is true, and you are right to remind me
of it ; but " — with a relapse into consternation —
" What a girl ! She speaks of her dead mother
by her Christian name as Claire ! "
" You can easily break her of that."
" She was turned out of a boarding-school in
Paris ! "
" She told you so ? "
" Yes, in answer to a question of mine about
her education."
" For misconduct ? "
" H'm ! She said that the mistress of the
establishment thought that some other system
would suit her better. It sounds like a lie, and
a bad lie, but she looked as if she, were speak-
ing truth ; indeed, I am almost sure that she
was."
A memory of the air of perfect veracity
with which Miss Ransome had dilated to himself
upon Felicity's immense admiration for his wife's
form of philanthropy — an admiration of whose
non-existence she must have been as well aware as
himself— made it difficult to Edward to endorse
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 51
Camilla's conviction ; but he kept his difficulty, as
he kept most things, to himself.
" If she speaks truth," continued his wife, hold-
ing on apparently with desperation to the one rope
thrown her by this possibility, "whatever awful
facts she may tell us about herself — and, poor
wretch, I suppose that she has not any others to tell
— there will be hope for her, for us ; there will be
some basis to go upon ; we shall know where we
are."
" And even if she does not ? "
The supposition expressed was drawn from
him involuntarily, and no sooner uttered than
regretted.
" Have you any reason for supposing that she
does not ? "
His rejoinder was as disingenuous as his
protegee's would undoubtedly have been.
" I ! Already ! How is that possible ? " His
disclaimer was so completely successful that he
felt compunction, and yet not so strongly as
to regret having put his sleuth-hound off the
scent.
" What were you going to say when I
interrupted you .'' "
" Oh, nothing of any importance. I was only
going to suggest that whatever shortcomings you
may discover in this poor little creature — and
I dare say there will be plenty of them " (he de-
spised himself for the concession, which he knew
to be a bid for his wife's leniency) — " we must
remember her antecedents ; we must try to make
allowances for her."
52 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
She stood for a moment silent before him,
her unbeautiful arms folded in her dull wrapper.
" Yes," she answered dryly, yet assentingly.
" Make allowances I It is a manufacture that for
fifty years I have found phenomenally difficult ;
but you are right ! one has no business to look
for morals and manners in the Stews ! "
He was used to the crudity of her phrases ;
yet now he turned with a quick movement towards
the fire to hide the shudder that her old-fashioned
vernacular, used in its present connection, caused
him ; but the accurate lyre-shaped clock on the
chimney-piece above his head had ticked ten times
before he could face his companion again with a
controlled smile.
"And there is one thing, at all events,
indisputably in her favour."
« What ? "
" Jock has taken a fancy to her."
CHAPTER VI
As Miss Ransome was not aware of having made
even the ally alluded to by Mr. Tancred overnight,
it was with a very self-distrustful heart that next
morning she appeared in the breakfast- room, to
find her host and hostess waiting for her. It was
one of the rules of Camilla's old-fashioned code
of politeness that it is as inadmissible to begin
breakfast without a guest as to go in to dinner
before he or she has appeared, and many a sleepy
visitor had cursed this cruel civility.
Bonnybell had made what appeared to herself
superhuman efforts to keep pace with the detest-
ably unanimous clocks, that apparendy, from
every recess and landing-place in the house,
admonished her of the flight of the minutes.
For Claire and her daughter time had been not.
Her apprenticeship in Hill Street had been neither
long nor strict enough to uproot the habits of a
lifetime; and though she had scamped her hair,
and entirely omitted to underline her eyes, those
eyes informed Bonnybell, on the authority of the
relentlessly ticking accuser that faced her as she
hurried in, that she was ten minutes late.
Edward offered her a choice of excellent
53
54 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
foods, and Camilla suggested that perhaps, for
the future she would prefer to breakfast in her
own room.
She was about to accept joyfully the ofFer,
when, just in time, some inward monitor — or was
it a look on Mr. Tancred's face ? — warned her
that it was sarcastic, and not meant to be taken
seriously.
With trembling thanksgiving at having — and
only by a hair's-breadth — shaved the first pitfall
set for her, she hastened to change the trend of
her response.
" Oh no, thanks, not for worlds ! I think it
is a horrid habit."
Once again Edward looked at her, and some-
thing regretful in his eye made her feel that
it would have been better to have been content
with the refusal of Camilla's ironical offer, and
not to have added the ornamental mendacity at
the end.
Having accepted coffee, and then wished that
she had chosen tea, as being more English and
less reminiscential of foreign ways. Miss Ransome
ate her breakfast in a wary but smiling silence.
Casting about in her mind for a safe and molli-
fying topic, her eye presently furnished her with
one.
" What a beautiful portrait ! " she said, pitching
with inherited bad taste upon the only modern
picture in the room.
" It has no business to be here," replied
Camilla, casting a brief and unadmiring glance
upon the presumptuous intruder among a goodly
A WAIF'S PROGRESS SS
company of Antonio Mores, Cornelius Janssens,
Romneys, and Gainsboroughs, " but my parents
had it hung there, and I have naturally not liked
to move it."
The idea of Camilla ever having had parents,
and not having issued directly from the bosom of
Primeval Night, was so stupefying to Bonnybell
that it kept her dumb long enough for Edward
to throw in, as he did rather hurriedly —
" It is a portrait of my wife by Graves, given
her, when she came of age, by the tenants."
Furnished with this explanation. Miss Ran-
some's eyes reverted to the object of an admira-
tion which had originally been more polite than
founded on conviction, and she chid herself in-
wardly for her stupidity in not at once recognizing
that in the large-featured girl, whose sandy hair
not even a courdy limner had been able to trans-
mute into gold, lay the germ of the grim woman
sitting beneath it. It was not yet too late to
repair her error.
" Of course, I saw at a glance who it was,"
she exclaimed glibly.
No comment followed this brave assertion,
and its utterer thought it safer to go boldly on ;
but the want of conviction that she felt her state-
ment had carried flurried her into a question from
which her more deliberate judgment would have
refrained.
" Is there no portrait of you, no pendant to
this one ? "
The query was addressed and referred to the
host, but it was the hostess who answered.
S6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" At the time that picture was painted,
Edward was exactly six years old. There is a
difference of fifteen years between us."
A slight writhe upon Mr. Tancred's part
witnessed to the failure of his skin to have
hardened itself against what yet must be a daily
pin-prick, and Bonnybell, good-naturedly sorry
for him, and still more concerned for herself at
having floundered into so egregious a fault in
taste, began a precipitate sentence which a look
from Edward's eyes converted into a for-ever
unfinished fragment.
" No one would guess it ! " was the complete
form of the projected lie, but the phrase never
got beyond its third word. In fact, Miss
Ransome left the breakfast-table with not the
slightest remorse indeed for the fibs, complete
and inchoate, which she had perpetrated there,
but with some misgiving as to their success.
It was contrary to what she would have
expected, but yet the conviction came solidly
home to her, as she pinned a veil with careful
nicety over the chastened mournfulness and un-
chastened coquetry of her toque, that Camilla
would be more easy to take in than Edward.
Miss Ransome was pinning on a veil at ten
o'clock in the morning, not because her ejection
had come thus early — though in her own opinion
unlikelier things might have happened — but
because it was Sunday morning, and she had been
told that she was to walk to church with Mr.
Tancred. There was apparently no question of
Mrs. Tancred's attending Divine Service.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 57
" You are not coming with us ? " the girl had
said with an extremely engaging moue of regret.
" But I suppose that you do not feel up to it."
" Up to what ? "
" To the long morning service."
"The long morning service lasts exactly one
hour and ten minutes, and it is not because of its
length that I do not attend it, but because I am
not a member of the Church of England."
" Oh ! " — a little nonplussed by a momentary
inability to think of a suitable comment ; then,
with a quick recovery, " Of course 1 So many
of the oldest families are Catholics."
" I am not a Roman Catholic either ; but if
you wait for me to expound my creed you will be
late for church, and — I do not think that your hat
is quite straight." The words were snubby, but
the speaker relaxed into an unintentional smile as
she evoked them.
Of course, there was not the slightest founda-
tion in fact for Bonnybell's expressed regret, but
there was a certain pleasantness in even the fiction,
in even the false presentment and elusive shadow
of a young thing belonging to one, and concerning
itself about one's comings and goings.
As to IVIiss Ransome, she skipped off, relieved,
and with a humorous inward indignation at
Camilla for not having perceived that her toque's
racy obliquity was intentional.
She found her escort waiting for her under
the stone portico over the hall door, and casting a
rather questioning eye up to a sky that did not
answer very reassuringly.
58 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
*' Have you an umbrella ? " he asked.
Of course she had not, the decorative in
costume always engaging her attention to the
exclusion of the useful. They were already a
couple of hundred yards from the house, and he
answered her suggestion of returning to fetch
one by —
" I am afraid we are already a little late, and
if it comes on to rain I can hold mine over
you.
" Of course he hopes that it will rain ! " was
the inward comment of the innocent creature to
whom this assurance was addressed, and upon it
followed a feeling of wonder at Camilla's rash
confidence, in trusting her husband to a tSte-h-tite
with herself.
But Camilla's belief appeared to be going to
be justified ; for beyond a gravely cautious warn-
ing now and again to his companion to avoid a
puddle, or indication of that strip of road which
the night's rain had left driest, Mr. Tancred
walked along almost in silence, with the width of
the elm avenue between them.
" Perhaps he would think it wrong to make
love to me going to church ! " thought the wary
Bonnybell. " Men have such funny scruples. I
must look out for myself going back."
It was in a hansom while returning from St.
Paul's Cathedral that Tom had first told her that
she could turn him round her little finger. There
was no sign at present of Edward's executing or
intending to execute a like gyration, but it was
always well to be on the safe side, and nothing
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 59
kept dangerous topics better at bay than a little
safe small talk upon unimpeachable subjects.
" You always go to church here, 1 suppose ? "
" Generally. And you ? "
There was a slight demur. To talk about her
own past and its habits formed no part of Miss
Ransome's scheme ; but after a moment's hesita-
tion she answered —
" I went to church a good deal with the
GlanvIUes."
" I cannot at this moment remember who
Felicity's favourite pope is ? "
" She did not generally take me with her ;
she sent me with Tom — Mr. Glanville — instead."
Bonnybell did not think it necessary to explain
that towards the close of her unluckily shortened
stay Felicity had deemed it advisable to alter
this arrangement. Doubts such as she had already
felt with regard to what the Tancreds knew or
did not know of the Hill Street Jiasco hurried her
into a well-sounding expression of opinion.
" I like going to church, of all things."
The turn of the phrase amused him, and,
against his intention, he showed it a little.
" Is it a new sensation ? "
She repented the slip, but her hearer, glanced
sideways at in fleeting apprehension, looked so
lenient, that she took heart.
" We — Claire and I — were not generally up
in time to go to church in the morning, and we
mostly played bridge in the afternoon."
Mr. Tancred gave a slight shudder of thank-
fulness — if a shudder can ever be thankful — that
6o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
this glimpse into the young stranger's past had
been revealed to him, instead of to his wife. To
his thankfulness was added a prick of conscience,
reminding him that he ought to chide the girl
for her glib use of the forbidden Christian name.
But he did not ; and the civil, unrebuking atten-
tion with which he listened deceived her into fresh
admissions.
" Sometimes Sir Algy took us down on his
motor to Richmond or Maidenhead."
This time the hearer's shudder was a shudder
indeed.
" You liked that ? "
" It was no question of liking," she answered,
with a lightning-quick realization that she had
made a false step, and that for the future " Sir
Algy" had better remain in the extreme back-
ground of her conversation. " I had to go ;
Claire would have been dreadfully hurt if I
had objected."
There was a moment's pause. He must brace
himself to the effort, odious and anomalous as it
was, to tutor her.
"Would you mind — I must apologize a
thousand times for my presumption in making
the suggestion — but would you mind not speak-
ing of Lady Ransome by her Christian name ?
I do not mind it in the least myself" — yielding to
the relief of an emphatic assertion — " but it might
shock some of these strait-laced people down here.
I am not sure " — very reluctantly — " that my wife
would like it."
" I am sure she would not," replied the object
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 6i
of this rebuke, with a great candour, which would
have disarmed her admonisher, if he had ever
been armed. " In fact, I saw it by her manner
last night. Of course, I ought not to call my
mother ' Claire,' but it slipped out. The habit of
a lifetime, you know. Well, * C'est plus fort que
moi !
" Such a long lifetime, too ! " returned he,
with a gentle mocking of her absurd air of
longevity.
" I should have been more on my guard
with Mrs. Tancred," continued she, in anxious
explanation ; " but with you I fancied it did not
matter."
He found a rejoinder to this speech difficult.
He ought to have conveyed to her that he had no
wish to be set on any different plane of intimacy
with her from his wife, nor the least intention of
being drawn into conniving behind Camilla's back
at what he knew that she disapproved. But long
before he had found, even approximately, a form
into which to cast this necessary snub, they had
reached their destination. The church, standing
on a little eminence above the slow midland river
that slid through the park, was, from its small
size and original destination, rather a chapel to
the great house than a parish church.
" Is the music good .'' and do we come out
before the sermon ? " asked his charge, whispering.
He had to reply in the negative to both
questions, and the slight but amusing twist that
she gave her features on receiving his answer
made him not as alive as he ought to have been
62 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to the knowledge that she would not have dared
to make that grimace In Camilla's presence.
The Tancreds had a small side gallery,
entered by a private door in the church, set apart
for them, where for generations they had wor-
shipped In comfortable apartness, owners and
guests — with a superior view of the congregation
— In front, and servants ranged In decorous rows
behind.
To-day, as Edward had foreseen, they were late,
and — the good old days of waiting for the
entrance of the " Wicked Man " by the parson
being gone — it was upon an assemblage of bent
heads that Miss Bonnybell's cautiously roving
eye alighted. What a sparse congregation ! and
what an immense space separated her from Edward
when each was ensconced in his and her distant
corner of the long seat. That space was obvi-
ously Intended to be occupied by a numerous
progeny — Edward and Camilla's family. She
gave an irreverent Inward chuckle at the thought
of a row of prim little boys and bony girls
fashioned in Camilla's image.
Then a panic seized her. Was a visible smile,
produced by this tickling Idea, showing itself on
her face, to be seen now that everybody was
standing up again ? At once she composed her
features to an expression of devout melancholy,
which, being — as she had not a glass whereby to
regulate the amount — a little overdone, made
Edward pityingly reflect, when he occasionally
glanced at her during the sermon, that, despite
that playful gaiety of disposition which broke out
A WAIF'S PROGRESS St,
every now and then, her terrible past had written
its name indelibly upon her tiny features.
Those veracious indicators allowed themselves
to relax a little from their pious gloom, as their
owner lightly trod her homeward way, and cast
about for something suitable to say regarding the
service. If she could also obtain a little useful
information by the way no harm would be done.
" What a dear little church ! "
" Yes, it is rather an interesting specimen of
Transitional."
" Built in the time of Edward the Confessor,
did you say ? "
" Well, not quite " — with a smile.
" And what a nice congregation ! "
" I am glad you think so. But why did they
strike you as so particularly nice ? "
She thought it was a question that he need not
have put, but took pains with her reply.
" Oh, they looked so homely, and attentive,
and — and — un-smdLVt, I liked them so much
better than the London congregation I am used
to. Felicity's ' Pope,' as you call him, has all the
mondaines and demi-mondaines too at his feet."
" But I thought you did not sit under Felicity's
Oracle ; I thought you told me that you usually
went to church with Tom."
Miss Ransome wished, with a momentary im-
patience, that her companion's memory for her
statements was not so good, as it might lead to
inconveniences in the long run, but she answered
readily —
" Latterly, Felicity usually took me with her.
64 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Tom often had a cold or an engagement on
Sunday morning."
She laughed ofF further inquiries with her
airy cynicism, and having the Ijest reasons for pre-
ferring the role of questioner to questioned, began
an indirect catechism concerning the congregation,
whose motive Mr. Tancred did not suspect.
" It all seemed so patriarchal ; everybody looked
like tenants and farmers, and people of that
class. I suppose your neighbours have churches
of their own to go to ? "
"John Drake occasionally bicycles over to
Morning Service."
"John Drake ? " She looked across the road at
him with a sudden alertness of interest. Did John
Drake sound like the name of the South African
millionaire who was to pilot her out of her present
slough of dependence and manoeuvring to the
odious but indispensable anchorage of marriage }
" Who is John Drake ? Is it very benighted of
me never to have heard of him } "
The desire to keep his boots clean stiU ap-
parently held in check the desire that Edward
must experience to be near her, and it was across
the width of the drive that his answer reached her.
" Not in the least ; it would have been odd if
you had. He is agent to a man who has a property
near here."
An agent ! Miss Ransome had a distinct sen-
sation of disappointment. But agent to whom f
Perhaps her chance of promotion was only set one
step further off.
" I dare say he will turn up to luncheon to-day.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 65
My wife is always glad when he does. She thinks
he has not enough to eat at home."
" Why has not he enough to eat at home ? "
" I dare say he has ; but Camilla is convinced
that when all the ten children are helped, there is
not much left of the leg of mutton." {T'en
children !) " Poor chap ! " continued Edward ;
then, checking his expression of compassion,
"though I do not know why I pity him. He
probably gets quite as much out of life as the
rest of us " — with a smile. " He is a fair shot, and
he used to play the 'cello a bit, but he has given
that up ; and I think that is nearly all about him."
" How monstrous of anybody to have ten
children ! " she said with the shocked accent of
a philanthropist hearing of a great crime.
He did not feel inclined to discuss the subject
with her ; and his silence recalled her to the con-
sciousness that the turn of her phrase was not that
of the jeune fille.
" Agent to whom, did you say ? "
" I do not think I did say ; he is agent to Sir
Frederick Milward."
Ah, now we are beginning to get at some-
thing more promising ! Sir Frederick Milward !
— a well-acred baronet, perhaps, or preferably an
industrial millionaire, knighted for judicious hos-
pitalities in high places.
" Is he nice ? "
" Oh, fairly ; but they are scarcely ever here.
His wife is a neurotic ; and the place — it is a
dreary barrack at the best of times — is empty for
ten months of the year."
66 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
In profound discouragement, Miss Ransome
desisted from her queries. What a disgusting
neighbourhood ; everybody married, eating gory
gigots h I'eau, and breeding like rabbits !
At luncheon Mrs, Tancred took away her
guest's appetite for the moment by asking her what
the sermon was about, but dealt more gently
than might have been expected with her total
inability to reply, letting her off with the ironical
hope that she had enjoyed her nap, and adding
with that habitual grim justice which sentenced
herself as uncompromisingly as others —
"You might fairly ask why, if I wished to
know, I did not myself go to hear it ? "
" I should be very much interested if you
cared to tell me," replied the culprit, with meek
untruthfulness.
" I do not think you would," rejoined the other,
bluntly. " Anyhow, I have a creed, though I am
quite sure that you would not make head or tail
of it."
Bonnybell received with joyful acquiescence
this unflatteringly couched reprieve from a lesson
in theology ; and without the least inward or
outward murmur the announcement that Camilla
would not be visible before teatime. Later on she
learned that it was the prosecution of her mys-
terious cult that kept Mrs. Tancred in austere
study and Stoic meditation through the long
hours. Though her husband did not share in
her solitary devotions, it at first looked as if he
were going to be as invisible as she.
A sense of desperation laid hold of the young
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 67
stranger on finding herself left alone, with the
whole house, rich in artistic and historic interest,
it is true, to range over, but with, in all pro-
bability, not a living soul to exchange a word
with for two and a half mortal hours. She
filched some violets and a tube-rose out of a
vase, and pinned them upon her smart black-
ness, but she had to stand on tip-toe to get a
good sight of herself in the beautiful Venetian
mirror, evidently hung with a view to its own
becomingness, not for the convenience of "rash
gazers ; " and the whole mancEuvre, though she
prolonged it by practising a variety of expres-
sions that might come in useful by-and-by upon
her face, did not occupy five minutes.
From among the wealth of books, new and
old, that strewed the table, she picked up one, whose
yellow paper back " faisait esp6rer des choses,"
only to throw it down in disgust, since a very
slight skimming of its pages proved it to belong
to the literature of the jeune fille ; and where a
French novel is innocent, it is innocent with a
vengeance.
She walked to one of the long windows.
Should she go out? She decided not. Rain-
charged clouds hung over the ruddy trees of the
park. There was not the slightest chance in those
miles of walks, whose beginnings she saw stretch-
ing hopelessly away in their odious privacy, of
meeting any one not belonging to the place,
and if you had to endure boredom it might as
well be a dry and warm as a wet and cold one.
She tried the pictures. They were all hopelessly
68 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
good, some dusky, some mellow, glowing and
glooming from the harmonious dull-green brocade
of their background. Why on earth didn't
they sell them, now that there was a " boom " in
these dingy old masters, and hang something
worth looking at on their walls? Her mind
reverted admiringly to the canvases — how un-
like these ! — that had adorned " Le Nid," Claire's
villa at Monaco.
Miss Ransome had not considered all her
mother's methods commendable, but surely her
taste in pictures was perfect. Where had they
all gone to now, those charming specimens of
modern French art — " Le Bain," " La Surprise " ?
Her disparaging contemplation of the picture
at which she was staring was broken in upon by
the voice of Edward.
" It is hung too high," he said, not guessing
the spirit in which she was gazing. " I told
Camilla so, but she is not fond of change."
" People of her age seldom are, I suppose,"
returned Bonnybell, radiant at her interrupted
solitude, but at once feeling that she had said the
wrong thing.
" We have always thought it a Dierick Bouts.
Camilla's grandfather brought it from Bruges,"
he went on, in a tone that seemed to put him
further away from her than his first remark had
done. " Of course, when we sent it to a Winter
Exhibition at Burlington House, the critics
pronounced it a copy, but we took leave to
disbelieve them."
"I am sure you were quite right," rejoined
A WAIFS PROGRESS 69
she, with outward emphasis and an inward wonder
why any one should care to discuss the paternity
of such a grotesque old croute.
Apparently her acting was all too good, and
took him in.
" Since you are fond of pictures," he said,
" perhaps you will let me show you some rather
good portraits in the morning-room. They are
not all by any very well-known masters ; but
though their interest is chiefly historical, they are
not badly painted."
She acquiesced gratefully. Any change from
her late forlorn condition of being thrown on her
own resources must be for the better, and if she
pretended to be interested In his old daubs, she
might be more likely to retain his company.
They had reached the morning-room, and
Tancred held back the heavy curtain from the
nearest window, to let a larger measure of the
niggard daylight of a November afternoon fall
upon the object he was exhibiting.
" That is Sir Thomas Overbury ; it was given
by him to a cousin of his who married an ancestor
of my wife's. That" — indicating another portrait
— " is Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. There is a
grim irony in hanging them cheek by jowl, isn't
there .? "
"Very grim," returned she, and called in-
wardly upon her gods for help in enabling her to
disguise how little she knew why it was grim, or
why there was any question of Irony.
" And that is Somerset's wife " — pointing to a
good female portrait by Van Somers. " I always
70 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
think she has such a deceptive face ; one would
never read her story in it, would one ? "
« Never."
This was perfectly true, since Bonnybell had
not the foggiest notion of what the illustrious
murderess's story was.
" It was taken when she was Lady Essex."
" Oh yes, of course."
The " of course " was redundant, and a
mistake. It made him look at her in slight
surprise, and with that look dawned upon him
the fact that never before had Miss Ransome
" heard tell " of any one of the three notorious
personages to whose effigies he had just introduced
her.
CHAPTER VII
After that, being a merciful man, Edward let
her get off the historico-artistic gridiron, upon
which he had been innocently grilling her. He
showed her no more pictures, nor, indeed, any-
thing else except his smoking-room, in which she
exhibited a lively, and this time perfectly un-
feigned interest, and where her intelligent in-
quiries as to the brand of cigars favoured by him,
and her discriminating knowledge of the subject
in contrast to her abysmal ignorance of the former
ones, taught him that hers had not been a past of
mere cigarettes. She had nourished a faint hope
that he might have invited her to share a friendly
whiff there and then, but it was clearly not to be.
Instead, he gently ejected her. " Of course, the
old camel would smell it," said the disappointed
young creature, inwardly feeling a sensible relief
in this ingeniously insulting play upon the name
of her latest benefactress.
Edward had escorted her back to the very spot
where he had found her, opposite the calumniated
Dierick Bouts ; and with despair she saw, or
thought she saw, in his eye an imminent intention of
leaving her. What could she do to arrest him ?
71
72 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Rush at once into some entanglingly interesting
subject which would rob him of that wish to
escape which it was so incomprehensible that he
could ever have nourished ? Ask him why he
married Camilla ?
She was saved from a remedy which would
certainly in its results have proved worse than
the disease, by the object of her solicitude.
" I am afraid," he said, looking first com-
passionately at her and then rather helplessly
round the room, as if in puzzled search among
its wealth of beautiful objects and inviting books
for something capable of amusing her — " I am
afraid that you will be very dull all by yourself"
The inevitable civil falsehood — inevitable, at
least, to the ever-lying Bonnybell, followed.
" Oh no, I love being by myself."
"Really.?"
" Yes, really ; that is to say " — in terror that
he might be obtuse enough to believe her — " that
is to say, I love it generally ."
The implication that she did not love it on
this particular occasion was so piteously apparent,
that humanity forced him to throw a rope to her.
" What do you think about going out ? "
She glanced through the window. It would
have been much more consonant with her views
of the right way of spending Sunday to have
sat blowing delicate clouds through her nose and
picking his brains over the smoking-room fire,
but that was a blue rose.
" What do you recommend ? " she asked with
a smile that looked persuadable.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 73
" Isn't it rather rash ever to recommend any-
thing to anybody ? "
Mr. Tancred's propositions were mostly put
interrogatively. He had not enough value for
his own opinion to assert anything with dogma-
tism, having fifteen years earher set up so robust
a self-contempt as still showed no signs of wearing
out.
"Be rash, then." She was still smiling
anxiously, divided between a lurking fear of mud
and a horror of solitude.
"I wonder," he suggested, still tentatively,
and eying doubtfully the towny elegance of her
garb, "whether you would care to walk with
me as far as what we call the Dower House ? "
" Is that where you keep your dowagers ? "
she asked playfully, but with an inward mis-
giving as to the proposed treat being "good
enough,"
" It is where Camilla's people used to keep
them," replied he, with that careful dissevering
of himself, which Bonnybell so often afterwards
noticed, from his wife's possessions ; " but as she
is the last of the Tancreds, it will not be needed
again."
"The last of the Tancreds!" repeated she,
with an accent of surprise. " I thought that
Tancred was your name .'' "
"No," he answered in that ill-at-ease voice
with which he — and that as rarely as might be —
alluded to his marriage, " I gave mine up when
I married."
"I hope she made it worth your while,"
74 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
was the worldly wise reflection of the listener ;
but on her sweet little face appeared only the ex-
pression of an intuitive sympathy. The subject
was evidently not a much-relished one ; and yet
it would be disagreeable to her companion to see
that she had discovered the fact ; it must be
gently glided away from.
" So I am to be taken to see an empty house
— four bare walls ? " she pouted, with a charming
protrusion of her nether lip.
He laughed, in sheer irrational pleasure at
the prettiness of the contortion.
"On the contrary, the friends to whom
Camilla has lent it while their own house is being
rebuilt find themselves inconveniently thick upon
the ground."
" Are there ten of them ? and do they live
upon gigots h Veau ? " cried she, alluding to what
he had told her of the fiill-quivered land-agent
on their way home from church.
"No, there are only three young Aylmers —
only two at home, unless Toby came back last
night."
"Toby? Who is Toby?"
" Toby is the precious only son."
That decided her. "I should like it of all
things ! " she cried. " May I come as I am, or
must I make myself frightful, ^ FAnglaise f " She
held her arms straight down a little way from
her sides and " invited inspection."
" I think, if you go as you are, the brambles
in the wood will not leave you many of those
jingly things."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 75
"The wood!" repeated she, with a sudden
clouding of the brow.
Being much more innocent-minded than she,
and accustomed to much more cleanly company,
he had not the dimmest suspicion that his mention
of the harmless coppice in question had re-aroused
her misgivings. They had been almost com-
pletely lulled by his demeanour hitherto ; but
had he been acting all this while ? Had his cool
and distant friendliness — so improbable in the face
of all her experience of men — been assumed only
to lead up to this ominous wood ? It could be
safely said that with not one of Claire's and her
own former intimates would she have for an
instant thought of trusting herself in a shady
grove.
The thought that his apparently harmless
proposition implied an intended enterprise of
the usual sort inspired her with no particular
disgust. He would only be acting after his kind.
All men were alike. This formula, from which
she had hitherto had no cause to make any ex-
ception, covered with its contemptuous generality
her whole masculine acquaintance, actual and
possible.
" Well, does the wood frighten you ? " he
asked, with a slight and Riost unsuspicious laugh
at the perturbation and doubt written in her
face. "What do you think will happen to you
m it r
If she answered him truly — which, to do her
justice, was the last thing that she had ever any
temptation to do — he would probably think it
76 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
necessary to pretend indignation, and go off in a
huiF without her, so she temporized.
" It only just struck me that possibly I might
be out too late ; that Mrs. Tancred might want
me.
"Camilla never wants any one on Sunday
afternoon," returned he, with a sort of compas-
sionate amusement at the idea of his wife ever
" wanting," or doing anything but groan under, the
society of her litde mcubus ; " and besides, it was
her own suggestion."
There was no more to be said, and, remark-
ing to herself in derisive gaiety, that "There
is no fool like an old fool," Miss Ransome
skipped off to make grudging modifications in
her costume.
"Toby would have preferred me as I was,"
was her final verdict on her own reflected image ;
" but I have no doubt that I am good enough,
and too good for him, as I am."
The Dower House stood in the park, sundered
by a mere green mile from the great house, so
that the departed dowagers had been able clearly
to view the scene of their ended importance,
and to contrast their successors' methods un-
favourably with their own. It was of such roomy
proportions as to suggest the idea that it had been
planned by some foreseeing lady, providing can-
nily for her own days of deposition. Not having
been porticoed and stone-faced, as its parent-
building had been in the days when you were
compelled to inhabit a sham Grecian temple, or
forfeit your self-respect, it retained those modest
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 77
Tudor charms of old red brick and twisted
chimney - stacks, which, fashion having happily-
wheeled them round again into favour, might
chance to remain unmutilated during our little
day.
The dreaded " wood " was nothing more than
the skirt of a large covert, and was easily traversed
in five minutes. Although a cautious inquiry as to
its length had elicited this fact, Miss Ransome
quickened her pace as she entered the shade,
which the still adhering leaves on the trees, and
the quickly lessening daylight of a November
afternoon, rendered thick and almost more than
dusk.
Her companion noted with innocent surprise
her nervous haste, and again asked her what she
was afraid of, adding, with perfect unsuspicious-
ness that he himself was the cause of her fear —
"There is rather a boggy place just ahead
of us in the path ; I must have it looked to.
Shall I give you a hand ? "
She refused softly, but with such decision
as provided him with a lazy sense of entertainment
at the independence of her spirit, which was only
equalled apparently by her absolute indilFerence
to, and unconsciousness of, any of the sights and
sounds of Nature. There was nothing very strik-
ing, it is true, in a Berkshire park — "as flat as a
denial or a pancake " — on a winter afternoon, and
he should not have been surprised that the lighdy
speaking voices of birds, whose songs were long
since over, should hit unnoticed her sophisticated
ear ; but that the glorious colours which still
78 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
stained the noble trees, that the wonderful eye-
heam which the sky — smoke-coloured all day-
shot from under lifted lids in good night to
whitening grass and copper and rust-tinted
bracken, should be apparently entirely invisible
to her, gave him a slight shock. He pointed out
to her one superb effect of interlacing tints, but
did not repeat the experiment.
She was too civil and too anxious to please
not to respond with a perfunctory superlative
" Yes, too delightful ! " but in a moment had
dropped back into her chatter about people, a
chatter which circled round the family to whom
she was on her way to be introduced, and which
contained exhaustive, though circuitous, inquiries
as to why " Toby " was " precious." She must
know before his presentation to her why and to
what extent "Toby" was "precious." Was it
merely the usual dull British adoration of the
solitary male of an over-feminine family which
made him so ? Or was it that he was heir to
something so considerable as to render his life of
importance to his family stem ? Also, why were
they rebuilding their house ?
By the time she had reached the nail-studded
oak front door of the Dower House, both
questions were set at rest in her mind. The
house was being rebuilt, because, through the
carelessness of a housemaid, it had regrettably
been burnt down ; happily, however, the original
plans had been found, and it was being rebuilt,
stone for stone, as Sir John Vanbrugh had first
erected it.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 79
Bonnybell had never heard of Sir John Van-
brugh as either architect or playwright, but she
ejaculated fervently, " What a blessing ! " and
reckoning up mentally the sum of the information
given her, said to herself, with a thankful heart, as
she followed the servant into the hall, that Toby
was well worth her nicest attention.
CHAPTER VIII
" oh comme je regrette mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite et le temps perdu."
The planting of Miss Ransome's siege-train could
not be at once taken in hand, as a rapid gallop of
the eye over the unknown persons that the room
contained showed that not one of them answered
to the description which she had extracted from
Mr, Tancred, with many precautions in the
manner of doing it, of Toby. She made out a
mother at once, and an elder sister, and an elder
sister's friend, though at first not quite sure
which was which of the two latter, and a couple
of elderly men.
As the electric light was not turned on, and
the oaky gloom of the room was lit by only a fire
that, though generous, was unequal in its distri-
bution of light. Miss Ransome did not imme-
diately realize the additional presence of a large
female figure in outdoor dress, pelotonnie in an
armchair in a corner. The sight of a motor-car
at the hall door had shown that there must be
other callers besides themselves, but the girl had
forgotten the unimportant fact. It was brought
back to her with a jump.
80
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 8i
She was halfway through her presentation to
the family, executed in her very nicest jeune fille
manner, when officious servants, turning buttons,
flooded the room with light and set her staringly
face to face with her past. It stood opposite to
her in the shape of the large dim figure — alas !
no longer dim, but revealed in bounteous outline,
pigeon-egg pearls, ruddled hair and sable toque,
which at the sound of her name precipitated itself
out of its chair to look at her.
" Bonnybell Ransome ! Is it possible that it is
Bonnybell Ransome — poor CI — oh, of course ! " —
recalled by the chic woe of the daughter's hat to
the fact of the extinction of that former acquaint-
ance, of whose name nobody, apparently, not even
Lady Tennington, dared now pronounce more
than the two first letters.
For a moment — since this was a contingency
which the most foreseeing could not have guarded
against — Bonnybell stood mute and aghast.
Was there ever such a stroke of ill luck ? Flora
Tennington, who knew all about everything !
Flora Tennington, so intimately associated with
poor Claire's disastrous career — with all but the
last year, that is ! That last year had choked even
Flora Tennington off ! She had held on as long
as she could — one must say that for her — and she
had tried, yes, tried hard to stem the flood of
those dreadful champagnes and brandies and
chlorals. Her failure had been the occasion of
the final rupture, and then she, too, had dis-
appeared. She was not a bad friend, to do her
justice. She had gone on speaking to the
G
82 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
unnamable Sir Algy long after he had sunk quite
out of social sight ; but, all the same, what extra-
ordinary ill luck that she should have reappeared
in these surroundings ! She had always had the
character of being bonne enfant, but she would be
more than human if she resisted the temptation to
tell all she knew — and all was such a very great deal,
even without that last year — of poor Claire ! And
if she did, what, pray, would become of Toby ?
It did not take more than five seconds for this
chain of actual and possible misfortune to dart
through Bonnybell's brain, nor for her to recover
her presence of mind.
" What a delightful surprise ! " she said with
a sweet blush of pleasure, holding out a glad litde
black hand.
The rejoinder was not what might have been
expected.
"Do not put out your hand," cried Lady
Tennington, precipitately ; " she'll fly at you if
you do. Lisa never allows any one to touch
me." If this were true, Lisa must in past years,
if report lied not, have had her paws full.
A low growl, a glimpse of age-whitened
muzzle, and a struggling chestnut-coloured body
revealed the presence, under her mistress's arm, of
a small dachshund. Here was another voice from
the past.
"Lisa ! " cried Bonnybell, hardily putting out
her hand to stroke the little angry, faithful head.
" Is Lisa still alive .? "
There was an affectionate inflexion in her
voice, which Edward, though listening with one
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 83
whole ear to his hostess, caught, and recognized
as an unknown note. Art was non-existent for
her, Nature invisible to her, but she understood
and appreciated dogs.
" And why should not she be alive, pray ? "
inquired Lisa's owner, sharply, her sensitiveness
about her dog's age being even superior to that
which she manifested with regard to her own.
Then, with a reverting to her original key, " And
what, in the name of Fortune, my dear child,
brings you here ? "
The little buzz of greeting was over, followed
by a momentary silence among the rest of the
party. Not a soul in the room but must have
noticed the exaggerated emphasis on the personal
pronoun, and have drawn the inevitable infer-
ence that to meet Miss Ransome in a respect-
able house was an experience that must take
away any one's breath. The wings of the not
yet seen Toby were already spread for flight.
Who could have anticipated that the zgg of that
bright prospect would be addled almost before
it was laid ? These thoughts were coursing
through Bonnybell's brain, even while she was
murmuring her answer in a tone calculated in
its hesitating meekness to deprecate any further
showing up.
" I am staying with Mr. and Mrs. Tancred.
They are good enough to let me pay them a little
visit.
The rejoinder was a rather discomfited
" Humph 1 " a humph which had no need to
have any light thrown upon it for the rest
84 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
of the company, but which was interpreted only
later to Bonnybell, when she learned that Camilla
had never shown any sign of a knowledge of
Lady Tennington's presence in the neighbour-
hood, nor, large as was her circumference despite
French corsets and massage, any appearance of
seeing her, when they had met on neutral
ground.
There was a slight pause ; the matron
digesting the unintended snub, and the maid
quakingly asking herself what she could say
liext best calculated to stop the flow of Flora's
reminiscences ! Rescue came from an unexpected
quarter.
" Miss Ransome is very much understating
our hopes," said Edward, in a slow voice of
measured courtesy, through which any one who
knew him well could trace some sort of smothered
exasperation piercing ; " my wife and I count upon
her to stay with us indefinitely."
Had he already caught from his young
■protigie the faculty of glib lying? He knew
perfectly that he was saying the thing that was
not ; that there was nothing in the world which
Camilla ambitioned less than to have her present
guest as a permanent inmate ; but the impulse
of partisanship of bucklering one so exposed to
the world's cruel shafts conquered the lifelong
instincts of veracity in an almost invariably truthful
man. He was rather shocked when he realized
what he had done ; yet he did not repent. His
own espousing her cause would be worse than
useless to her, but his wife's, with her fifty years
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 85
of almost awful rectitude behind her, was a name
to conjure with.
Flora gave a little chuckle — not ill-natured,
for she was never ill - natured, but helplessly-
tickled at the idea of the rigid Pharisee who
had cut her for thirty years taking to her bony
bosom the progeny of poor Claire — poor Claire,
of all people !
" Then I hope we shall see something of
each other," she said bravely, ignoring her own
relations, or rather want of relations, with the
Tancred family. " I will send the motor over
for you. You used to like motoring in the days
when poor Al "
She broke off. Not even she, with all her
social courage and no character worth speaking of
to lose, dared pronounce more than the first half
of the submerged one's name.
Before Bonnybell could frame a judicious
answer to this discomfiting invitation, her hostess
came to her aid. She had not caught Miss
Ransome's name with any precision, mumbled
as names always are mumbled by English people
on introduction, and perhaps even more so on the
part of Edward than was usually the case, from
the consciousness that it was not a patronymic
warranted to ensure a welcome for its owner.
Mrs. Aylmer only saw a remarkably pretty
and evidently very young girl looking confused
and miserable, though trying with the greatest
civility to hide it under the avalanche of Lady
Tennington's questions and invitations. Of course,
a decent girl could not possibly be allowed, and
86 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
evidently had no wish, to accept the latter ; and,
being a warm-hearted woman with a motherly
heart going out to the slender black figure
standing to be baited by the shocking old
demi-repy whom she so unaccountably seemed
to know, the hostess hastened to extricate her
from the tight place in which the poor child
found herself.
" I wonder," she said, looking kindly at the
young stranger, "whether you would care to join
the schoolroom tea ? My children like it so very
much better than ours."
" I should love it ! " replied Bonnybell,
fervently, throwing an eyebeam of unmistak-
able gratitude out of her enormous eyes at
her saviour, and thinking with intense inward
self-congratulation upon how admirably in the
teeth of hideous difficulties she must have played
the jeune fille this time. Oh, if she could only
keep it up ! If only she could have seen Flora
Tennington safe into her motor before her own
exit ! could — failing that — have had any trust in
Flora's reticence !
It remained to be seen what the schoolroom
had to show. Its possibilities, at all events, could
not include another Flora, nor could any of the
disreputable men whose images rose with such
unwelcome vividness upon Miss Ransome's mind,
recalled by the sight of Lady Tennington, by any
possibility have crossed the scholastic threshold
on whose other side a governess with a pince-nez
and an assured manner, and a tall diffident girl in
a pigtail presently greeted her. The third person's
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 87
salutation could scarcely be called a greeting,
as it consisted merely in his standing up, stop-
ping eating quince jam, and looking thoroughly
annoyed at having to do either. The governess
revealed herself on presentation as Miss Barnacre,
and the leggy young Miss as Meg.
In the case of the third person, presentation,
though it took place duly, was superfluous. If
induction had not, intuition would have taught
Miss Ransome to recognize in the sullen con-
sumer of interrupted jam the magnet that had
guided her tender feet through the puddly park of
a November twilight. He conquered his indigna-
tion at her intrusion enough to set her a chair
at the command of Miss Barnacre, who followed
up the attention by asking her a series of patroniz-
ing questions, adapted to the intellect of a child
of four years. Miss Barnacre was of the new
type of instructress, that type which sometimes
makes its employer privily regret its down-trodden
predecessor, victim to melancholy and indigestion ;
that new type which, fortified by all the rites of
Girton, condescends to the parents of its pupils,
chaffs and lectures their brothers, and inspires
adoring awed friendships in their elder sisters ;
that type which differs as much from the early
Victorian one as does the pert houri in " bang "
and streamers who commands at our sick-bed side
from the classic figure of Mrs. Gamp.
Bonnybell responded with meek submissive-
ness to the elementary catechism so glaringly
adapted to her comprehension, and consoled her-
self for the time wasted upon the governess by
88 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
the philosophic reflection that she might gain
more by being seen and heard in the case of so
obvious a cub as Toby, than by being brought
into more direct colloquy with him. ]
Miss Barnacre interrupted her own question-
ings at last, to give a brusque order to the young
man to ring the bell, and it was now the turn of
the eldest daughter of the house.
" Lady Tennington is an old friend of yours ? "
she asked quite pleasantly, and with a curiosity
that was well within the limits of the courteous
and permissible ; yet in which the young stranger
divined an inevitable surprise.
Her answer must be cautious, yet not hesi-
tating. To repudiate intimacy with Flora would
be — shabby ? — yes, but that might pass at a pinch,
but it would also be useless.
" She was very kind to me when I was a
child," answered the dear little voice, with a depre-
cating gratitude in its tones ; " and she was at
school with my grandmother."
" With your grandmother ! " repeated Miss
Aylmer, in a key of rather gratified discovery.
" Oh, then she must be much older than "
The speaker broke off; but it was not difficult
for the hearer to supply the missing " than she
pretends."
" My grandmother would not be so very old
if she were alive," replied Bonnybell ; " Claire
was only thirty-four when she died."
The name slipped out headlong, all Miss Ran-
some's wariness being unfortunately on duty in
another direction. Every one looked puzzled, not
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 89
having the slightest idea as to who " Claire " was,
nor how her early death aiFected the age of the
young stranger's grandmother.
" Lady Tennington is very bien conservh, isn't
she ? " continued the girl, hurrying away from the
too-late-realized blunder ; " and though she looks
a good deal made up, it is really more face massage
than anything else. We — I know her masseuse !
We often employed her. She was the best in
Paris."
There was a slight silence, as of a company
taken aback. Every eye involuntarily rested on
Bonnybell's lovely bloom, each looker asking him-
self or herself distrustfully whether it and the
exquisite seventeen-year-old contour were due to
mysterious French rubbings and unguents 1
" She has not been very long in the neigh-
bourhood ; we know her only very slightly," said
the elder Miss Aylmer, presently, with an air of
reserve, and the subject was felt to be closed.
The never-to-be-defeated governess at once re-
placed it by another.
" You walked here ? "
"Yes."
"Are you fond of walking ? "
" Oh yes, very, very fond."
Of course, it was not true ; but equally of course
Toby would think the better of her if he could
picture her stumping through wet vegetables by
his side. Her ideas of all sport, except racing,
were of the vaguest.
" Mrs. Tancred is inaccessible on Sunday
afternoon } "
90 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" I believe that she does not like to be dis-
turbed ; she shuts herself up to study."
" She always interests me," said Miss Barn-
acre, as if making an announcement that was
advantageous to its object. "There is something
stimulating to the curiosity in those resolutely
solitary thinkers ; but I cannot quite make her
out. I used to think that she had leanings towards
Hegelianlsm."
" Had she ? " returned Bonnybell, faintly,
asking herself, with a sick heart, whether Hegelian-
ism — whatever it might be — was one of the pro-
perties that no jeune fille Men ilevee should be
without. Let it be what else It might, it was
certainly a word of ill omen, for no sooner was
it pronounced than Toby pushed back his chair
with such cruel violence that it fell over back-
wards, and left the room, shutting the door noisily
behind him.
" In some respects I fancy she is nearer Esoteric
Buddhism," continued the governess, fixing her
unescapable eye upon the victim of her horrible
suppositions. "I must tackle her upon the
subject."
" I am sure that she will be delighted," mur-
mured Miss Ransome, with the greatest outward
demureness, and a malicious inward wish that
her tormentor would put her threat into execu-
tion and " tackle " Camilla. There could be little
doubt as to the issue of the combat. Her own
ardent personal wish now was to escape before re-
vealing some damning and irretrievable ignorance.
" Do you think that Mr. Tancred is waiting
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 91
for me ? " she asked, turning, with pretty defer-
ence, to Miss Aylmer, whom she thought much
more worth propitiating than the pushing pro-
pounder of odious riddles.
" You need not be in any hurry," replied the
other, with a pleasant smile, that yet seemed to
have a touch of superiority in its deeper know-
ledge of Edward's habits. " Mr. Tancred always
pays us a good long visit on Sunday afternoon ;
but if you had rather go back to the hall "
Bonnybell's hesitation was of but two seconds'
duration. Barnacre and Hegelianism, or Flora
and Sir Algy ? If these were her only two
alternatives, unpleasant as was the first, it was
undoubtedly the least objectionable of the two.
" I am very happy here," she said with soft
civility, " if I am not in the way."
She glanced appealingly across at the pig-
tailed Meg, in whom she seemed to divine less of
neck-and-crop absorption in the utterances of the
governess and more of covertly admiring interest
in herself than was the case with the elder sister.
" May I help you to look at your picture-
paper ? " she asked, and took the acceptance of
her appeal for granted, crossing the room to the
side of the young girl, who was shyly holding the
leaves of the journal in question, so as to be able
to peep over its sheets at the startling stranger.
The shyness in this case was not of the brutal,
chair-oversetting, bolting character of the brother,
and was compatible with honoured gratification,
as was evidenced by the room readily made, and
the paper hospitably spread open.
92 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Miss Ransome's first need was to suppress
the expression of contempt which sprang to eyes
and lips at the mawkish character of the publica-
tion ; but to a really well-trained mind even
Our Girlies can be made to provide nutritious
pabulum. The portrait of a lady, surrounded by
prize-taking Schipperke dogs, was the text pro-
vided on this occasion for Bonnybell's instructive
discourse.
" Lady Cressida Beaulieu ! " she read, then
added elucidatingly, " She used to go to the same
coiffeur in Paris as we. She has thirty wigs ;
and he told us that hardly a week passed without
one of them coming over from London to be re-
frisM, or done something to."
" Thirty ! What an expense ! " ejaculated
Meg, in thrifty horror.
Bonnybell laughed, her little bubbling, inno-
cent laugh, that often swore so piquanfly with
the themes that called it forth.
" It would be if she paid for them,"
" And doesn't she ? "
The other looked incredulously at the putter
of this question. Is it possible that ignorance of
the simplest facts of nature and civilization could
be so crass ? /
" She had not a farthing ; and Reg^^Beau-
lleu ran through the little he ever had before he
married."
Miss Meg's eyes were opening rounder and
rounder in riveted interest at each fresh stroke
added to the portrait of the lady of the Schip-
perkes.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 93
" How does she manage it ? "
Bonnybell laughed again. "It is not very
difficult. Of course, everybody knows that
Waddy, the indiarubber-tyre man, runs her."
" Rum her ? "
" Yes ; dresses her, finds her in diamonds,
pays for her motor and her house in Grosvenor
Street."
It was a pity — at least, one of the interlo-
cutors thought so — that so surprising, puzzling,
and exciting a dialogue should be brought to a
premature close ; but ere Bonnybell could finish
one more illuminating sentence, " Oh, I dare say
there is no real harm in it ; it is merely a matter
of mutual convenience. Waddy pays and Cressida
introduces him to " the place at her other
side was occupied by the elder Miss Aylmer, and
Miss Ransome's promising pupil disappeared on
a message, to return no more.
CHAPTER IX
Too late the poor little stranger realized that even
such truisms and commonplaces of conversation
as the relations of climbing millionaires and smart
women for their mutual weal had no place in the
wretchedly limited conversational repertoire of the
well-brought-up young girl. It was a very flat
and flagging conversation that replaced her lucid
word-paintings, for which she, too late, felt that
the Dower House schoolroom was not the place,
and with a very unfeigned relief she received' the
message sent up by Mr. Tancred, a message
of inquiry as to her readiness to depart.
Readiness to depart! There could be little
doubt as to that ! The state of mind expressed
in that hackneyed line, " Ready to go, but not
afraid to stay," had certainly no reference to her ;
she was horribly afraid to stay.
Miss Bar nacre shook hands with her with
brusque manliness, and uttered a condescending
and rather dry query, which did not seem eager
for an affirmative answer, as to her making a long
stay in the neighbourhood.
Miss Aylmer politely accompanied her down-
stairs. The party they had left in the hall was
94
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 95
diminished by two. Flora Tennington and her
attendant swain were gone. Perhaps, after all, it
would have been the lesser of two evils, though at
the time for decision it seemed much the greater,
to have abode below ; at least, there would have
been no danger of corrupting Flora s mind, and,
judging by the undiminished kindliness with
which the hostess bade her good night, and the
heartiness with which she invited her to repeat
her visit. Lady Tennington must have judiciously
suppressed all that was damaging — and, when you
came to think of it, how little there was that,
according to these people's standard, was not
damaging — in Miss Ransome's past. Flora was
always a "good old sort."
While Bonnybell was accepting with dove-like
coos of gratitude the hospitable offer made her,
Mr. Tancred was having a word apart with the
daughter of the house. Their taste for each
other's society had been long so patent in its
perfect and harmless openness, that their acquaint-
ance had grown tired of giving them to each
other en secondes noces. He was now testing her
friendship, and trying delicately and tactfully, but
still with a bias which was quite apparent to her,
to extract some favourable judgment upon his
xv&vj protigie from this tried comrade. As a rule,
their opinions coincided with curious nicety ; and
in the girl's family circle it had become a pro-
verbial phrase that what Edward Tancred said
Catherine would always swear to. The nearest
thing to a compliment that she produced was the
ejaculation, "She is amazing I" If the adjective
96 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
was used in a flattering sense, it was too big for
the occasion, and if it was not ?
^'■Amazing?" he repeated, conveying a ques-
tion with the repetition of the word, adding, as
no explanation seemed forthcoming, " Amazingly
pretty, do you mean ? "
" She is that too, of course," replied his friend,
without excessive haste to make the admission,
yet, in accordance with her character, making it
conscientiously all the same. "But that was
not the sense in which I meant to apply it."
He knew that it would be wiser not to press
her further ; that after such an exordium no good
for Bonnybell could come out of this Galilee, yet
he heard himself say —
" How, then ? "
" I am not good at defining, and besides, I
think that before long you will find out for your-
self," she answered, her smooth, fair face, which,
as all her acquaintance said, ought to be better
looking than it was, assuming an expression than
which her ally thought he had never seen any
that became it less. Was it the case, as Toby
always told her, that Catherine had a slight cast in
her left eye }
The night into which Mr. Tancred and his
amazing young person stepped out of the Dower
House seemed at first even darker than it was,
by contrast. Moon there was none ; but when
eyes grew used to the windless gloom, stars in
plenty showed through the light fog that had
gathered.
Had it not been for the ominous last words
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 97
that had passed between Miss Aylmer and himself,
Edward would have begun at once, and naturally,
to question his companion as to how she had
fared in the Dower House schoolroom. But a
species of dread as to what he might hear made
him avoid the subject. Instead — partly for some-
thing to say, and partly because the nightly
heavens had always a fascination for himself — he
directed her attention to some of the constella-
tions, making a trifling comment upon their
beauty. She assented in tones of heartfelt ad-
miration, without, as he somehow was aware, lifting
her head to glance at them, her attention being
indeed chiefly occupied in guiding her steps
through the darkness, having again refused his
aiding hand or arm. This was more from habit
and prudence than from any very active alarm,
but though he might be, and apparently was, an
anomally, it was as well not to tempt Providence.
Although in point of fact her misgivings about
the success of her late visit were even graver and
better founded than his, she, unlike him, did
not shirk the subject, but opened the campaign
gallantly, in her usual spirit of strict veracity.
"What a charming girl Miss Aylmer is!"
The remark was dictated by the fact that Bonny-
bell's quick eye had detected the intimate-looking
aside that had passed between her escort and the
daughter of the house, and drawn from it con-
clusions of a dimension which would have startled
both.
" I am glad that you think so."
" How could any one think anything else ? "
H
98 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"She is one of the best."
He said this, because it was a tribute due to
loyalty, and because he knew that it was his
real opinion, but at the moment he did not
feel it.
" And that sweet Meg ! And then Toby !
I lost my heart to them all."
" Toby ! Oh, he was there ? "
"Yes, Mr. Toby was there."
" Did you get much out of him ? " — in a tone
tinged with incredulity.
" It was not so much what he said " — since the
young gentleman in question had never opened
his mouth except to admit jam, this was stricdy
true — " as his looks ; such a nice, frank, straight-
forward English boy." Men are jealous and
grudging about other men's praises, and it is
more than likely that this encomium would never
be repeated to its object ; but, on the other hand,
it might, and the attempt cost nothing.
" And you found plenty to talk about to
them all ? " returned he, going circuitously round
his own alarm, and thinking that he might as
well know the worst. He could not see her face,
but he heard a slight hesitating catch in her
breath.
" The governess — Miss Barnacre, is she ? —
monopolized the conversation a good deal ; she
talked very brilliantly, but I was not quite
up in the subjects she mentioned. I think " —
very tentatively — "that I was a litde afraid of
her."
" A Mk ? " repeated he, with much emphasis
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 99
and less of doubtful suggestion than was generally
the case in his utterances.
" Oh, you are afraid of her too, then ! " cried
Bonnybell, with an accent of joyful relief, but
added, reverting cautiously to her rule of uttering
no opinion about her new acquaintances that
might not handsomely be repeated to its objects,
" Of course, I saw what a treasure she must be to
Mrs. Aylmer."
« Did you ? "
Tact told her that her praise of the detestable
Barnacre had reached — perhaps a little exceeded —
the limits of his power of swallowing, and she
desisted gladly.
" And the girls, Catherine and Meg, had
not they a chance of getting a word in .>'"
" Not very much " — rather slowly, as her
thoughts reverted not quite comfortably to the
sudden door shut upon her budding friend-
ship with the younger Miss Aylmer. " I saw
most, perhaps, of Meg. What a darling
she is 1 "
*' She is a good child, but she is a great baby
for her age," replied he, in a tone which she
heard to be touched with surprise. " I should
not have thought " — reviewing in his mind certain
choice flowers of his present companion's speech
— "that you and she would have much in
common."
"A great baby for her age ! " repeated Miss
Ransome, in a key of relieved enlightenment.
"Ah, that accounts for it, then."
" Accounts for what ? "
loo A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" For the surprise she showed — the ignorance
of such very ordinary things — things that every-
body knows."
His heart quailed. " What sort of things ? "
But Miss Ransome was all at once on her
guard. It might be one's misfortune to be shown
up ; but to show one's self up was a sin against
common sense not to be committed by any one
even moderately wide-awake.
" I cannot recollect any particular instance,"
she answered with apparent carelessness ; " it was
only a general impression, and I dare say quite
a wrong one ; but, anyhow " — returning to safe
ground — " they are all darlings, and you are very
lucky to have them so near. I do not say any-
thing about their luck ! " she added in a witching
lower key.
All the same, she was relieved that, when the
small family was reseated round the supper-table,
spread with enticing cold foods, in Sunday leniency
to the admirably treated and very much under-
worked servants, Camilla put her through no
catechism as to her afternoon's experiences. The
note of alarm in Edward's voice had made Miss
Ransome resolve to be wholly reticent as to the
slight contretemps about stupid Meg ; and beyond
a message sent by Mrs. Aylmer to his wife
and faithfully delivered by Edward, to the effect
that a day's shopping in London would prevent
her fulfilling a promise to visit Mrs. Tancred on
the morrow afternoon, the Dower House remained
for some good while unmentioned.
To Bonnybell it would have been an unmixed
A WAIF'S PROGRESS loi
blessing that this silence should last through the
evening. To pick Camilla's brains upon any
subject would require the courage and dexterity
of a lion-tamer, and by a series of delicate feelers,
veiled suggestions, and innocent-looking supposi-
tions on the dusky homeward walk, Bonnybell
had wiled out of Edward all the information
about the Aylmer family that it was really of any
consequence to her to know, viz. that through
the bequest of a distant kinsman the suave Toby
was independent, and at the death of a decrepit
great-uncle would be more independent still of
his father. She had also learnt that he was called
a woman-hater ; but, so far from being daunted
by this information she, put her own encouraging
gloss upon it. " A woman-hater ! Pooh ! that
only means that he is bored with respectable
women ; and though I am respectable, and mean
to remain so, I am not sure that 1 look it."
In this soothed and hopeful mood Miss
Bonnybell sat down to supper. Not for long,
however, did she remain quietly seated. Since
from the Sunday supper servants were banished,
and that on Edward devolved the whole onus
of handing chaudfroids and pouring claret, an
instant desire to help him sent her circling round
the table too. He had rather that she did not.
It gave him the same sense of superannuation as
if she had oiFered to help him into his greatcoat,
but after one gentle protest he desisted, fearing
to hurt her feelings. Camilla's sarcastic-sounding
observation that, decrepit as Edward looked, he
was capable of waiting upon two people, had its
I02 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
sting taken out by the lenient smile that accom-
panied it, and that seemed almost to approve of
the eager rejoinder—
" Oh, but I love waiting upon people ! "
There was no denying that this praiseworthy
ejaculation was uttered chiefly because its author
hoped that it might advance her in the good
graces of her benefactress, but it was also acci-
dentally and incidentally true. Bonnybell was
one of those born obliging and serviable ; and
her terrible education had at least had the merit
of developing these qualities in her. She added
humbly, " But if it fidgets you — either of you —
to see me capering round, please say so, and I
will try to sit still and be waited on."
She was rewarded by a look that was almost
benign.
" Is it so difficult to you to sit still ? "
Edward smiled slightly too, a sudden sense-
less warmth, for which he at once chid himself,
about his heart at these signs that his womenkind
were beginning to " get on."
" I used to wait hand and foot upon "
She broke off, looking down ; and Camilla's
conscience — always too painfully active for her own
or her surroundings' comfort — gave her a smart
stab.
The poor child was — thanks to her, Camilla's,
severity — afraid to mention her own mother. She
made her amends at once ; but even the suavity of
Camilla was gruff, and her " It is a fault on the
right side, but to night I think I had rather you
would keep quiet ! " though received with the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 103
pretty gratitude of one led by rosy chains into
the way she had been seeking provoked in the
young stranger's mind the inward comment,
" What a surly old camel it is ! I always heard
that they were odious-tempered animals." But
her meek face gave no slightest indication of this
reflection ; and she sat down docilely, nor made
any further protest against the host's ministra-
tions, beyoad an occasional glance of deprecating
gratitude when he offered her anything particu-
larly appetizing, followed by a furtive peep at
Mrs. Tancred, to ensure her not having noticed
and thought too affectionate this proof of thank-
fulness.
The evening was halfway towards bedtime, and
Bonnybell, lulled in a false security, was capering
down the long morning-room with biscuit held
aloft, in tantalizing education of Jock, pleased
and pleasing, when the topic she had been
dreading broke upon her ear.
"I hear that you paid the Dower House a
visit this afternoon .'' "
The slender whiteness of the raised arm
dropped to its owner's side, and with a surprised
and dishonest grab Jock mastered a practically
" unearned increment."
"Yes," rather falteringly, "Mr. Tancred
thought that a little exercise would do me
good."
"Are you fond of walking ? "
" Oh yes, very, very fond."
"You will have to wear stronger shoes
than the ridiculous things you went to church
I04 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
in, if you mean to indulge in that pleasure
here."
" Oh, of course " — with an eager snatch at the
subject of shoe-leather, in the hope of thereby
averting further inquiries as to her visit. " Per-
haps you will very kindly give me the address
of a good boot-maker."
The elder woman looked at her with a some-
thing of incredulity at such an excess of acquies-
cence, and Bonnybell made an inward note that
though she must always agree with Camilla, it
was a mistake to do it too suddenly. That
defeated its own end, as the mechanical una-
nimity of the laugh of supers on the stage
destroys all impression of mirth.
" I hope that my friends made a pleasant im-
pression upon you .'' " Camilla would not be put
off by any boots, thick or thin, from her intended
aim ; and her strong eyes demanded truth even
more than did her lips. It was the one com-
modity of which poor Miss Ransome's warehouse
was almost always empty, but she was able to
scrape up quite a respectable amount of it for
her answer.
" I thought them all delightful — perfectly
delightful! There was only one" — with a diffi-
dent hesitation — "that I was not quite sure I
liked."
"And who is that unfortunate person .'"
" I — I have no doubt that I am wrong, but
I did not much fancy Miss Barnacre."
"And do you always expect to fall in love
with all humanity at first sight ? "
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 105
There was no great severity in this mode of
acceptance of her feeler, and Bonnybell rejoicingly
told herself that for once she was on the right
tack.
" I did not quite like the way she spoke of
you."
Camilla's always rigid features grew rigider ;
and Bonnybell's happy conviction of the right
tack slid from under her.
" I have no opinion of tales told out of
school," answered Mrs. Tancred, coldly.
" Oh, but you must let me explain," cried
Bonnybell, in a key of anguished exegesis. " I
have expressed myself so badly, as I always do.
If you do not let me tell you what she really
said, you will think it is much worse than
it was."
As Camilla maintained a disapproving silence,
the young girl, too late conscious of a new blunder,
threw a shipwrecked glance at Edward, and veri-
fying that he looked thoroughly uncomfortable,
made the lightning-quick shrewd reflection, " He
wants to stick up for me, but he thinks it will
make it worse for me if he does."
"I have no doubt that she meant well, and,
of course, she is a most valuable person ; but I
thought it impertinent in — in — a girl of her age
to say that she meant to ' tackle ' you about —
about — your religious opinions."
The austerity of Camilla's face thawed a little,
and something that might do duty for a smile
turned upwards the corners of her thin-lined
mouth.
io6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Did Miss Barnacre happen to mention the
day and hour at which her investigations are to
take place, so that I may not be found unpre-
pared ? "
Bonnybell breathed again ; and so — or she
thought so — did Edward.
CHAPTER X
" Far from the sun and summer shade " — far,
that is to say, from the distractions and liability to
intrusion of the more public parts of the house,
lay a gallery ; and off that gallery lay a room
which had witnessed the evolution of Camilla.
It was to witness the evolution of Bonnybell.
" In my old schoolroom you will be quite
safe from interruption," Mrs. Tancred had said,
when first breaking to her future pupil her in-
tention of repairing the yawning gaps in that
pupil's education. It was on the Monday morn-
ing, and there had been very little " breaking "
about the — to the ears that received it — horrible
and staggering announcement.
" You are only seventeen, I believe ? "
"Yes, only seventeen." She would be
eighteen in three days, but did not think it
necessary to add this superfluous admission.
And, as she reflected afterwards, it would not
have saved her.
" So that, if taken in hand at once, you will
be able in some degree to make up for the time
you have so grievously lost."
An indistinct assent. To what grisly project
was this the preface ?
107
io8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Miss Ransome had been boredly speculating
as to how she was to get through the day with
Edward away in the City ; and Toby so near and
yet so far at the Dower House, but it seemed
that the solving of the problem was to be done
for her.
" I do not know whether you are aware of it,
but your spelling is phonetic."
"Yes, I know it is." The speaker had not
the faintest notion of the sense of the adjective
employed, but as applied to her own accomplish-
ment, it evidently connoted something bad, so
that it was safe to acquiesce.
" You know what phonetic means ? "
" Oh yes, perfectly."
"It is carrying your principle a little far to
spell the carriage I sent to meet you ' b-r-o-o-m.' "
" It must have been a slip of the pen," replied
Bonnybell, devoutly praying that she might not
be asked how the word that had played her this
scurvy trick really spelt itself.
" It will be safer to guard against the possi-
bility of such slips in the future," rejoined
Camilla, with a resolute dryness, which showed
how little she believed in her future disciple's
gloss.
The disciple made another feeble struggle
against the meshes of the net which she felt to
be closing round her.
"Do you think that it is any use to teach
people spelling ? Isn't it born with them ? I
have heard it said that there are people who can
never learn to spell ; perhaps I am one of them."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 109
" It Is, at all events, worth a trial," replied
Mrs. Tancred, with a determination which brooked
no further attempt to overset it.
Half an hour later saw Bonnybell established
in solitary confinement in her prison, with the
instruments of her torture methodically arrayed
around her. During that baleful half hour she
had, in answer to questions, revealed a know-
ledge of history and geography quite on a par
with her orthography, since she had married
Richard II. of England to his grandmother
Philippa ; had treated Argentina as a town, and
generously given it a seat on the Italian sea-board.
When the depths of her hitherto unsunned
ignorance had been satisfactorily plumbed, Mrs.
Tancred left her, having pencil-marked the limit
to which her investigation of each volume must
extend, having opened an atlas and hinted at
sums. (" Oh, but I am very good at figures !
I could always calculate the odds in all the races !"
was an unconsidered interpolation which did her
no good.) With a detestable promise to return
in an hour and a half's time to give her a lesson
in dictation, with a view to fettering the freedom
of her spelling, and the observation " Your ignor-
ance is incredible ; but at seventeen nothing is
irremediable," her instructress withdrew.
BonnybeU remained for a few moments sedu-
lously staring at the first words of the opening
chapter of Green's " History of the English
People ; " as who knew to what treachery of
sudden return and inexcusable espionage she
might be liable ? Not even the sound of the
no A WAIF'S PROGRESS
swing-door at the end of the passage closing
behind Camilla's departing form, nor the perfect
silence that settled down upon her practically un-
inhabited wing, reassured Miss Ransome.
She peeped cautiously out, and finding the
coast clear, at once deserted her studies in order
to ascertain on what the range of windows that
lighted the gallery upon which her torture-
chamber opened, looked out ? They gave upon
a court-yard, surrounded by offices, and in which,
at the moment of her survey, nothing livelier was
happening than the crossing it by a footman in
shirt-sleeves. Her own prospect — that from the
schoolroom itself — was even more hopeless. Two
tall sash-windows looked right into an impenetrable
belt of thick evergreen trees and shrubs, which
entirely baffled all attempts to penetrate it. To
the girl's angry fancy it seemed as if the old witch
who had laid this tedious spell upon her, must
have made it spring up in the night in its choking
density. She turned her attention to the interior
of the room, and beguiled some half-hour in
examining and inwardly ridiculing its appoint-
ments and adornments — the aniline-dyed carpet,
the crinolined and whiskered hideousities in the
shape of photographs, presumably of Camilla's
parents, since they were male and female, and a
portrait of Camilla, herself in a sashed frock
and frilled trousers, with a hoop in one hand,
artistically balanced by a hoop-stick in the other.
The likeness was still a staring one : large bald
forehead, long upper lip, and piercing eyes, already
in evidence. "Put her into a sash and frilled
A WAIF'S PROGRESS in
trousers, and she would not look much different
now ! When I get to know Edward a good deal
better I shall suggest it to him ! "
She laughed out loud, excessively tickled by
the idea of this humane and feasible project, then
pulled herself together in alarm. Who knew how
far her voice might carry In the echoing void of
this desolate region ? nor what spies might be set
to check and report her movements ? Candour
compelled her to reject the latter supposition as
soon as formed, divining and acknowledging the
absolute straightness — stupid, contemptible, and
unaccountable as it was — of her tyrant.
After having exhausted the objects of interest
and mirth afforded her by the — to Camilla —
sacred relics of her severe infancy and adolescence,
and having learnt from a perfectly accurate bald-
faced clock, upon which she fastened an imaginary
likeness to its owner, that she had succeeded in
frittering three-quarters of an hour out of the
hour and a half allotted to her in which to pre-
pare for Mrs. Tancred's re-appearance and the
threatened dictation lesson, she returned most
reluctantly to Greene, skimming and peeping and
skipping, in the style of the true-born dunce, in
search of what she would call "plums." Her
acquaintance with history was indeed slender ; but
she had a sort of idea that in the driest of that
species of literature might be found oases in the
shape of anecdotes about king's mistresses, etc.
Her quest in this case was very poorly rewarded,
and with a heartfelt sigh she returned to Chapter I.
*' Angles, Saxons, Jutes ! What tommy rot !
112 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Jutes ! What a ridiculous name ! Jute ! That
is the cheap stufF to cover chairs with, whose
colour always flies."
Her eye left the page, and fixed Itself absently
upon that branch of the nearest of the shrubbery
trees, which absolutely swept the window. To think
of heVy Bonnybell Ransome, of all people, sitting
here like a good little schoolchild learning lessons !
She, with her experiences in the past ! Memory
went back to them ; indeed, they were never very
far away. To do her justice, the reminiscences,
begun with a scornful smile of superiority, ended
by sending a slight shudder over her. That
evening when they automobiled down from Paris
to dine at the Reservoir at Versailles, that was
about the nearest shave she ever had ! Hateful,
hateful old Charlie Landon ! And to have to be
civil to him afterwards ! It would never have
done to tell poor Claire. She had plenty of other
things to worry her, and latterly it was so difficult
to make her understand anything. But how
angry even she would have been ! Well, assommant
Spatant as it was here, it was at all events better
than that.
Good Heavens ! she could not have been
thinking of Charlie Landon and the park at
Versailles for three-quarters of an hour ; yet
some one — Camilla, of course — was nearing the
door, and she had not yet mastered even those
wretched elementary Jutes ! But it was not
Camilla.
Camilla was frying other fish, and, for the
morning at least. Miss Ransome was saved from
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 113
any exposure of her frittered opportunities.
Perhaps, however, she would be glad to compound
for such an exposure in exchange for the one that
was hovering over her unsuspecting head. Mrs.
Tancred was sitting at her large and business-like
writing-table, tranquilly attacking her daily task.
Her correspondence was immense, and as she
never left any letter or note unanswered, but
sent speedy and conscientious replies, even to such
valueless trivialities as most people commit at once
to the waste-paper basket ; as she flouted the idea
of a secretary or typist, occasionally suggested by
Edward, her labours sometimes threatened to over-
whelm her. But the threat was never fulfilled ;
to-day she was going through her tale of bricks
with a heart at peace. Bonnybell was out of
possible mischief, with her feet set on the upward
path, and in her long solitary hours of the previous
day Camilla had drawn strength from communion
with her own strong spirit and earnest appeal to
her Unknown God worthily to bear and even
profit by the heavy burden and responsibility laid
upon her. Whether Miss Ransome would be
flattered did she know that she was regarded in
the light of a hair shirt is doubtful.
It was an understood thing that Mrs. Tancred
was not to be disturbed during the forenoon,
and it was a displeased face that she turned upon
the butler who invaded her busy privacy.
" Mrs. Aylmer and Miss Aylmer are in the
morning-room, ma'am, and wish to speak to you."
" There must be some mistake. Mrs. Aylmer
knows that I am never at home in the morning."
I
114 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Mrs. Aylmer told me to say that she wished
to apologize for disturbing you, but that, as it is
something very urgent, she thought you would
not mind breaking through your rule for once in
a way."
Without any further remonstrance or inquiry,
and no change of countenance to indicate the
surprise that her friend's audacity bred in her,
Mrs. Tancred obeyed the summons to the morn-
ing-room. There she found the Aylmers, mother
and eldest daughter, standing close together, and
somehow giving the impression of doing it for
mutual protection, near the fireplace.
"What can it be that will not keep till the
afternoon .'' " she asked, rather severely, but hold-
ing out a hand to each in a manner that implied
intimacy and goodwill.
She looked from one to the other as she put
her rebuking question, and it would need a much
less penetrating vision than hers to perceive that
both were, in servant phrase, "very much upset."
" I am going to London in the afternoon,"
replied Mrs. Aylmer, " as I sent word by Edward
last evening, but even if I was not I do not think
I could have borne to put it off — to delay getting
it off my mind."
" To put what off .? To getting what off your
mind ? Will you please come to the point ? "
There was a very perceptible stiffening in
Camilla's manner ; anything of the evasive or
shilly-shallying being abhorrent to her. Her
friend was well aware of this peculiarity, and
was very much frightened by having provoked it.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 115
but she was also too much frightened at the task
she had in hand to state even now directly her
errand.
" It is the first — the very first touch of any-
thing disagreeable that has ever come into our
relations with each other."
" Had not we better sit down ? " rejoined
Camilla, with an elaborate patience. " There is
no use in tiring ourselves by standing until we
get to the point."
The expectation of an immense period of
waiting implied by this suggestion ought to have
decided the matron addressed to take the plunge ;
but it did not.
" I do not think that I should ever have had
the courage to tell you — to enter upon so painful
a subject at all — if Catherine " She broke
off with a drowning-man look at her daughter.
Mrs. Tancred looked also at that daughter.
She had never liked Catherine as much as she did
Catherine's mother, nor had ever hidden from
herself that it was because of her supposed high
appreciation by Edward, and because the neigh-
bourhood's habitual observation, "What a nice
and suitable wife she would have made for him ! "
had penetrated, if not to her bodily ears, yet to
the ears of her heart. For these very reasons,
driven by her unsquarable conscience, she had
always treated the girl with an unusual leniency.
"Perhaps Catherine will explain," she said,
with a strained patience, but not harshly.
Miss Alymer was already highly pink ; she
waxed pinker.
ii6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"I think it would come better from mother."
Mrs. Tancred made a movement, instantly
checked, of extreme irritation at being thus
shuttle-cocked between two foolish battledores to
the waste of time and temper.
" I will get my knitting until you have
decided which of you is likely to regain your
powers of speech first," she said, moving towards
her large work-basket, and drawing it within
reach of her chair.
The determined endurance expressed by her
knitting-needles — for she was nearing the end of
her patience, and was never much of a hand at
feigning — at length goaded the jibbing pair into
more explicit utterance.
"We came to speak to you about the girl
that Edward brought to see us yesterday."
" Yes ? " Mrs. Tancred had laid down the
cardigan upon which she had just engaged, and
her gimlet eyes were looking over, not through,
her large spectacles in that manner which made
erring kitchen-maids, drunken husbands, and even
Edward himself, call on the mountains to fall on
them.
" She — she is a very lovely creature ! "
" But you did not break through my rule to
tell me that ? "
" Oh no, of course not ; of course not."
" What, then ? "
" I did not catch her name at first."
"Her name is Ransome" — articulated very
distinctly — " that is, her surname ; her Christian
name is Bonnybell, an extremely silly one, but
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 117
she is not responsible for it." There was a feeling
in the air as of putting armour on. " She is the
daughter of that — that " — an adjective at once
presentable and applicable seemed hard to find —
" that very, notorious Lady Ransome who died
this year."
" She is the daughter of that infamous
woman ! What first surprised me about her
was that she seemed so intimate with Lady Ten-
nington, who happened to be calling at the same
time."
" That is a fact which I should not have been
able to verify." Here Mrs. Tancred undoubtedly
scored, strong in her immovable resolve to have
no " truck " with the good-natured but completely
unvirtuous Flora. Yet even this weapon might
be turned against her.
Mrs. Aylmer, like her daughter, was growing
rosy. There was no drop of vitriol or even gall
in her whole composition, but when a stone had
been thrown at her, would she be human if she
did not return it ?
" I was surprised that any one coming from
your house, any girl under your wing, should be
intimate to the degree of Christian-naming with
Lady Tennington."
" I am to understand, then, that it is on the
score of her acquaintance with Lady Tenning-
ton that you have come to complain of Miss
Ransome } "
The glaring inconsistency with their own
practice thus coldly fastened upon them loosened
still further the string of both intruders' tongues.
ii8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" What a misrepresentation ! " said Catherine,
in a low key of indignation ; and, " Oh, dear
Camilla, how you do manage to put one in the
wrong when one knows that one is absolutely in
the right 1 " cried her more emotional mother.
Camilla's reply was to fold her bony hands.
" I wait for an explanation."
" I came to speak to you about the girl,"
returned the other, attacking her words at a great
pace, for fear they should decline to come at all,
" not because I have any grudge against her — in
fact, I was very much prepossessed by her appear-
ance — but because — because — I am afraid — 1 really
and truly think that she is not a fit companion
for my children."
There was a slight pause.
"You think that because the fathers have
eaten sour grapes the children's teeth should be
set on edge ? Well, there is a good deal to be
said in favour of your view."
The cold impartiality aimed at, if not quite
attained, in this utterance with its underlying
suggestion of Pharisaism in the person addressed,
called forth a hurried retort.
" You are quite mistaken ; I am not blaming
her for her unfortunate origin. It would be ini-
quitous to do that, but for her own behaviour."
" What has she done .? "
"As I told you, I knew nothing about her,
but, thinking that she looked uncomfortable while
Lady Tennington was talking to her, I sent her up
to tea in the schoolroom. Catherine can tell you
the rest."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 119
The burden thus shifted was taken up with
evident reluctance, but yet without flinching, by
the daughter.
" She seemed rather shy with Miss Barnacre,
who did her best to put her at ease by asking her
questions about subjects she thought would
interest her." (Here a slight upward curl, like an
angry torn cat's, of the corners of Mrs. Tancred's
rigid lips, incomprehensible to her companions,
would have revealed to the initiated a recalling
on her part of one of the subjects, i.e. her own
religious creed, of the governess's catechism as
retailed by the culprit now under discussion.)
" She got up suddenly, and went over to the other
side of the table, and joined Meg, who was
looking at an illustrated paper."
"Well?"
" Miss Barnacre and I went on talking, but I
could not help catching snatches of the two girls'
conversation — of Miss Ransome's, rather — and
I can only say that it was of such a kind that I
thought it best to send Meg out of the room."
" I shall be glad to know precisely what you
overheard."
" She was retailing to Meg very objectionable
scandal."
"Yes?"
Miss Aylmer was evidently to be spared no
detail of the attributed crime, nor had she indeed,
now that the action was well engaged, any objection
to making good her accusation.
" I heard her telling Meg apropos of a picture
of some prize Schipperkes, that Lady Cressida
I20 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Beaulieu, who showed them, had no money of her
own, but was " run " by Waddy, the indiarubber-
tyre manufacturer. I thought then " — ^with a well-
justified air of having made out her cause, " that
it would be better that Meg should hear no more."
The case for the prosecution was complete.
" You were perfectly right," said Camilla,
without a moment's hesitation, though her voice
was even harsher than usual, and as she spoke she
walked to the bell, and rang it.
" You are not going to send for her } " gasped
Mrs. Aylmer, in a key of the most unvarnished
consternation.
"That is exactly what I am going to do."
CHAPTER XI
Thus it was not the task-mistress, but a mere
footman, whose approaching tread struck com-
punctious fear into the breast of the pseudo-student
in the east gallery — a footman who simply re-
quested her presence in the morning-room, coup-
ling with his message the information that Mrs.
and Miss Aylmer were there.
This ambiguous piece of news was enough to
drive Jutes and Angles from a mind on which they
had a firmer clutch than could be said of Miss
Ransome's. Mrs. and Miss Aylmer calling at
half-past eleven in the morning ! What could
the infringement of what had been already im-
pressed upon her as an iron law of Mrs. Tancred's
life portend .'' With a sinking heart the vision of
pig-tailed Meg making her abrupt exit from the
Dower House schoolroom upon an obviously
vamped-up errand presented itself once more to
her inward sight. Had they come to complain
of her for corrupting that gaping goose's mind .''
The footman was gone, and she laughed out
loud and clear. Impossible I What had she said
that was not matter of common knowledge to aU
the world .'' A brighter possibility suggested itself.
122 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Perhaps — Mrs. Aylmer's manner to herself had
been friendly, almost caressing — perhaps they
had taken a fancy to her, had pitied her sore
bondage, had come to rescue her, to propose
some pleasant plan — a plan that would include
Toby, or leading up to others that would include
him !
" I look more young and innocent with my
hair a little dishevelled," she said, carefully pulling
out a strand and letting it amble down the back
of her neck.
Having smeared a drop or two of ink on the
middle finger of her right hand to give the idea
of past obedience to Camilla's suggestion of taking
notes as she read. Miss Ransome, having wasted
only two minutes on her preparations, flew along the
endless passages and down the slippery polished
stairs in prompt and cheerful obedience. Short
as had been the interval between her being sent
for and her arrival, it had seemed phenomenal in
length to the three people making forced con-
versation during it — conversation all the harder
for being so out of character with their usual easy
intimacy.
Bonnybell, on her downward flight, had
quickly decided that it would be wisest to come
in impulsively, and with no hint of a suspicion
that the motive for her production could be other
than a pleasant one. She carried her intention
out admirably, and the graceful, young cordiality
of her greeting to the visitors, with its respect-
fully grateful stage aside to Mrs, Tancred, " How
good of you to let me know ! " could not be
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 123
improved upon. But the first touch of the
visitor's limp hands, the first glance at their over-
set countenances, told her that her earliest and
worst supposition was the true one, and that the
object of their coming was not to invite her to
gambols with Toby, but to arraign her for some
crime against their stupid and unintelligible code.
The accusing forms of Waddy and Cressida rose
before her, and she said to herself with an inward
groan, "What an ass I was to cast my pearls
before such swine ! "
Meanwhile the " swine " might provoke pity
in their worst enemy ; and Camilla allowed a
moment or two to elapse, perhaps with a touch of
malice, perhaps only while gathering herself to
strike, before she relieved them from their cruelly
false position.
"I do not think you need be so very glad
to see Mrs. Aylmer," she said with a dryness
in comparison of which the desert sand was
juicy. *' She has come upon an errand that is
not particularly pleasant for either herself or
you.
The light died out of Miss Ransome's face ;
she was careful that it should do so gradually,
to keep up the impression of complete unsus-
piciousness. With the little escaped tendril of
hair straying over her white nuque, and her
immense and gentle eyes widely opened, she
looked like a child whom some ruffian had with
unexplained brutality hit and hurt. (" I am sure
that I cannot be looking a day over fifteen.") She
made no protest, deciding to be too stunned for
124 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
that, but only turned from one to another in
innocent astonished alarm.
" Mrs. Aylmer has come to lay a very grave
charge against you," continued Camilla, in an
awful voice. " She will explain to you."
There was nothing in the world that Mrs.
Aylmer at the present moment relished less than
the task thus imposed upon her. In her angriest
moments she had never contemplated having to
bring the accusation with this horrible publicity
against the poor child herself. " She looks such
a mere child ! not a day more than fifteen ! " A
quiet remonstrance with Camilla upon the subject
had been all she had bargained for ; and now to
be suddenly summoned to stick a knife into this
pretty, fragile, motherless creature who had run up
to her with such a sweet sureness of welcome,
such pretty open pleasure, — this poor litde waif
whom she felt so much more inclined to take into
her warm motherly arms ! No, it was more than
human nature could stand.
" It was Catherine who heard. Catherine
knows better than I ; she will tell you," was all
that Catherine's mother was able to produce.
Miss Aylmer, to do her justice, had no zest
for the deputed duty, but as she had in the first
instance been less attracted than her parent by the
young sinner, so was it less impossible to her to be
" faithful " in the discharge of the unpleasant feat
they had come expressly to perform.
" I could not help overhearing what you were
saying to Meg."
The great eyes opened wider in a helpless lack
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 125
of comprehension, and there was an air of painful
puzzledom about the delicate brows knit in the
effort to recall any utterance that could have
given offence.
« What— 1 said— to Meg ? "
Happen what might, she would not make it
easier for this squinting prude, who had given her
away. It was in these harsh terms that her own
distress of mind made her qualify the very nearly
invisible cast in Miss Aylmer's left eye.
" You were telling her things that I thought —
that I knew — my mother would think she had
better not hear."
" I am very, very sorry ! " — in a low key of
meek apology that was yet completely at sea as to
the ground of that apology. "But what sort of
things ? "
" You told her that Lady Cressida Beaulieu
was ' run ' by a man of the name of Waddy."
The colour died out of Bonnybell's cheek, a
feat which not even she would have been able to
perform, but which a very real dismay executed
for her. Good-bye, Toby ! Good-bye, probably
the very roof that now covered her ! Here
lies would avail her nothing. Here innocence,
penitence, and brass must go hand-in-hand ; and it
was too likely that not even that trio would be
strong enough to drag her out of the swamp
into which she had fallen neck-deep.
" But he does ! " she answered, her startled-
fawn air and her apparent fifteen years giving a
piquancy, if any of her present hearers were in a
condition to appreciate it, to her scandalous words.
126 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" I thought that everybody knew it. Why, people
always ask them to their houses together ; quite
good people do."
There was a horrid silence, broken at first
only by Miss Aylmer's long breath of relief at
the accomplishment of a hateful duty, and its
immediately following justification. To the eye of
faith, Camilla might have been almost seen lifting
her bludgeon. It fell.
" Because a blatant indecency is nowadays the
key-note of a certain section of society," she
said with an eye-flash that literally scorched its
unlucky object, "there is no need for you to
introduce its pollution into our midst ; if you
have the misfortune to possess a mind full of
unsavoury knowledge, I must at least request
you to keep it within the bounds of that
mind."
The young girl stood shivering with bowed
head under the blast of this blizzard. She could
not help shivering a little, but had still presence
of mind enough to shiver even more than she
could help, particularly as a restless movement
and a sort of sigh coming from the direction of
Mrs. Aylmer gave her a faint hope that to one
at least of her accusers the punishment that had
overtaken her seemed excessive in its severity.
"I was brought up a good deal abroad,"
Bonnybell whispered faintly. " I am afraid that
I do not yet quite understand English ways."
"That is nonsense," replied Camilla, very
harshly, but yet not quite with the awful voice-
quality of her former Philippic — " sheer nonsense.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 127
The standard for the behaviour of young girls in
France is a far stricter one than ours."
" Then I can say nothing ! " rejoined the
poor child in a voice of despair, folding her
slight hands, and really not for the moment
noticing how advantageously the ink-stain on the
middle finger of the right hand was introduced to
notice by this gesture. But Camilla saw the tell-
tale spot — tell-tale of obedience and honest effort,
and it caused her an odd qualm of pity.
Probably the accusers found the situation too
poignantly unpleasant for further endurance,
which was also, since their work was done, need-
less. A murmured proposition to depart from
the mother was followed by a murmured con-
sent from the daughter. There was a little
natural difficulty about their farewells, and in
the moment of hanging back which resulted,
and before this problem was solved by Camilla's
shaking hands with them and saying in a hard,
conscientious voice, " You were perfectly right,
I am glad that you had the courage to tell me.
You shall have no cause for further complaint,"
Bonnybell realized that before the clock had ticked
thirty times she would be left alone with her
judge and executioner to hear what awful sentence
of hopeless doom ?
With an impulse which had less of calculation
in it than in any of her actions, words, or gestures,
since her first entry, though even here there was
a little, she slipped across the intervening space
to the one person in whom she had divined
some bowels of compassion, i.e. Mrs. Aylmer,
128 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
and spoke tremblingly, yet not without a forlorn
dignity.
" I am very, very sorry for having made such
a bad return for your goodness in giving me so
kind a welcome ; but indeed, indeed I did it in
ignorance ! "
" I am quite sure you did," replied the other
precipitately, conquering her desire to throw her
arms round the criminal and give her several
hearty kisses only by a very fast retreat to the
door ; " and I would have given anything that —
that this had not happened ! "
Mrs. Aylmer must be a foolish woman, for she
cried the whole way back to the Dower House.
There remained the executioner and the gallows
bird. Camilla had sat down. Judges always sit,
but, on the other hand, hangmen always stand.
A grotesque wonder flitted through Bonnybell's
mind as to how a person who united the two
functions could harmonize this discrepancy in
practice } There followed an absolute silence.
Camilla did not even look at her. She sat with
the " starers " she had taken oflF lying in her lap,
absently rubbing their glasses with her pocket-
handkerchief. Was her wrath too deep for even
further vituperation } Would it be satisfied
only by a dumb ejection from her house and
protection ?
As the moments passed this seemed to the
girl waiting the pronouncement of her doom
the only possible solution, and after a time she
lifted up, if such a phrase can apply to anything
so low and faint, her little pathetic voice.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 129
" Must I go to-day, or will you let me stay
till to-morrow — to make arrangements ? "
Camilla lifted her eyes, out of which the fire
and sword had gone, but whose expression was
inscrutable to the quaking would-be reader of
their meaning.
" Where would you go to ? "
The cool common sense of the inquiry brought
home to Miss Ransome more strongly than ever
before the sense of her own waifness. She threw
out her hands hopelessly in front of her.
« Where indeed ? "
The action once more brought the inky ensign
of her studiousness into prominence, and this
time it really served as a lifebuoy. Not that
Camilla said anything that spoke of relenting ; but
some indefinable change in the atmosphere that
surrounded the rigid figure in the armchair, still
rubbing its goggles, emboldened the poor sinner
to put up a quivering plea in her own defence.
" I have not had many advantages ; it was
not poor Claire's fault " — with a hasty recurrence
of that feeling that it was against the rule of
the game to impute blame to the helpless dead.
" She was too ill latterly to understand about
anything — but — I have not had much of a
chance."
For once — except in that pardonable gloss
upon the habits of her late mother — the girl was
speaking God's truth, and so strong and immediate
was the eifect of her appeal that neither Mrs.
Tancred nor herself perceived that she had used
the tabooed Christian name.
K
I30 A WAIFS PROGRESS
When the answer came, Bonnybell knew that
neither to-day nor to-morrow would find her sur
la pavi, as she herself would have worded it.
"You shall have a chance now; it will lie
with yourself to profit by it."
There was both dignity and kindness of a
severe sort in voice and mien ; and to the
reprieved criminal the relief was so immense that
she fell incontinently on the floor at her bene-
factress's feet. Mrs. Tancred left her there, and
hurried out of the room, in evident distaste for
the prostration.
No sooner was she gone, than Miss Ransome
picked herself up.
" That was another mistake," she said. " Will
there be no end to them ? Oh, how did I live
through it ? Oh, what a near squeak ! Oh for
a cigarette ! "
CHAPTER XII
" Well, what have you to say for your protigie
now ? "
" Who is my protigie ? Have I got one ? "
There was weariness in the voice that answered ;
but neither that quality nor the patience that
accompanied and emphasized it had any influence
in persuading the putter of the question to desist
or delay the communication which it prefaced.
Edward had come home dispirited and out
of tune. It had been a bad day on the Stock
Exchange, even the gilt-edged securities tumbling
down ; a rumour of the suicide of a member had
been confirmed, and the sense of how litde he
himself risked, in comparison with the life-and-
death struggle going on around him, which to
many minds would have been a source of con-
solation, deepened Mr. Tancred's gloom. He
would have been glad to have been told some-
thing pleasant, however trivial, on his return.
But Camilla was not one of those wives who
tactfuUy pick and choose the moments for im-
parting bad news. It would never have occurred
to her that ill tidings told at night might probably
rob the recipient of sleep, and that it would
131
132 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
therefore be better to defer them till the morning.
Such a reticence would have seemed to her to
argue a want of moral courage on the part of
both narrator and hearer. If anything untoward
occurred to herself she wished to be told it at
once, no matter whether she was sick or well,
waking or sleeping ; and she did as she would be
done by.
" Miss Bonnybell has surpassed herself this
time.
"What has she done ?" cried he, forgetting
his pretence of not knowing to whom his wife
was alluding, with a great heightening of his sense
of out-of-tuneness, made up of fear of what he
was going to hear and of exasperation with
himself for minding so much what he ought to
mind so little.
"Marian Aylmer and Catherine have been
here to-day," said Camilla, not falling into the
procrastinating weakness which had been shown
by the ladies alluded to, but going straight to the
point.
" I thought Mrs. Alymer had an engagement
in London ? "
" So she had in the afternoon ; but they came
in the morning." She paused, as if to let him
absorb this fact, pregnant with significance of
something abnormal and monstrous. " They
came to make a formal complaint against " —
" your protigie " was on the very edge of her
lips, but perhaps some sudden impression of how
fagged he looked prompted her at the very last
moment to alter it to — " our guest."
«
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 133
" What for ? "
In his heart he knew that he was not very
much surprised, recollecting the relieved tone of
Bonnybell's " That accounts for it ! " in answer to
his remark upon Meg Aylmer's backwardness, on
their homeward walk. He felt at the time with
misgiving that it would be wiser not to ask what
it " was. Well, he was going to learn now.
" For corrupting Meg's mind."
"I did not know that Meg had a mind to
corrupt," he answered unwisely, and, with an
instant awareness of his slip, added, " Miss
Ransome must have been very quick about it,
for she could not have been more than half an
hour in the schoolroom, and the great and good
Barnacre was there on guard all the time."
" I only repeat the tale that was told me,"
replied Camilla, with frosty impartiality. " She
was overheard inoculating Meg with one of the
worst of the current scandals of the day, dilating
— no " — correcting herself with characteristic
honesty — " there perhaps I am inexact ; she
probably had not time to dilate, but telling her
how Lady Cressida Beaulieu was ' run ' by a man
of the name of * Waddy.' "
An odious inclination to vexed laughter assailed
Edward : firstly at the ugly piquancy of the imputed
criminal utterance as proceeding from such almost
infantile lips, and secondly at the disproportion of
such a pomp of disapproval as was implied by the
"indignation meeting" alluded to. But the laughter
impulse was a mere muscular contortion, and the
annoyance kiUed it dead before he found words
134 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to comment on the charge. The accusation was
grotesque — with the criminal's antecedents, what
else could they have expected ? — but the peep given
by it into her mind and its furniture hurt him all
the same. The whole business, with its unneces-
sary parade and fuss, was a storm in a tea-cup, and
yet it might have far-reaching consequences for
the poor little culprit, and it was he that would
have brought them on her. He knew that he
ought to express abhorrence at the offence com-
mitted, and that the article which issued from the
warehouse of his jaded mind was not the one
expected.
"It is I that am to blame," he said, a sharp
self-reproach piercing through the natural languor
of his tones. " I ought not to have introduced
her to them ; she had no wish for it."
" She need not fear a repetition of the experi-
ence," returned Camilla, folding her arms in that
wrapper which she had assumed, having snatched
ten minutes from the bare half-hour which she
dedicated to dressing for dinner, in order to make
an irruption with her Evangel into her husband's
quarters.
To Edward's eye and mind that snufF-coloured
peignoir had something in common with the
judge's black cap. His wife seemed always to
assume it when she pronounced sentence of death.
Was she going to pronounce one now ? If there
was any chance of averting it, that chance would
not lie in the direction of a too eager partisanship
on his own part.
"You must remember," he said with a cool
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 135
gentleness of reminder, " that when you under-
took this task you braced yourself to the making
of discoveries that would more surprise than please
you."
"That is true," she answered after a moment's
reflection. " If you had asked me, I should have
told you that I was prepared for anything — bad
habits, objectionable phrases, idleness, ignorance —
her ignorance is stupendous y
" I am sure it is."
" I put her through a few elementary ques-
tions upon English history this morning. There
were not many facts that she was sure of, but she
was quite sure that King Richard II. had married
Philippa of Hainault. I tried to explain to her
that in the fourteenth century men did not marry
their grandmothers, although it has become a very
common practice to-day."
The shaft went home, as it was intended.
What had he done to deserve it .? Did she sus-
pect him of an intention, by servile acquiescence
in her subsidiary charges, to lead her away from
the main point at issue ?
" But that is not the question now. What we
are primarily concerned with — what was the object
of Mrs. Aylmer's visit — is to prevent a person
for whom we have made ourselves answerable
from spreading the infection of her own corrup-
tion to healthier households."
The husband and wife were standing opposite
to each other, but in their respective grace and
ungrace, still in morning dress ; a trivial irrita-
tion with her for making him late for dinner
136 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
forming the warp of that annoyance of which her
communication was the woof.
"Don't you think that the whole thing is
grossly exaggerated ? " he asked with an accent
where a lifelong habit of courtesy proved its
value by helping him to an apparently quite good-
tempered air of deference — "the pompous embassy,
the inconsiderate breaking of your rules. No ! " —
recapitulation of his friend's errors against good
taste leavening the " sweet reasonableness " of his
words with a perceptible indignation. " The whole
way of setting about it was wrong, and not what I
should have expected of an old friend like Mrs.
Aylmer."
"She was perfectly right," rejoined Camilla,
standing bolt upright under an electric burner,
which made her look taller and scraggier than
usual. " If a woman is granted the inestimable
blessing of children, her first duty is to them, and
besides "
She paused. Should she teU him, as it was
on the edge of her lips to do, what was the
strict truth, that both the original idea of the
indictment against BonnybeU and the vigour to
carry it out had belonged to Catherine Aylmer
and not to her mother ? Should she or should she
not ? The neighbourhood was right. Catherine
Aylmer would have made Edward a fit and con-
genial wife in the event of her own death, and
Camilla was aware that her life was not a good
one. The girl might still fill that ofliice. Why,
then, should the present tenant say anything
calculated to prejudice Edward against her ?
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 137
" Besides what ? "
Mrs. Tancred had no powers of inventing, nor
wish to invent, an altered utterance,
" I have thought better of what I was going
to add," she answered.
Silence followed. He had forgotten that she
was making him late for dinner. All desire to
check the flow of her communication had ceased,
replaced by an awful curiosity for details.
" I suppose that they did not meet ? "
" You are mistaken there ; it was only fair to
her that she should be confronted with them."
The hearer hoped that the slight shudder he
could not repress at the idea of this display of
equity escaped detection.
"What happened?"
"Oh, she came bounding in, so delighted to
see them. I explained to her at once that she
had no great cause for elation at this visit. They
must have felt rather like fools under her demon-
stration ; they certainly looked it." She stopped
with a fierceish smile, as if the memory of her
friend's discomfiture were not at all disagreeable
to her.
The picture rose in sharpest realism before
Edward's vision. The lovely little gay gladness
coming frisking in, and its reception !
" And — and how did Miss Ransome take it ? "
" She made no attempt to deny the charge."
After a moment, " Her excuse, if it can be called
one, was that she had supposed every one to be
acquainted with the ugly story. Perhaps every
one is ! " Another slight pause. " To do her
138 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
justice, I do not think that she had any glimmer-
ing of a suspicion that there was any diiFereftce
between 'decent' and 'indecent' in conduct or
conversation."
He bit his lip ; protestation or extenuation
would be fatal, and he attempted neither.
"And then ?"
" Then — why, then they went. I do not think
I ever saw people in quite such a hurry to
be off."
Again her tom-cat smile reappeared, and she
went off wearing it, when she at length left him
to his belated toilet.
" You have heard, I suppose ? "
« Heard what .? "
It was disingenuous of Edward to pretend
ignorance of the subject of Bonnybell's ques-
tion, but though guiltily conscious of an acute
curiosity as to the criminal's version of the
story, a grave doubt as to whether it would not
be the wiser course to let such sleeping dogs
lie, drove him into as much prevarication as was
implied by his " Heard what ? "
" If you have not heard, I think it would be a
relief to me to tell you, if you would allow me."
" Oh, but I have heard ! " he answered rather
precipitately, uncomfortably aware that he was
giving himself away by admitting knowledge of
what he had a moment ago feigned ignorance of.
The scene was the morning-room after dinner
on the same day. From that dinner Camilla had
been summoned away by a messenger of ill from
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 139
the village. She had left that small and rigidly
plain portion of her own excellent food which
she ever allowed herself without hesitation or
regret, and was still absent, now that the tea-table
was being placed in its usual position. Edward
had not long rejoined his guest, who was sitting
rather out of sight behind a screen, from beyond
which her voice came low and plaintive. The
few glances at her that he had allowed himself
during dinner had told him — or he thought so —
that her eyelids were a little reddened, though not
to the extent of disfigurement. " I am one of
the few people who can cry becomingly," was her
own dispassionate dictum, " and it will be dis-
arming to look as if I had wept, and I am sure " —
the waif feeling returning in some strength — " it
will come easily enough ; no one can ever have
had better reason to do it."
"I was silly enough to hope I had made a
good impression,"
" I, too, quite thought so," he answered mourn-
fully, touched by the gentle humility of her
confession of mistake.
"I dare say I should have continued in my
fool's paradise if Miss Aylmer had not persuaded
her mother to come and complain of me."
Bonnybell had not the generosity of Camilla,
and the immediate effect of her words upon Miss
Aylmer's ally and supposed admirer filled her
with a sincere and tranquil joy.
" Miss Aylmer ! " he echoed with an unmis-
takable start. " Catherine Aylmer ! Oh, you
surely must be mistaken."
I40 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
For answer, he saw a lovely little dusky head
shaking itself sadly from its seclusion.
" She was perfectly right — oh, do not think I
am blaming her ! — quite, quite right, if she thought
I was doing her sister harm ; but oh, it is all
such a different milieu from what I have been
used to ! If you knew, if you could only guess,
how utterly at sea I feel among you all."
There was something in the forlorn and well-
justified pathos in her tone that might have
melted a harder heart, and affected a nature less
sensitive to others' sufferings than Edward's. He
rose out of the armchair into which he had tiredly
let himself down on his first entrance, as if seeking
relief from his emotion in a change of posture.
(" Good Heavens ! " thought she, " I have over-
done it. I have been too affecting. I thought I
was safe with him. One is never safe.") But
he only went and stood on the hearth-rug, with
his back to the garlands and grouped figures of
the Adams chimney-piece, and took a coat-tail
pensively under each arm.
" I am afraid that it was inevitable at first," he
said at length with a faltering reassurance in his
voice. " The plunge was too sudden ; but things
will right themselves in time, don't you think ? "
His manner was always tentative, and he
had never in his life felt less sure of the truth
of any proposition than of the one he was now
advancing.
" Do you really think so ? " she asked, once
more relieved and astonished that her new fears
of his harbouring purposes of enterprise were as
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 141
baseless as her former ones. She added hesita-
tingly. " You could help me a good deal if you
would."
" I ! "
" If — when you saw that I was going to make
one of my blunders, you would make some sign
to me to stop."
His head was bent a little. It gave her the
opportunity to notice how thickly and with what
a pretty tendency to curl at the ends his hair
clothed its crown. Her proposition had not the
effect of lifting it.
" I do not quite see how that can be managed,"
he answered in a key whose reluctance to dis-
appoint her and an indubitable disapproval of her
project strove for mastery.
" We could agree beforehand upon a little code
of signals," she went on, pushing aside the screen
that had hitherto partly hidden her in the eager-
ness of persuasion. " If you passed your hand
across your forehead, it would mean ' Stop at once.'
If you pulled out your shirtcuif, it would mean
' Make your sentence end in some different way
from what you are going to."
Still his eyes did not lift themselves, nor did
he give any sign of acquiescence. An uncom-
fortable sense of the horrible glibness — speaking
of long use of such methods — with which she
developed her little underhand plan was very
present to him.
" I am afraid I do not quite like the idea."
" Don't you ? " she answered humbly and
sadly. " Then I am sure it is not a good one, but
142 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
if you do not consent to help me in some way —
to give me some sort of rule to guide me — I shall
always be getting into fresh disgrace with Mrs.
Tancred ; and — old people are so very easily
shocked."
He lifted the head whose well-furnished top
she had been admiring now, and looked at her
with a disapproval which, if gentle, was very
unmistakable.
" I think, if you do not mind, that I had
rather you did not speak of my wife quite like
that."
Her heart sank, and the flustered desire to
repair her error led her into a far graver one,
" Now I have made an enemy of you too,"
she said, " and Heaven knows that is the last thing
I wish to do ; but — but she looked so much more
like your mother."
Miss Ransome had touched the raw of her
host's whole life.
CHAPTER XIII
Of the three denizens of Stillington its owner
took by far the easiest mind to bed with her.
She had accepted the presence of Bonnybell,
with all its attendant ills, in the same spirit as she
would have accepted the loss of her fortune, an
infidelity of Edward's, or some dire blain or boil
upon her own body. Bonnybell had been sent
here by the same Unerring Wisdom that would
have sent her any of the other possible afflic-
tions, and she had only to adjust her back to the
burden.
Miss Ransome had no such consciousness to
support her as, with an inexpressible yearning
for the soothing properties of tobacco, she sat
in the huge chintz chair by her bedroom fire,
taking stock of her errors, and their probable
consequences.
" I shall bring him round in time, I suppose,"
she reflected. " But what a surprise ! Who would
have thought he would have taken up the cudgels
for his old lady's juvenility so violently ? Violent
is not the word. I should not think he could
ever be violent ; and yet those lackadaisical eyes
gave a fine flash when I suggested that she was
143
144 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
not quite a slip of a girl ! I must pretend for
the future that she looks sixteen, or " — more
shrewdly — " I had better not meddle with the
subject again at all to him." A lugubrious stare
into the fire, with inky hair still unbuilt for the
night, and hands clasped round slender lace-and-
satin-clad knees. (Bonnybell's peignoir would not
own Camilla's, even as a poor relation.) " After all,
I believe the old camel will prove the easier of the
two to get round. I did not half dislike her when
she stood glowering over me as I grovelled on the
floor, and told me I should have a chance — it will
be an uncommonly disagreeable chance " — with a
backward glance thrown by memory at her hours
of evaded study in the dull schoolroom, ending
in the grisly ordeal of confrontation with her
accusers — "but such as it is, I must hold on to
it until something better turns up."
When will that be ? Not, certainly, on the
morrow of her exposure ; that brought only a
dictation lesson, which threw Rontgen rays of
unexampled brutality upon her orthography ;
brought also a bluntly worded inquiry from
Camilla, in allusion to a slight tinting which her
late paling experiences had made seem admis-
sible, as to whether she had " forgotten to wash
her face ? " A still less delicately worded hope
followed, in answer to Miss Ransome's explana-
tion that the wind must have caught her cheeks,"
a caustic hope that the "zephyr" in question might
remain prisoned in its cave during her stay in her
present quarters. A further piece of advice to
commit it to the flames with the least possible
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 145
delay displayed the discourtesy of an entire dis-
belief in Miss Ransome's interpretation of her
heightened roses.
The charge and its feeble parry took place in
Edward's presence ; but he did not attempt the
smallest share in the engagement. Not a rustle
of the paper he was reading ; not the least fid-
geting on his chair, not an eye-glance nor a lip-
biting gave evidence of any inward protest against
the " baiting " that was being undergone by one
whom he had yesterday seemed inclined to
shield and pity. Throughout the day — or rather
throughout that small part of it when he was at
home and in her presence — he treated her with
a perfect but distant courtesy, and so through
the next and the next.
" Oh, how careful one ought to be ! " she
sighed to herself ruefully. " One would have
thought that the one perfecdy safe thing to do
was to laugh at a wife to a husband, or at a hus-
band to a wife, but in this dreadful place there are
no rules, only exceptions 1 "
When the third day showed no sign of a
relaxation of her host's gentle austerity. Miss
Ransome grew desperate. She was returning in
drag-footed boredom from a walk in the shrub-
beries to the extreme end of which she had been
lured by the distant sound of guns. It was un-
likely that the park should be shot in its master's
absence ; but triggers were being pulled some-
where within hearing, and one of them might be
by Toby ! It was on neutral ground alone that
she could now have a chance of pursuing that
146 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
chase which she was so loth to abandon. It was
possible that if she walked far enough into the
park in the direction of the Dower House, she
might intercept him on his homeward way. Her
intention to make the attempt held out while
she followed a long walk that wound with the
slow midland rivulet, that it was long ago cut
to accompany on its sluggish course through the
pleasure-grounds, until a little bridge across the
stream, and a rustic gate on its further side giving
access to a copse that led into the Park, were
reached. But, having attained this point, her
resolution failed. The light was thickening.
Some one had told her that this was the season
when the stags — heard even from here belling
loudly — -were dangerous to meet. Even the very
oiF-chance of being rescued by Toby from hoofs
and antlers made it scarcely worth while to incur
the probability of being tossed by the one and
trampled by the other. She turned sadly away,
wafting a sigh in the direction of the renounced
prize, and breathing the silent, pensive ejacula-
tion, " Oh, you great lout, if you only knew
what was good for you ! "
She retraced her steps through the humid
gloom of the laurels, and by the dimming, dull
water. Near the house — but not very near —
just where two giant cedars stood on each side of
the path, making twilight into midnight beneath
their shade, she met Edward.
" You thought I was lost ! " cried her little
voice in trepidating pleasure. " You came to look
for me ! How more than kind ! "
A WAIFS PROGRESS 147
" I am afraid that I did not even know you
were out," he answered, stepping hastily out of
the patch of darkness and throwing away the end
— or a good deal more than the end — of his
cigarette. Both actions seemed to her unneces-
sary and undesirable. She commented only upon
the last.
" Please don't ! " she pleaded eagerly. " You
know that I was brought up upon cigarettes — I
mean, of course, upon their smell. You do not
know how I love it ! "
The Heimweh in her tone shocked and
startled him. Heimweh ! Good Heavens, for
what a Heim !
" Do not walk quite so fast," she said, en-
treatingly. " I want, if you will let me, to get
right with you. I know that I have been all
wrong since Sunday."
He slackened his pace — as what else could he
do, so besought .'' — but it was with an unwilling-
ness that she divined through his civil acquies-
cence ; and he did not answer quite immediately.
To deny that she had been "wrong with him"
since Sunday would be to take a leaf out of that
Liar's Book, of which he had already begun to
be afraid that she was a steady peruser ; to assent
would be certain to be followed by a re-opening
of the casus belli, and there was nothing in the
world that he wished less. To refuse to listen
to the explanation, which it was but too evident
that she had invented and was bent on uttering,
would be to give it importance. He tried to
carry the thing off lightly.
148 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" My memory refuses to go back as far as
Sunday. This is Thursday. Let us start a new
reckoning from to-day."
But Bonnybell was not to be put off. She
got a little nearer to him, partly in real anxiety,
partly because she reckoned upon her face as her
best ally in the work of propitiation, and in this
scant light proximity was indispensable for him to
feel its value.
" You were quite under a misapprehension the
other night, when you were so displeased with me,"
she began, with rapid deprecation. " Is it likely
that, friendless as I am, I should want to alienate
my best — a — a — well-wisher ?" (She had hesitated
over the last word, as if her humility had replaced
by it the more presuming " friend.") " I never
meant to say or imply that Mrs. Tancred was really
old." (Oh, Miss Ransome !) "Fifty! what is fifty
nowadays ? Many women of fifiy do not look
a day over five-and-thirty. With a little touching
up, Mrs. Tancred would not look a day over
thirty."
He would give his ears to stop her. There
seemed to him something at once shocking and
ludicrous, firstly in her brazen mendacity, and
secondly in the indelicacy of her determination to
discuss his wife ; but she ran on so fast in the
eagerness of self-exculpation that he could not
find a chink in which to put a protest.
" What I meant to say was that Mrs. Tancred
intended to look old, that it was a parti-pris in her
case. I thought it must be so by the way she
scratches her hair off her forehead."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 149
But here, chink or no chink, he broke in.
" Stop ! " he said, authoritatively, " I must beg
of you to change the subject."
Through the damp mistiness she looked up at
him, snubbed and frightened, her pomegranate-
flower lips apart, and with the stream of explana-
tory eloquence that had been issuing from them
frozen at its source.
" I see that I am making bad worse," she said
presently, her glibness fled, and in a very crest-
fallen little pipe.
He could not command himself to speak again
yet ; still sorely angry and chafed, yet with a half-
relenting feeling that he had been too harsh to this
wicked little waif that had been tossed on his
shore.
"I am a very great trial to you both," pre-
sently came sighingly in his direction — sighingly,
and he half-suspected showerily too ; " but it is
far worse for Mrs. Tancred than for you."
" Worse for Mrs. Tancred than for me ! "
repeated he, echoing her words in a tone of
alarm.
Was she going to be guilty of some new
monstrosity against good taste ? Was she going
to force him to a fresh rebuke ? This latter was
perhaps the most urgent form that his fear took.
But her next words reassured him.
" Yes, because she has to see so much more
of me than you have. You are away all day, and
need never cast a thought towards me between
sunrise and sunset, but I am always before her
eyes, shocking her every time that I open my
ISO A WAIF'S PROGRESS
mouth by my gross ignorance, or by saying some-
thing impossible without knowing it ; and now
that she has undertaken my education "
She paused dramatically. A wholesome and
welcome inclination to laugh came over him, but
he checked it ; he must not allow himself to de-
cline into triviality, or she might at once resume
her terrible confidentialness.
" It is not that I am not mosi anxious to learn.
Oh, do not misunderstand me on that point !
I have had enough of misunderstandings the last
three dreadful days."
Through the dusk he could see that her little
black orphaned hands were tightly clasping each
other, but he did not know that their anxious
grip was a matter of calculation, nor that the
penitent before him was saying to herself, " I am
really very touching. The odd thing is that I am
rather touched myself too."
" If I thought I should ever do her any
credit," she continued, inserting a slight quaver
into her tone ; " but I have no natural aptitude
for learning, and I am beginning so late. I cannot
bear to think of what uphill work it wiU be for
her."
" That is an aspect of the question that will
never present itself to her," replied he, with what
might be a shade of dryness in his voice ; and
the anxious Bonnybell divined that she was not
even yet quite on the right tack.
(" I am overdoing it ; I must not be too
angelic. He is beginning to suspect that I em-
broider a little.")
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 151
" Perhaps it was one word for Mrs. Tancred
and two for myself" — allowing a tinge of self-
rallying playfulness to creep into her words.
" Perhaps I am only a born dunce, and want an
excuse for remaining one."
The unvarnished truth of her last sentence did
her far more service with her hearer, as she in a
moment felt, than the high varnish of her pre-
ceding ones.
"There are worse things in life than a
dunce," he answered, in a tone of unmistak-
able indulgence, and for which he contemned
himself.
" Then we are friends again," rejoined she,
softly sliding out, with carefully studied impul-
siveness, four little humble fingers and a hesitating
thumb to meet his clasp.
" Yes," he answered, accepting her hand with
a frank comradeship, in which even her expert
palm could detect no attempt at a squeeze, " by
all means let us be friends ; only" — with a return
to his habitually tentative, non-assertive manner —
" would not it be a good plan for us to remember
that even in the most intimate friendships there
are reticences ? "
Miss Ransome's education proceeded, despite
all her struggles, with inexorable regularity.
" Apace " is hardly the word to apply to its pro-
gress, since her own resolution to learn as little as
possible rescued her from all danger of its course
being a rapid one. It was impossible to peruse a
contraband novel from across the Channel, or
enjoy a ribald little Parisian journal, smuggled to
152 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
her by a foreign admirer, during the whole time
of her incarceration in the schoolroom, as detection
must inevitably have followed upon an entire
neglect of the imposed tasks. But her intelligence
was quick, and she was able to assimilate enough
surface knowledge of the subjects in which she
would have to undergo an examination by her
tormentor without absolute disgrace, and yet
have a good margin of time to bestow upon
" L'Enigme du P6ch6 " and Le Petit Journal.
A discovery that her reading of her native
tongue was on a par with, if not upon an even
lower plane of accomplishment than her spelling,
led to the imposition of a corvee more hated by its
victim, as less able to be shirked or scamped than
any of its fellows. In an evil hour, it occurred
to Camilla that to make her pupil read aloud the
daily newspapers to herself would be the best
method by which- at once to discover and correct
the extent of her ignorance. Through foreign
intelligences, leaders, money-markets the unhappy
girl ploughed with stumbles and jibs. Once a
gleam of possible relief came to her.
"Would you care for me to read you the
Racing intelligence ? "
"You might as well read me a page of
Coptic." ...
" I could explain it a little to you, if you cared
to hear " — with a delicate bashfulness at this pro-
posal to reverse their respective relations and turn
instructor.
Camilla brushed away the proposal as with a
new-twigged besom.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 153
"I know nothing in the world that I wish
less ! Read the review of the new ' Life of
Schopenhauer.' "
But if Miss Ransome was an unsuccessful
and unwilling pupil, she was, as Jock soon learnt
to his cost, a relentless and successful teacher.
He disliked being educated almost as much as
she did herself — it would be impossible to do so
more — yet that perseverance on her part which,
if exerted in another direction, would have made
her a profound and eloquent scholar, and his
own vanity, of which he had as large a share as
most dogs — and that is saying a good deal —
combined to enable him to reach a very high
standard of unnatural accomplishments.
" If I ever get round her, it will be vid Jock ! "
Bonnybell said to herself astutely, seeing the
unwilling laughter that wrinkled the mouth of
Jock's mistress, and hearing the latent enjoyment
that pierced through the superficial snub of her
words.
"What a fool you are making of the
dog!"
" He may not enjoy being educated, but, like
me, he knows that it is good for him," replied
Bonnybell, with pretty insincerity, throwing a
glance, as she delivered herself of her fib, at
Edward, to see how he took it — whether with
approbation of her sweet docility, or with that
grain of distrust which she had uneasily sur-
mised several times lately in his reception of her
statements both as to fact and sentiment ?
She could read no expression of either approval
154 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
or disapproval in his eyes ; but he broke out
into one of his rare laughs, as she capered off
again down the long room, whirling Jock along
in an ambling waltz, against which his dragging
hind legs made a bored protest. There was calcu-
lation and consciousness in the childish frisking
gaiety of Jock's partner ; but yet there was real
young enjoyment too. One might be a little
Mayfair mudlark, obliged to earn one's bread by
currying favour with one's patrons in any way
that seemed most likely to succeed ; but one was
only eighteen,^ and it took but a very little to
make one's heart feel uncommonly light.
Having landed Jock in front of his mistress,
and by judicious pressure upon his stomach forced
him to execute an angry bow to that lady as a finale
to his performances. Miss Ransome, forsaken by
her good genius, lapsed into ruinous reminiscence.
"When we were at Deauville there was a
poodle at the hotel who could walk as well on his
forelegs, with his hind ones in the air, as on all
four. My mother was so pleased with him that
she wanted to buy him ; but the lady to whom he
belonged — she was not quite a lady ; she was
with the Prince de Compifegne — would not hear of
parting with him. Claire could never bear not
getting what she wished ; so we had a scene
about it one night on the stairs."
This interesting trait was followed by absolute
silence.
" There is nothing for it but patience, I sup-
pose ! " said Mrs. Tancred, a little later, when
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 155
Bonnybell, not enjoying the atmosphere which
she had created, expressed herself tired and
went to bed ; and Edward answered, with brief
acquiescence —
" I suppose not"
CHAPTER XIV
A WEEK had elapsed, and a morning came on
which Edward set off for London accompanied
by his wife, instead of, as usual, alone ! The
result was obvious : freedom — temporary, indeed !
but still freedom for Miss Ransome, But of
what use was that noblest of God's gifts to one
who had no means of employing it ?
" Don't get into mischief if you can help it,"
was Camilla's parting benediction ; and the smiling
humility of Bonny bell's " I will try not," took an
ambiguous meaning as she turned it over after-
wards in the leisure and liberty of her own mind.
"Try not to get into mischief?" or "Try not
to help getting into mischief? How can I help
helping ? What mischief could I get into if I
tried?"
This problem set her pondering. If she were
to borrow Camilla's cutting-out scissors from her
work-basket, she might cut snips in the canvases
of those dismal primitifs. If she were to em-
ploy the aid of a poker, she might break the
nose of the young Augustus coldly glimmering
at her from his pedestal in the centre of the litde
circular vestibule at the stairs' foot. But in neither
156
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 157
of these, nor in any analogous crimes, would there
be much point nor any enjoyment.
In her total destitution of all opportunities
for evil, the poor young creature snatched eagerly
at the one sin — though it was only a paltry one
of omission — open to her ; the entire neglect of
the tasks assigned her by her departed tyrant.
It relieved her to kick the instruments of her in-
tended elevation and enlightenment into a corner,
and when " L'Enigme du P6che " — a work whose
very title would make Camilla's straight hair break
into horrified curls — was produced from its hiding-
place ; when the little shoes lately employed in
propelling Greene, Bryce, etc., were hoisted to
the top of the nursery fender, which still stood in
long-unneeded precaution before the generous
grate, Bonnybell's conscience grew clear. Her
power of doing wrong in her present surround-
ings was infinitesimal, but she had done what
she could. To do what one could ! — this was a
standard beyond which Mrs. Tancred herself did
not attempt to rise. At the ingenious perversity
of this reflection, Bonnybell laughed delightedly.
She had been in the enjoyment of her illicit
pleasures for an hour and a half, and had begun
to suspect that the solution of the "Enigma"
would form a plat too highly spiced for even
her seasoned palate, when the door opened. She
whisked her feet down from their dizzy height
and sat up, to find a salver, a note, and a footman
at her elbow.
" Any answer ? " she asked, taking the note
and looking at its superscription curiously. The
158 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
handwriting was at once familiar and unfamiliar ;
known, but not lately known.
"The chauffeur wished to know how soon
you would like the motor to come round ? "
" The chauffeur ? The motor ? " repeated she,
staring; then, bethinking herself that the best
way to solve this new enigma would be the same
as that which she had been employing on the other,
she tore open the envelope and read —
" My darling little Bonnybell, —
(The unaccountable warmth of this opening
took her eye to the signature, " Flora."
" Of course ! How stupid not to have
remembered Flora Tennington's scrawls and
flourishes ! ")
" I have just heard from Harrington "
(so Harrington is still with Flora, is he ?) " that
he had seen your ugly old gaoler and her souffre
douleur at the station and off to London, so I have
sent the motor to fetch you to spend the day.
If it comes back without you I shall go on sending
it until it brings you, dead or alive. I have
millions of things to say and Usk.
" Your loving
" Flora.
" P.S. — You will meet two friends, a new
and an old one."
Miss Ransome's decision must be immediate.
The expectant footman was still at her elbow
awaiting orders. She threw her cap over the
mill.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 159
" I shall be ready in ten minutes."
The decision — given the deep disgrace from
which she had so lately emerged — sounded like
madness ; but a streak of reason ran through it.
Her host and hostess had announced their intention
of returning by a later train than the one that
usually brought Edward ; the servants would, in
all probability, not tell upon her. Camilla's own
lifelong maid, a young lady of fifty-five, had,
shordy before Bonnybell arrived, yielded to the
urgencies of a bridegroom, become too pressing
to be longer resisted, to crown by marriage an
engagement of thirty years. Her present atten-
dant was a young person whom she had employed
because nobody else would, and in order to
make her a character. But what decided Miss
Ransome to take the plunge was the postscript,
" You will meet two friends, a new and an old
one.
" An old friend ! " This by itself would act
as a deterrent. It must be a man, since Claire
and she never had any women friends after Flora
dropped them, and of the men who formed her
circle, there was not one concerning whom her
most ardent wish was never to hear of or meet
him again. But " a new friend ! " Who could
it be but Toby ?
It was, perhaps, a stretch of language to give
that name to a person, the sole evidence of whose
meriting it was that he looked black when she
entered the room, remained churlishly silent
during the few minutes of their joint occupancy
of it, and left it with a bang of discourteous haste
i6o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to escape her. But, at all events, it was well
worth trying, and in twenty minutes from her
first reception of the proposition she was flying
along between the tree-stems of the park, on her
way to accept it.
The motor was, to her relief, a brougham.
To arrive touzled and stained — and she had not
a proper motoring costume with her — would be
to prejudice her chance of success at the outset.
She must be pretty before all things. Whether
her prettiness was to be further ornamented by a
sweet innocence or a daring raciness of conversation
must depend upon what a further acquaintance
with Toby's tastes and methods might reveal. If
he were an habitue of Flora's, the latter of the
two alternatives was the one more likely to please.
But her deep-seated and universal distrust of man
— falsified though it had been in the case of
Edward by a fortnight's acquaintance — made her
finally resolve to temper her raciness, if she was
racy, with caution.
Arrived, after a quarter of an hour's whirl,
Bonnybell found Flora in a hot room, crammed
with flowers and hric-a-hrac, whose very atmo-
sphere brought back, with a rush of starded
repulsion, to the girl's memory the atmosphere
that she had breathed through her own childhood
and early youth. During the last period of her
mother's life it had been further improved by
the continual perfume of champagne and drugs ;
but the present one, though free from these
ingredients, was like enough to make her realize
how far she had travelled from what it represented.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS i6i
and to wish that she had not come, particularly as
no vestige of a redeeming Toby showed on the
naked horizon.
Flora was too much occupied at the moment
of her guest's arrival to spare time for any
greeting. She was sitting on the floor, as was
Harrington, the broken-down gentleman who
was coeval with Flora in Bonnybell's acquaintance
with that lady ; the broken-down gentleman who,
beginning by being her lover, had ended by being
her major-domo.
Upon Flora's lap sat the little old dachshund
Lisa, down whose throat Harrington was trying
to drive a pill. By holding her mouth tight shut,
and stroking her throat, the object was supposed
to have been, after many previous failures, attained.
The fallacy of the deduction was proved an hour
later by the pill being found intact on the front
stairs, showing that the wily Lisa had, after all,
bested her physicians ; but for the present, lulled
in a false security, Lisa's mistress was able to
remember her visitor's presence.
" Wasn't it fortunate that Harrington should
have happened to be at the station just in time
to see your old monster get into the train ? I
said to myself, ' Now is my time.' I had been
puzzling my head as to how I was going to get
at you. I could not come after you. You know
I am tolerably faci/e a vivre, but I cannot stand
that old woman."
Truth is truth, even if inverted, and Bonnybell
did not think it necessary to point out that in this
case it was standing on its head ; since, in point
M
1 62 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
of fact, it was " that old woman " who had never
been able to " stand " Lady Tennington.
"I had scarcely a word with you at the
Aylmers'," continued Flora, raising her rather
bulky form from the floor by the aid of
Harrington, whom she immediately afterwards
sent out of the room. " You were packed ofF to
Meg and that odious prig of a governess for fear
that I should corrupt your mind, I suppose."
She laughed, both with cosmetic-ed lips and
with eyes that, though brazenly bistered, were
joUy and good-natured, at the humour of such a
thing being possible ; and Bonnybell laughed too,
though with a surprised sense of annoyance at the
unlimited knowledge of evil attributed to her.
" I corrupted theirs instead," she replied, with
a humorous gloom.
"The governess's and Meg's ?" with an accent
of delighted interest. " Oh, how it must have
improved them ! "
As she spoke, she held out an expensive and
floridly coronetted cigarette-case to the girl, who
pounced upon it as the camel upon a desert pool.
" Oh, how delicious ! how I have longed and
thirsted for one ! Savory ? "
" Yes, I always stick to them."
There was a short silence of rapturous enjoy-
ment on Bonnybell's part. Flora had pushed her
into a luxurious chair, and the smoke was going
up to heaven from her pink nostrils. She was
beginning to be glad of her iniquity, even though
the Toby for whom it was committed had proved
to be but a mirage.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 163
" How did you corrupt their minds ? " The
question shared Lady Tennington's mouth with
a cigarette ; but, though a little inarticulate from
this cause, the relish in it was unmistakable.
" I got into a dreadful scrape. They came
and complained of me next day."
The interest aroused by this statement van-
quished material enjoyment, and Lady Tennington
took the " Savory " from between her rosy lips,
and sat up.
" What did you say ? "
"Will you believe it?" replied Bonnybell,
sitting up too, her eyes sparkling intensely in the
relief and enjoyment of having at length found a
confidant certain to sympathize in the grievous
wrong done her. "All that I said was — I was
looking at a silly little newspaper with Meg, and
I happened to mention — we had come to a picture
of Cressida Beaulieu and her Schipperkes — that
Waddy ran her. Could you imagine that there
was any one in the world so ignorant as not to
know that Waddy ran Cressida ? "
" It is inconceivable," replied Flora, in an
almost awed tone ; and there was a moment or
two of wondering and compassionate silence on
the part of both.
"They came and laid a formal complaint
against me next day, and I was sent for down
from my studies — I was at my studies, if you
please " — with a delightful little grimace.
" Your studies ! " laughing significantly. " I
should have thought that you knew as much as
most people."
1 64 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
At this ambiguous compliment something in
Bonnybell once again felt jarred.
" Oh, what a time I had of it ! " she exclaimed,
gliding with only half-unconscious distaste from
the subject of her own discreditable omniscience.
" What a scolding ! "
" From that hateful old prude } "
" Yes, from Camilla. But she is not quite all
hateful. I thought she was at first, but she isn't.
After having ground me to powder — while those
two women looked on— oh, I should like to be
even with them ! — she told me she would give
me another chance ! It doesn't sound any great
catch," beginning to laugh heartily ; " but I can
assure you that I was very much relieved, as I
felt certain that I was going to be turned out
then and there, neck and crop."
" I wish you had. I should have got you for
good then."
The phrase, in one sense, was scarcely a happy
one, since it could not, by any stretch of language,
be considered a good thing for any young woman
to be taken under the soiled and tarnished wing of
Lady Tennington.
Bonnybell's heart did not in the least echo the
aspiration, but her lips brought out their " It
would have been too delightful for words ! " with
their accustomed lying glibness.
She looked with pretty, grateful affection at
her hostess as she spoke, asking herself alternately
whether it was that she had forgotten Flora, or
that the latter had lost her eye and donned a
greenlier gold wig than of yore, imparted a more
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 165
sealing-waxy red to her mouth, and laid the
powder on her nose, thick as snow on the summit
of the Jung Frau, without knowing it.
"Tell me some more," said the unconscious
object of these silent queries, in the delighted
voice of a child asking for the repetition of a
favourite fairy tale. " Ah, here is Charlie
Landon ? I told you you would meet an old
friend. You must begin all over again for him."
CHAPTER XV
So this was the "old friend" with whom the
hook for her had been partially baited ! Charlie
Landon, the hero of that dinner at the Reservoir at
Versailles ; Charlie Landon, the odious old volup-
tuary most detested by her of all her mother's
disreputable entourage; the one whose degrading
admiration and nauseous overtures she had had the
most difficulty in keeping within decent bounds ;
Charlie Landon 1
Was it to meet Charlie Landon, whom she
would have compassed sea and land to avoid, that
she had imperilled her salvation ? — for indeed the
sure refuge of the house into which she had
found admittance seemed to her, in this sudden
terror of deservedly losing it, to spell no less a
thing. She had never seen the hateful old satyr
face since the Versailles evening, as some blessed
accident summoned its owner back to England on
the day following it.
That Flora was quite ignorant of her young
guest's attitude of mind towards her old one
was evident both from that known good-nature
of hers, which would never willingly place any two
people in an uncomfortable situation, and also
1 66
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 167
from the fact that before Charlie had become a
prominent person in the ever-narrowing circle of
Claire's friends, Flora had seen herself obliged
to withdraw from it personally.
Lady Tennington rather liked Charlie. He
did not make love to her, and she would not
have minded if he had, and his fund of indelicate
anecdotes amused her. It was upon his own re-
presentation of the affectionate intimacy existing
between himself and the young girl — for in the
accomplishment of lying Charlie could have given
Bonnybell herself points — that the invitation to
meet him had gone forth veiled in the anonymity
which was most likely to produce the desired
effect.
Perhaps it was because Miss Bonnybell's
features, though equally practised in dissimula-
tion, were not so expert at it as her tongue, but
certainly it was that something which was not of
the expected quality had expressed itself in the girl's
fuce, and given a surprised and interrogative quality
to Flora's next words.
" Charlie wanted to go and fetch you, but 1
would not let him. I wanted to have the pleasure
of seeing your pleasure at so unexpected a meet-
ing. He tells me that you became such dear
fi-iends after — after I left Paris."
But by this time Miss Ransome was herself
again. Charlie would be a dangerous enemy, and
might let out or purposely disclose circumstances
in her past history — circumstances due not to her
fault, indeed, but to her misfortune — yet does
the world ever nicely discriminate between the
1 68 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
two ? — which might seriously prejudice her future.
She had no more doubt of Charlie's vindictive-
ness than of his sensuality, and there was as much
need to be on guard against the one as against
the other. So she submitted her hand, which he
insisted upon kissing, to his clasp, and answered
with perfect civility —
" Yes, it is quite a surprise. I had not an
idea that Colonel Landon was down here."
" Colonel Landon ! " repeated he, with an
aifectation of reproachful astonishment. " How
formal we have grown all of a sudden ! "
There was an odious implication of former
intimacy in his tone, and Flora, who had begun
to laugh at it, stopped suddenly, arrested by the
undisguisable repulsion which pierced through the
set smile on her young friend's face.
"You would not wonder at anything," she
cried hastily, "if you knew the sort of people
the poor thing has fallen amongst. Do tell
Charlie, Bonnybell, about your experiences with
the Aylmers ; he would be so much amused, and
I could not hear them too often."
But Bonnybell had, with all her knowledge of
Charlie's power of revengeful tit-for-tat in the case
of a supposed snub, done as much for him as she
could for the moment manage, and she excused
herself with pretty ingenuity, asserting, with a
smile that was ordered still to keep well to the
front, that the anecdote could be entertaining only
to a person acquainted with the Aylmer family,
and would lose all its point in the case of one
who had not that advantage. Inwardly, while
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 169
uttering her little apology for refusing, she was
sharply regretting that her glove had been taken
off previous to the "old friend's " detested caress,
and wondering how soon she would cease to be
conscious of it on the back of her hand.
The announcement of luncheon put a welcome
end to the importunities to which her refusal
subjected her. The sight of one more place laid
at the table than there were occupants for made
her draw the inference that the " new friend " had
been expected, and had failed to appear, but she
waited in vain for some comment upon his absence.
To Lady Tennington's easy-going board people
came or not as they chose. If they appeared at
it, so much the better ; if they didn't appear at
it, not so very much the worse. In Flora's circle
promises and engagements did not go for much,
nor did the breaking of them cause her either
annoyance or surprise.
The conversation at the repast was chiefly In
Charlie's hands and under his guidance. He was
a past-master in the art of double-entendre^ and
had a power that It would be difficult to surpass
of giving to the most plain and innocent sentences
an indecent meaning. From oiF the guileless backs
of most English girls Charlie's conversation could
fall in a harmless cascade, as being too bad to be
understood, but there was not one of his innuen-
does and perverse twistings of the commonplaces of
speech that Bonnybell did not fully comprehend,
with the added knowledge that he knew that she
did so.
Flora called him to order once or twice, but
I70 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
not very severely. Charlie was really very amus-
ing ; and, after all, Bonnybell was not like other
girls. It was such a comfort that one need not
be on one's P's and Q's with her.
Scarcely ever, in all the reach of her eighteen
years' memory, had Miss Ransome sat at a feast
— and Flora's cuisine deserved that title — with
a more uneasy and unenjoying mind. Not even
the unwonted solace of as many post-luncheon
cigarettes as she could desire at all compensated her
for the distastefulness of the company, or for the
racking twin anxieties that occupied her mind ;
the anxiety to get home as fast as possible, so as
to obviate all risk of discovery incident upon
a possible change of plan in Mr. and Mrs.
Tancred, and to prevent Charlie from escorting
her. All her manoeuvres to get her hostess alone
in order to ask for her aid in obtaining this latter
boon having failed, she had to content herself
with the meagre consolation that, at all events,
she would have the chaperonage of the chauffeur.
Immediately after luncheon the rest of the
party sat down to dummy bridge. It was not
without loud outcries on the part of two of her
companions, and some umbrage at the gentle fixity
of her determination not to make a fourth — for
Harrington never dared show umbrage at anything
— that Bonnybell escaped their upbraiding im-
portunities. If she allowed herself to acquiesce,
Heaven knows how long she might be chained to
the card-table, when once they had got hold of
her, and her longed-for departure postponed if
she was not firm. But it was not without paying
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 171
the toll of some gibing jests at her benefactors'
expense — jests which she did not in the least
enjoy, and which caused her an unexpected sub-
sequent remorse — that she was let off, and given
the inspiriting promise that the motor should be
at the door in half an hour's time. She waited
to hear the message really given, and then to
escape the pursuit of Charlie's eyes, which, though
not so good as they had been, were still only too
embarrassing, she left the trio, to resume her hat
and wraps.
In former days Bonnybell had never been in
time for anything, but to-day, though twenty
minutes must elapse before the motor was due,
she stood restless and troubled, awaiting its arrival
in a conservatory which opened out of the room
in which the players had settled down to their
mutilated gamble. She could hear, between the
deals, Charlie firing off his doubk-entendres to
lighten the seriousness of the pursuit, and Flora's
stimulating rebuke, " Oh, come, Charlie, that is
rather too stiff. You must remember that we
have zfille h marier on the premises," And then
they all laughed.
Well they might ! thought the listener, A
fille h marier ! And yet that was precisely what
she was ! With what other purpose but the
insane one of furthering that object was she
there } And how likely were such a milieu and
atmosphere to promote it I
The conservatory was a long one, and by walk-
ing to the end of it she could get out of earshot
of the bridge-players. Why go on listening to
172 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Charlie for twenty minutes, if she could help it ?
A cluster of wicker chairs stood under a palm, and
into the cushions of one of them she sank, looking
round with uneasy eyes upon the mass of bloom
about her. She did not care a straw about flowers
in their natural and out-door state, and forced ones
represented to her mind out-of-season extrava-
gances of ten and twenty-five guinea January
bouquets — represented to her the past and
Claire.
What a fool she had been ! Had ever any one
risked so much to gain so little ? Thinking it
over coolly — that was just what she could not do,
since so much was at stake — what were the odds
in favour of her getting home undetected ? Even
if she did so, the danger was by no means over.
A slip of the tongue, a stupidity, a malice on the
part of one of the servants, happening any time
during the next six months, might wreck her.
She must be very, very civil and pleasant to the
whole establishment. If she got any itrennes in
the shape of money, she would have to tip them
heavily ; and yet even so, she would never be
able to be quite free from anxiety.
She trusted to be put out of suspense as to her
worst fear — that of a premature return from
London on the part of the Tancreds — in half an
hour from the present moment. The return
journey could not take more than fifteen or
twenty minutes.
Her worst fear ! Wasn't there yet a worse
than the worst .'' — the fear that Charlie might th's
time carry his point, and insist on escorting her
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 173
back ? Since the motor was a brougham, of what
possible use or protection could the chauffeur be ?
Should she beg Harrington to come too ? But it
was a single brougham !
The sound of steps approaching roused her.
Well, this was a bit of luck 1 She would get off
sooner than she had thought possible ; for here
was a footman coming to tell her that the ark
of her salvation was at the door. But the
owner of the nearing footfall did not wear Flora's
livery.
" I was sent to look for you ! " observed a
young and manly, but not very gracious voice.
The heart of the f Ik h marier gave a jump up
from her boots, to which it had latterly been sink-
ing. Late, but not quite too late, here was the
Toby for whom she had sacrificed, suffered, and
imperilled so much !
" Oh, how glad I am 1 "
This was perfectly true, but that was not at
all the reason why she uttered it ! A rapid cal-
culation resulted in the conclusion that in the
very short time allotted to her, if she ever wished
to make an effect — and oh, didn't she wish it .'' — the
stroke of her brush must be broad. This was
neither the place, the time, nor the object for
caution. The impulsive pleasure of one too
young and inexperienced to hide a keen pleasure
that had taken her by surprise, the outbreak of
an emotion too glad and strong to be kept in
the leading-strings of convention, — this was the
appearance to be aimed at, and which the full
look which she allowed her large fawn eyes to
174 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
take of his fresh-coloured stolid face told her was
achieved.
Toby, who, despite his stodgy shyness, was
possessed of quite enough conceit to keep him in
a competence, if not affluence, of self-esteem, saw
no reason why he should doubt that this eiFusive
young stranger was excessively glad to see
him.
The young stranger, on her part, was pleased
to have made her meaning plain ; but, having
done so, gave maiden modesty at having been
surprised into such an admission its turn.
"You must forgive my saying what seems
silly and exaggerated, considering how little I
know you ; but " Then a sudden inspira-
tion came to the prettily embarrassed, and yet
really harassed, young creature. Why not kill two
birds with one stone ? Give herself an interest
in the eyes of this block of a Toby, if he was
stupid enough not to have already conceived
one, by enlisting his sympathy and help ; and in
so doing also baffle the abhorred Charlie ? No
sooner thought than uttered, with no apparent
hitch or hindrance in the smooth run of her
sentence : " But the moment I saw you the
thought struck me how much — how enormously
you might help me if you would."
"Help you? //"
There was marked surprise in the tone, but
there was also, if the hearer erred not, a hint of
gratification and a willingness to hear more.
" You give me the idea " — permitting herself
to take timid stock of him as she spoke — " of being
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 175
very determined, and able to make people mind
what you say."
"Dol?"
Bonnybell hesitated a moment, both to heighten
the evident curiosity that she had roused, and
because she was divided between two or three
artistic openings. But her time was running out.
She must not allow herself to hesitate.
" Is — is Colonel Landon a friend of yours ? "
" Old Charlie Landon a friend of mine ? God
forbid ! "
There was such a distinct tone of oiFence at
the suggestion in this robust disclaimer, that
Bonnybell clasped her little black hands, which
she had on several former occasions found to be
so invaluable as " properties," in an ecstasy of
relief.
" Oh, I am so glad ! " After all, it was pleasant
and refreshing to tell truth as a change once in a
way, and with a judicious economy.
" I can't imagine how Lady Tennington
could have asked you to meet such a beastly old
reprobate ! "
The stodgy face had lit up, and the vigour of
its owner's vernacular found an echo in Miss Ran-
some's inmost soul.
"A beasdy old reprobate!" Oh, if Toby
knew all ! Yet caution and the dread of Charlie's
vengeance, and his power of revelation, prompted
her to say —
" I knew him when I was a child, and I
should not like to hurt his feelings. But I am a
little afraid that he will want to take me back to
176 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Stillington in the motor, and — and — it is a
brougham ! "
A quarter of an hour later Bonnybell was flash-
ing homeward alone, having accidentally happened
to mention to the preserver, whom she had success-
fully enlisted in her service, the fact of her pas-
sionate fondness for wandering in parks at winter
gloamings, and having received from him in return
information of almost excessive accuracy as to those
parts of the Stillington Deer Park which might be
safely visited at that time of year by a solitary
stroller.
CHAPTER XVI
All was safe. There had been no change of plan
on the part of Miss Ransome's protectors, as,
drawing a long breath, she realized on reaching
home, and joyfully found the house as destitute
of its masters as she had left it. To begin at
once the attack upon the servants' clemency was
her next care. Bonnybell had always been
charming in her manner towards all dependants ;
but the tone in which she now asked the butler
after a sick wife whom Camilla had been doctor-
ing, and told the housemaid, whom she found
lighting her bedroom fire, how concerned she
was to hear her still coughing, would have
wiled " the savageness out of a bear."
Her neglected studies were her next thought,
but an unconquerable distaste towards resuming
them made her persuade herself that it would be
unsafe to run the risk of being found studying
at so unusual an hour, and would lead to the
inference that she had been playing the truant
earlier. It would be better to take the least
evadable books up to bed with her, and make
what scrambling preparation she could before
177 N
1 78 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
going to sleep. While collecting her authors, the
young student became aware of "L'Enigme du
P6ch6 " lying in tell-tale openness on the floor,
where it had evidently lain since it fell off her lap
in the hurry of her departure. Another sigh of
relief, almost as deep as the first, signalized this
timely discovery.
Camilla was in unusually good spirits at
dinner that night. Her day, though she was
strictly silent upon that part, had been tiring,
boring, self-sacrificing. It had been devoted
wholly to the unhealthy, the unprosperous, and
the ungrateful. But apparently it had had a
tonic efi^ect, and she ate her slender allowance of
food with more apparent enjoyment, and talked
more and more cheerfully, than usual. Perhaps
it was because she talked more that Edward
seemed to talk less than his never garrulous
custom.
BonnybeU could wish that Mrs. Tancred's
inclination to converse would have led her in
another direction than inquiries as to the mode
in which she, BonnybeU, had disposed of her soli-
tary day, though those inquiries were made almost
genially, and in the spirit of neither a school-
mistress nor a spy. It was not that the girl was
conscious of any new or even nascent disincli-
nation for fibbing ; but when the whole field of
invention lay open before her, it was so difficult
to know which lie to choose. Lie she must, from
beginning to end of the catechism that ensued,
but she had no wish to be excessive, nor to daub
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 179
where one coat of paint would serve her purpose.
It was a pity that the servants had to hear her, as,
of course, they must be laughing in their sleeves ;
but the tips to be administered doubled them-
selves in her intention, and she tried to forget the
silent presences that might become so ruinously
vocal.
" Did you make up your mind to tear your-
self from the fireside at all to-day ? "
" Oh yes ; I was out a good deal."
So far truth carried her, but nervousness made
her add an unnecessary gloss, which was the
falsest of falsehoods — in implication, at least —
" I knew that you would wish me to take some
exercise."
" H'm ! how far did you go ? I dare say not
farther than the houses. I know that the stove
house is the kind of atmosphere you really
like."
Camilla was in wonderfully good tune ; there
was even an attempt at genial raillery in her
tone.
" Oh, but I did. I went muck, further."
Truth again reappeared. It was as well to give
that seldom-invoked goddess a look-in now and
then.
" To the summer-house ? "
" Further still."
" You did not, I am sure, risk those ridiculous
little shoes of yours in the wet grass of the
park ? "
" Oh yes, I did ; they are stronger than
they look. But I was sorry afterwards that
i8o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
I had. Jock got among the rabbit-holes, and
though I whistled and called for ten minutes,
I am sure, I could not persuade him to come
out."
There was a noise as of a small object falling
on the floor. Edward, who was not generally-
clumsy, had whisked a fork, with his coat-cuff
apparently, on to the carpet. A footman picked it
up, and the conversation proceeded. But Miss
Ransome had caught a glimpse of her host's face,
and a cold sweat broke out inside her. "Was it
possible that Edward knew of her escapade ?
There was nothing for it but to hope for the best,
and to go on boldly, since she was already too far
immersed in the sea of fancy to withdraw. And
besides, what she had been relating of Jock's
perversity was strictly true, only that it was post-
dated by twenty-four hours, having happened
yesterday.
With unconscious inhumanity, Camilla went
on —
" Jock must have had two walks to-day,
then, for Gillett told me she had taken him
out."
Bonnybell's heart quailed. Suppose that
Camilla next inquired at what hour her promenade
with Jock had taken place, and that she herself
in answer hit upon the same one as that already
claimed by the maid ?
" It must have been in the morning, then,
that you took him out," continued Camilla, still
perfectly unsuspicious, adding, with a sternness
that was more affected than real, " You must
A WAIF'S PROGRESS i8i
have given him time that was filched from your
reading."
"He looked so wistful," replied Bonnybell,
post-dating Jock's expression of emotion, as she
had done his iniquities. " It is so difficult to resist
him when he looks wistful."
This was a thrust directed at the one weak
spot in Camilla's armour, and it penetrated at
once.
"What a bad dog ! " she said, in a ridiculously
pseudo-angry voice. How different, as Bonny-
bell ruefully reflected, from that employed to
herself, for the far smaller crime of her attempt
to educate Meg Aylmer ! " No biscuits to-
night."
In the execution of this threat Jock did not
even affect credulity, but wagged a short black
tail, which was in piquant contrast to the rest of
his white body, and Bonnybell heaved her slender
shoulders in a deep inspiration of relief, once again
involuntarily stealing a look at Edward. She
found him looking straight and full back at her,
in the security of Camilla's occupation with the
dog ; read in that look that he knew ; that since
he had promised her his friendship he would not
betray her, and that he despised her from the
bottom of his heart. In point of fact, Edward
was not much in the habit of despising any one
but himself, but he might have made an exception
in Bonnybell's favour.
The belief that he had done so, at all events,
depressed that young woman to such a degree
as to impart an inattentive languor to her nightly
i82 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
dancing lesson to Jock. That unworthy animal
took a base advantage of her absent-mindedness,
and executed his part of the performance on all
four feet, in a shabby, ambling run, which, not
even by his partial mistress, could be classified as
a " trick."
" You seem to have tired yourself with your
walk," observed Camilla, noticing the limp air
of relief with which Miss Ransome subsided into
a chair at the end of a display which was gene-
rally a source of unmixed enjoyment to her.
" Of course, I have no wish that you should
overdo yourself; there is never any sense in
extremes."
Bonnybell drooped her head in silent acquies-
cence. Circumstances prevented her defending
herself from the charge of over-exercise by stating
the fact that the longest walk she had to-day taken
had been from one end of Lady Tennington's
conservatory to the other, and she felt unequal
for the moment to the framing of new inventions,
which one of her hearers would be perfecdy aware
to be such.
"Perhaps it is because the wind has not
caught your face to-day," continued Mrs. Tancred,
in caustic but not hostile allusion to Bonny-
bell's former explanation of her excess of bloom,
" but you look pale to-night. Neither Edward —
I think I may answer for you," with a scarcely
inquiring spectacled glance at her husband — " nor
I will take it amiss if you feel inclined to go to
bed."
The girl accepted, with apologetic courtesy,
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 183
which she tried not to make too eager. Not even
the sight of the piled books by her bedside, heaped
there with an intention of midnight study, could
lessen the sense of relaxed tension in being alone.
She was tired, dispirited, anxious, with sore disquiet
for the future.
Edward knew that she was a liar, and hated
her for being one. More shame for him ! If he
had been in her grievous straits, he would have
lied too. It was very unsympathetic and bomi
of him not to understand that ! Now that
Charlie Landon was aware that she was in the
neighbourhood, he would never leave her in
peace. Did she not read an intention of persecu-
tion in the baffled anger of his face when it was
made clear to him by Flora that his escort was to
be dispensed with ?
Yes, the future was heavy with clouds, and she
regarded it, as has been said, with some disquiet.
Yet her repentance for the past was by no means
complete. If Edward and Charlie — unnatural
alliance of names ! — weighed down one scale of
the balance, did not Toby in the other make it
greatly out-dip them ? The campaign against
Toby — hitherto existing only in aspiration and
intention — had passed into the domain of fact.
It had really and seriously opened, and how
artistically too, by that sudden inspiration or
an appeal for help. A stroke of such genius
had enabled her to skip over at least a dozen
preliminary steps, and rushed him into the pro-
pitious situation of benefactor and rescuer before
he knew where he was.
1 84 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Never in my life have I managed to get
hold of anything good or pleasant without having
to pay heavily for it," she said to herself in bitter
retrospect, " and I suppose that it will always be
so ; but, at all events, this time I have something
to show for my efforts ! ' Quite safe to walk
anywhere between the belt of firs on the left of
the big covert and the group of Spanish chestnuts
near the gazebo.' Quite safe for me^ I suppose
he meant 1 I would not swear that it was quite
as safe for him ! "
She fell asleep with an angelic smile on her
parted lips at the thought of Toby's insecurity,
the pile of unopened books forgotten beside
her.
An hour later a figure, who had carefully
chosen that one of the electric burners to turn up
whose light would not fall on the sleeper's face,
stood by Bonnybell's bedside.
"I do not think that that child is well,"
Camilla had said, after an interval of silence,
addressing her husband ; " she seemed unnaturally
depressed. Depression under such circumstances
as hers would be natural and proper in any think-
ing being, but as she certainly does not come
under that head, there must be some other
cause."
As she spoke Mrs. Tancred left her chair and
the room. Her absence lasted for a quarter of an
hour, and towards the end of it Edward grew
restless ; that is to say, inwardly, for he allowed
himself no change of posture that would recognize
or indulge his uneasiness. Was she ill .? and if
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 185
so, was hers the kind of constitution upon which
illness would take much hold ? Both her parents
had died when well under forty, but as neither
of their deaths could be called natural ones,
their shortlivedness could not be held to lend
probability to hers, unless her mother's tendencies
were hereditary.
Camilla's re-entrance interrupted the shudder
caused by the last supposition.
" I was mistaken," she said calmly, though
his eye noted the sign of an emotion of some
kind on her harsh face ; " she was sleeping quite
quiedy."
Both settled down again to their occupations,
and a few minutes elapsed before Camilla, bring-
ing out the words as one forced to make an
admission against the grain, said —
"I am afraid that my tendency is to judge
people too severely ; and I believe that in the
case of this unfortunate girl I may have done
so."
She paused, and he had time for an inwardly
interjected wish that she had used some other
adjective than that which, employed as a noun,
had such an unsavoury significance when applied
to a woman !
" I am led to think that some glimmer of a
sense of right and wrong is awakening in her ;
that I trace some germ of a desire for better
things ! "
Again she halted, and he threw in a " Yes ? "
"You heard at dinner to-day how she had
conquered her dislike to leaving the fireside in
1 86 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
deference to my wishes ; it came out quite un-
ostentatiously — not as if she were making a merit
of it."
Perhaps it was surprise at the change in his
wife's tone that hindered Tancred from expressing
that pleased acquiescence in their joint incubus's
improvement which might have been expected ;
but neither did he give any sign of dissent.
" And though she could not have expected a
visit from me to-night — I have never before gone
near her," continued Camilla, in the key of one
resolved to make her amends for possible former
injustice handsome and complete — "she had
evidently taken to heart my reproach of having
wasted the time, that should have been devoted to
study, upon the dog." (When Camilla occasion-
ally tried to make her family believe that she was
indifferent to Jock, she spoke of him as "the
dog.") "The poor girl had evidently been at
work until overtaken by sleep, for the books were
piled at her bedside."
Edward must make some comment now, and
must try not to let it be too stony ; but the
" Indeed ! how very creditable ! " which he at
last brought out sounded to himself so coldly
ironical that it must rouse his wife's suspicions
by its contrast with his former championship.
To his relief, he soon perceived that she was
occupied by a train of thought, and stirred by an
emotion which blunted her powers of observation.
" She looked very sweet and innocent," Mrs.
Tancred said, in a softened tone, as one recalling
a gentle, dreamy vision ; " all traces of her terrible
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 187
heredity wiped away by sleep ! " After a short
pause in a lower key, "The All Wise gave one
more proof of All Wisdom in denying me the
blessing of children, for I should have made idols
of them."
CHAPTER XVII
It was a source of mixed wonder and thankfulness
to Miss Ransome on the succeeding day that she
got off so cheaply when the discovery of the
extent to which she had neglected her studies was
made. The rebuke incurred was so inexplicably
gentle, that though by this time BonnybeU was
pretty well acquainted with the directness of her
instructress's methods, she at first suspected that a
trap must lie beneath it. She did not know that
she had been saved by her usual means, a lie ;
only that in this case it was an innocent and
unintentional one, the lie, namely, of the piled
books at her bedside. She escaped with a more
sorrowful than indignant expression of opinion
from CamiUa as to the slenderness of her intellect
and her inability to grasp any subjects other than
those appertaining to the cult of the frivolous and
the trashy.
Insults to her intellect left Miss Ransome
perfecdy calm. She had long believed the truth
of the saying that " Hard words break no bones,"
having been dieted upon expletives and adjec-
tives both vigorous and varied whenever "poor
Claire " was " not quite right." Were her mind
i88
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 189
furnished as Camilla would have it, she might
become a second Miss Barnacre, and all that she
would know of men would be the banging of
doors by them, in hastening from her presence
whenever she lifted up her voice in the odious
terminology of science and philosophy.
Snubs to her appearance, occasionally admin-
istered on hygienic principles by Mrs. Tancred,
left her equally good-humoured, though from
another cause. Having grown up with her
beauty from babyhood, she was as sure of pos-
sessing it as she was of possessing hands or a
palate. Any one who did not think her pretty
must be either blind or jesting. It was valued
highly by her, as being the only means of escape
she had from the sordid darkness of her outlook.
But it was not the source of pleasure to her
which their good looks afforded to most hand-
some women. It had been associated with too
many disagreeables ; had obliged her to struggle
against too many imminent degradations, for her
to have much fondness for it, apart from its
commercial value as a matrimonial asset.
The serenely sweet acquiescence with which
Miss Ransome received the information given as
to the unusual smallness of the mind power with
which she had been endowed still further increased
her teacher's leniency.
" She thinks that I am half-witted," said
Miss Ransome to herself, " and it will certainly
be wiser to encourage her in the idea, as she will
expect less of me. In her present mood I might
safely finish ' L'Enigme du P6ch6 ' without fear of
IQO A WAIF'S PROGRESS
detection, but " — with a slight sense of unwonted
repulsion — " I don't think I care to ; it is too like
Charlie."
To escape the odious memory evoked, Bonny-
bell diverted her thoughts into another channel.
" What induced her to come up to my room last
night ? I felt sure it was because she had found
me out, and I thought it safer to sham being
asleep till I could make up my mind what excuse
to offer. And why, in Heaven's name, did she
kiss me ? "
The girl lost herself in contradictory solutions
of this enigma. Was it in order to test the reality
of her slumbers or to break them that Camilla
had inflicted that astounding caress ? Or was it
humanly possible that the poor old lady was
growing a little fond of her, and treated her as she
would have done a young Camilla ? The notion,
to her own surprise, touched her oddly at first,
but she shook off the sensation almost indig-
nantly. How likely ! She drove away her
own inchoate softness by exchanging it for the
ridiculous thought of what a hideous object a
sleeping young Camilla would have been, and how
impossible that in wildest fancy she could have
been mistaken for such an imaginary monster.
" I always knew that Camilla would be easier
to take in than Edward," pursued Miss Ransome,
a rather anxious wrinkle furrowing her brow ;
"and it is unlucky that just as I had brought
him round, his belief in me should have received
this fresh shock. With him now I have, I am
afraid, my work cut out."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 191
The ensuing days justified this forecast.
There could be no doubt that Edward was in
possession of the fact that she had taken " the key
of the fields." " He must have heard it at the
stables," was Bonnybell's conclusion ; "but how
could I ward off that ? How could I ask all the
grooms and helpers after their colds, or offer
them anti-kamnia for their wives' neuralgias ? In
this case I am not to blame. It is my misfortune,
not my fault."
Misfortune or fault, the result remained the
same ; Edward did not betray her. It did not
surprise her that he refrained from doing so,
though it was only doubtfully that she attributed
his silence to loyalty to that promise of friend-
ship which she had extracted from him.
Loyalty to given promises was not a quality
with which she had ever had more than a bowing
acquaintance. In all probability it was a taste for
peace, coupled with the knowledge of what a
terrific household storm his communication would
arouse, that sealed his lips. Doubtless during the
last fifteen years he had had frequent need of
reticences and concealments on his own account.
But whatever the cause of his conduct, Miss
Ransome had regretfully to own that it was not
due to any of that lurking partiality for herself,
with which she had, up to yesterday evening,
credited him. If his eye met hers — a rencounter
apparently neither sought nor avoided — no grain
of admiration was to be detected in its cold beam.
A repelled curiosity, a sort of frosty wonder was
all that was to be read in it.
192 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
However, a philosophic mind is able to see
the good derivable from even the least propitious
set of circumstances. There was an advantageous
side even to Edward's objectionable attitude.
She would never be in the least afraid of being
left alone in the same room with him. The fears
apparently were all on the other side. She
laughed to herself jeeringly. Would any one
believe it ? And yet it was true, that without
overtly seeming to seek that end, her host
undoubtedly avoided her.
She set herself with all the power of the wits
her benefactress held so cheaply to propitiate him.
But it was a path beset with pitfalls. His ideas,
springs of action, standards were so radically
different from those she had been used to find
in the men of her acquaintance, that experience
lent no candle to light her steps. She had learnt,
indeed, by the process of burning her fingers at the
flame kindled at one taper, that any discussion of
Camilla's body or mind, any comments on her
actions, however mendaciously flattering, were
to be shunned like the plague. But even thus
much of progress was negative, and held out litde
hope, as a method of rebuilding his good opinion.
What were his weak spots ? And what chance
had she of finding them out, if he never indulged
her in any enlightening talk about himself? It
was chiefly interest and the desire for a valuable
ally in her arduous life battle that prompted her
efforts to bring him round, but mixed with it was
a worthier regret at having forfeited the only
chance of a pure and honourable friendship with
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 193
a man that her short ignoble life had yet offered
her.
For several days she cast her little cautious
nets in vain. Not a worthless sprat did the
meshes enfold when drawn to land. He must
be vulnerable somewhere, if only it were given
her to discover the spot. The days passed in
the fruitless search, and by the time the second
Sunday came round since the disaster of her
falsehood — or, as she would have it, the disaster
of its discovery — she was almost desperate of
success. On that day an idea struck her, which
she hastened to put into execution. Luncheon
was just over. Camilla had retired to her
weekly stock-taking of her spiritual condition, and
Edward was in the act of withdrawing himself, as
he had done on the previous Sunday, for the
whole afternoon. This self-eiFacement of his might
have had its advantages, by leaving her free to
carry out any innocent project of her own, but the
motive that prompted it was at once too obvious
and too distressing in its results not to demand
one more urgent effort for its renewal. He had
the door-handle already in his hand, when she
addressed him so pointedly that politeness — and
in that, at all events, he had never been lacking
— compelled him to pause a moment to listen.
" I noticed," she said, with what sounded like
the painful diffidence of one making a great effort
over herself, " that you did not go to the Dower
House last Sunday."
" No." There was a slight inflection of
chilly surprise in his monosyllable.
194 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" 1 do not think that you have been there
since the day you kindly took me to tea ? "
" No ? " The monosyllable was interrogative
this time, and seemed discouragingly to ask what
the drift of these idle remarks might be.
" I think I have understood that you always
used to go there every Sunday afternoon ? "
It was on the edge of his lips to say carelessly
that he believed he did call on the Aylmers now
and then ; but with a timely realization of the
necessity of giving her the example of a rigid
truthfulness he answered, still with that daunting
air of cold wonder as to her purpose in putting
the question, that such had been his weekly habit.
" You wiU forgive me if I am mistaken," she
said, with a half-frightened meekness that would
have wiled " the savageness out of a bear," " but
I have sometimes been afraid that I had come
between you and your friends."
She had hit the nail so exactly on the head,
that the nearest approach to denial of her sugges-
tion within his reach was a " You ? " that sounded
to himself a contemptible paltering with the truth,
and to her a cold snubbing of her presumption.
" I am not so siUy as to dream that any liking
for me was your motive," Bonnybell went on
with an exquisite humility. "Why should you
like me ? What is there to like in me } " (The
question was accompanied by a sorrowful smile
which evoked within its executor the reflection,
" If that harrowing contortion does not fetch him,
I may as well shut up shop ! ") " But I feared
that perhaps your generosity had resented their
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 195
unnecessarily harsh treatment of such a forlorn
creature ! "
Answer to this speech would in any case have
been difficult, and apparently Edward found it
more than difficult, impossible, for he made none ;
and with a more dragging tone and a heavier
spirit Miss Ransome took up her apparently
useless little parable.
" If I am mistaken, I can only ask you to for-
give me — I am always having to ask people to
forgive me — but I could not bear the idea of
coming between you and — people you are fond
of."
" Thank you ; but indeed you need not
distress yourself. I am going to the Dower
House to-day," he answered, with his usual
gentle intonation, perhaps a little hurried from
its wonted leisureliness, and so left the room,
giving her no opportunity for a rejoinder.
Bonnybell, left to herself thus cursorily, walked
to the Venetian mirror nearest her, carrying with
her as nearly as possible the expression her face
had worn during this last successless venture, in
order to judge of what ought to have been its
efficacy ; and then, exhaling a large sigh, solilo-
quized, " H'm ! I might as well have saved my
eloquence, my magnanimity, the tremble in my
voice (I am afraid that I am not quite sparing
enough in the use of that), and my heartbroken
smile, which really was a masterpiece in its way.
Bah ! and all for one poor harmless indispensable
fib ! What a ridiculously warped view to take ! "
She gave a little snort of indignation, but the
196 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
place where her heart ought to be, and as she had
always supposed was not, felt oddly sore.
Neither had Edward's heart much leap about
its actions as he took his way — the way weekly
trod by his Sunday feet — to the house where until
a fortnight ago he had found pleasant, if not exces-
sive, entertainment for his spirit. It shocked him
to find how laggardly that spirit guided him to-
day. There was nothing changed in the reciprocal
attitude of the Aylmers and himself. Mrs.
Aylmer would give him the geniality of her matter-
of-course welcome, and to whomsoever Catherine
was talking at the moment of his entrance, he
would find her — for it was an unwritten law of
their recognized comradeship — by his side in as
many or as few moments as civility — for Catherine
was nothing if not civil — demanded to rid her of
her interlocutor. He was always treated like one
of the family, but to-day the kind imitation of
kinship offered had no charm for him ; and he
felt a dead reluctance towards the occupation
of that wainscoted recess, with none of the secre-
tiveness of a corner, yet all its privacy, where in
the course of a good many consecutive Sundays
his gende friend with the candid if not quite
straight eyes had made him the happy master
of her sentiments about some of the greatest
themes upon which our poor intelligences turn
the dark lanterns of their groping speculations,
and, pleasanter still, had lured some of his own
shy imaginings out of him. Cart-ropes should
not drag him to that friendship-hallowed window-
seat this afternoon. And yet he must not hurt the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 197
feelings of his comrade ! Why shouldn't he ?
The question rose rather brutally in his mind.
He had had no scruples as to hurting the feel-
ings of another person, of one whose wretched
circumstances claimed a much tenderer handling
than the full-blown prosperity of Miss Aylmer.
He stopped in his walk to look up as if in
interrogation to the ash-coloured sky, hung so
low over his head, that it seemed as if touchable
by an uplifted hand.
" How long can I keep up the pretence of
harshness with the poor little creature ? Why
should I be angrier with her than I was with
Jock for killing rats in the barn yesterday ? Both
follow their nature ; she her shifty lying one.
She is a liar ! Yes, but am 1 not one too ? Is
not my whole life an actual lie ? If it had only
been one or two" — his thoughts harping in ex-
asperated pain on Bonnybell's delinquencies —
" they might have been accidents, the result of
that abject fear she evidently feels towards us
both. But the dreadful ghbness of it ! the
plausibility ! the circumstantiality ! " The circum-
stantiality brought him to the Dower House
door, and rang the bell for him.
CHAPTER XVIII
The moon unexpectedly lighted Mr. Tancred
home. As if she had something agreeable to show
him, she had shoved and elbowed aside the smoke-
coloured curtains, drawn so closely across the sky
when he arrived, and though still vapourish and
a little sickly, gave radiance enough by which to
distinguish objects. At first her lamp seemed
officious. He could find his way home blind-
folded along the familiar path, but before the end
of his walk he discovered a use for it.
The evening air was mild and mawkish, and
it was not because he was chilly that he covered
the ground quickly. It was unlikely — scarcely
possible — that anything untoward could have
happened during his hour's absence ; yet he
had heard something at the Dower House which
made him eager to verify by his own eyesight the
fact that the terrible charge committed to him was
still safe, that he should surprise her as he did
last Sunday, sampling his best cigarettes over the
fire in the smoking-room, to which he had be-
taken himself earlier than her calculations had led
her to expect, and where the austerity of his own
manner had routed her, not in repentance for her
198
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 199
theft, which at this moment she was probably-
repeating, but in confusion at its discovery.
His wife had no toleration for female smokers.
How, then, did he reconcile it to his conscience
that, before leaving that wife's house this afternoon,
he had placed the box of cigarettes, of the brand
of Miss Ransome's predilection, where she could
not possibly miss it ? Yes, undoubtedly he would
find his little lazy, lying inmate, with her depraved
instincts and her seraphic eyes, stretched discon-
solately on an armchair, scheming some false new
wheedlings by which to undermine his principles
and cajole him out of his just displeasure.
His reason was convinced that there was no
need for haste, and yet he hastened. The moon
was getting the better of the vapours as she
walked higher up the low sky ; and at even some
distance off he could see not only the dark bodies
of the deer moving in the open spaces between
the dead bracken, but could distinguish the
branched heads of the stags.
Presently other objects made themselves out
against the steel-washed dusk. Neither were they
unfamiliar, since a right-of-way, which for a cen-
tury had vexed the souls of the owners of
Stillington, intersected at about halfway between
the Dower House and the Manor the path he was
pursuing. The objects in question were the
figures of a man and woman standing in the
middle of the public footway, which held a trans-
verse course across the park, and just outside the
shade of a copse.
There was no reason why the couple should
200 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
not be any pair of village lovers — of his own
servants taking loitering farewell at the crossing
of the ways. Yet Edward quickened his pace.
The added proximity of fifty yards told him that
the man's figure was elderly and bulky, and that
he was holding the wrists of his slender com-
panion against her will. Both were talking with
such vehemence and concentration of gesture as
to be absolutely unconscious of anything outside
themselves.
A horrible suspicion, with the strength of
almost a certainty, first stopped the observer's
feet stock stiU, then fevered them into a run.
At the same moment a little voyaging cloud,
thick enough momentarily to hide her, wholly
covered the moon, and when it had swept past
the man had disappeared, and the girl was running
away in the direction of the Manor, with all the
fleetness of which a very light body and longish
legs were capable.
In two minutes her pursuer had overtaken
her. She stopped, panting, and said gaspingly —
" Oh, it is you ! I am thankful to see you !
I — I — have — had — such a fright ! "
For once he could not doubt that she was
speaking truth. Her eyes were full of terror, and
her breath came in little dry sobs.
" Yes ? "
" I — I had taken Jock out for a run — you —
you know how he teases one. By-the-by, where
is he ? He must have run after a rabbit."
Alas ! she was off the lines again. Her hearer
knew perfectly that the innocent Jock had not
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 201
shared her mysterious evening promenade. His
heart turned to stone against her, or at all events
he thought so, and she had to continue her lame
narrative unhelped by any expression of interest
or belief in it.
" I had just reached that cross-path, when a
man — you saw that a man was talking to me —
jumped out of the trees. 1 had never seen him
before, and — and — began to — to beg of me."
She paused, her invention for the moment
spent, apparently. It would be humane to give
some sign of a pretence of credulity, but none
came.
" I suppose," she resumed with regathered
pluck, though still trembling all over from the
evidently very bad fright she had had, " that
when he saw I had nothing to give — I told him
I had no purse with me — he got angry, and "
A voice at last broke in — an icy voice. Why
should he allow her to sink deeper into her abyss
of lies ?
"Beggars do not usually wear fur coats and
motoring caps."
He saw a new and different fear born in
her eyes ; but in a second she was trying to
conceal it.
" Was he — dressed like that ? I was too
frightened to notice ! Was he — anybody that —
that — ^you knew ? that — that you recognized ,?"
The temptation to lead her into confession,
by affecting to know more than he did, was
strong ; but he resisted.
"No!" he answered, and instantly saw a
202 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
light of relief spring into her eyes. " I could
not see his face clearly enough for recognition ;
but," he added, with stern gentleness, " 1 cannot
believe that he was equally unknown to you ! "
By this time she was recovering, and her
weapons were getting into order again, the bodily
terror that had for the moment floored her giving
way to a moral fear.
" I cannot think why you are always so ready
to distrust me ! " she sighed. " What motive
could I have for deceiving you ? "
" I do not presume to judge of your motives,"
he replied ; " I go only upon facts."
if she had not been very much flurried, she
would have abstained from the question she now
put.
"What facts?"
" Since you force me into incivility," he
answered, with grave sadness, " I must remind
you tha't ten days ago you told an elaborate
falsehood, or rather series of falsehoods, to dis-
guise the fact that you had spent the afternoon
of my wife's absence in London, in motoring to
Tennington."
Here was a facer. Yet it did not produce the
eff^ect he expected, and in an instant he realized
that she had been aware of his knowledge all
along.
" So that is why you have been so cruel to
me all this weary time ? " she cried, astute in
softness, and trying with nice strategy to turn
a position which it was quite impossible to
face.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 203
A suspicious tendency to grow lenient, recog-
nized in time and rebutted, hardened his voice.
" You do not deny it ? "
"Why should I?" — her look taking a sur-
prised unbraiding. " I meant no harm ! I only
did it because I was afraid of giving pain to
either of you. I knew that you did not approve
of Lady Tennington ; and yet " — anxiously
watching to see the good effect of the next
utterance — " I could not bear to neglect an old
friend who is down in the world."
She had so deftly changed the ground of
conflict, and confused the issues, that he could
only repeat stupidly —
" Down in the world ? "
" Yes ; isn't she ? Isn't she very mal vue ?
And I am so down in the world myself, that it
is not for me, of all people, to be hard on her ! "
Perhaps the whole success of Miss Ransome's
not very artistic falsehoods lay in the poignant
flashes of truth that she unintentionally lit up
their darkness with, here and there. No hearer
could doubt the reality of her desolate fellow-
feeling for the social outcast with the golden
wig, concerning whom Mr. Tancred had just
been hearing something that made him feel that
flaying alive would be too lenient a fate for her^
"It is no question of Lady Tennington," he
interrupted with a cold severity, " but of the
person who left you so suddenly as soon as he
saw me."
"Did not I tell you — I thought I had—
that he was a perfect stranger to me ? that I
204 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
had never seen him before ? He jumped out of
the trees, as I was passing ! Oh, how frightened
I was ! "
A perfectly unaffected shudder told the listener
that here again was a stratum of unalloyed truth.
" You do believe me, don't you ? "
" I believe that you were frightened."
Had poor Miss Ransome remembered a certain
fact, she would not here have lifted her clasped
hands, nor would Edward have had the pain of
seeing the glint of unfamiliar diamonds on one
of them, showing her up by moonlight.
" Thank you so much ! Of course I know
that appearances are against me ; and if, as you
say, that man " — another shudder — " wore a fur
coat, I suppose he could not have been a real
beggar. But if you believe me "
" Pardon me ! my belief was limited to your
being frightened ! I can't believe that the person
to whom you were talking with so much animation
and intimacy was a stranger to you, nor that you
mistook him for a beggar."
She drew her breath heavily, and to his relief
did not repeat her asseveration.
" Whom do you suppose that he was .? Have
you any idea ? "
" I am afraid that I have a very good one."
The gravity of his answer was tinged with
such a disgusted reluctance, that Bonnybell's heart,
not really at all recovered from its late intensity
of fear, stood still. Loathsome old Charlie !
She had always known that he would be the
death of her! Would it be better to tell the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 205
truth now ? No ! the truth was always a mistake
for people like her, who had to live by their wits.
The truth was, like motors and tiaras, only for the
well-off ! But she must express some curiosity ;
put the question to which she already knew the
answer so fatally well.
"Whom?"
" I hardly like to insult you by saying so ;
but I believe the man to whom you were talking
to have been Colonel Landon."
Her answer came without apparent delay ;
yet three alternatives had raced through her head
before she adopted it. " Shall I deny it flat ? It
is impossible that by this light he could have
recognized him ; he owned that he did not : it
is just a trap to catch me 1 Shall I pretend never
to have heard of Charlie ? By this time Edward
knows that I am not very innocent, so that will
never do .-' Shall I just give a great start of
indignation, and begin to walk home very fast ? "
The last project was adopted, and at once put
into execution. So well done was it, that it was
a self-reproachful Edward, fearful of having done
a grave wrong, who came up alongside of the
fleeing victim to appearances.
"If I was mistaken, I can never ask your
pardon enough. I was mistaken ? "
The interrogation was so urgent, yet so apolo-
getic, that somehow the bang- out lie that she had
ready died on the fugitive's lips. Perhaps the
evasion to which she resorted was not much
more really truthful.
" I do not know what I have done" — by this
2o6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
time art had advised, and nature Had readily
supplied tears — "that you should accuse me of
being friends with such a man " — " as Charlie "
was on the edge of her lips ; but the misleading
diminutive was arrested just in time. " Of course,
I do not know what he has done, but I know that
everybody, except Flora, cuts him. How could
you imagine that I could like such a detestable
old beast, or want to meet him ? "
In the application of the strong noun applied
to Flora's protegi there was such intense hearti-
ness that Edward's relief deepened.
" If I have been mistaken, how can I ever beg
your pardon enough ? " he said with a horrified
accent of remorse, she posting along beside him,
sobbing in the moonlight. "I must have been
the victim of a preconceived idea and a fancied
likeness. But I have just been hearing that that
person had been staying for the last fortnight or
more at Tennington ; and I unhappily could not
forget that you had been reduced to — to invention
to hide the fact of your visit there."
The links in the chain of evidence were closely
knit. Yet there was hope as well as apology in his
tone — hope of a denial as emphatic as her expres-
sion of distaste had been.
But Miss Ransome had already begun to
repent of an outspokenness so foreign to her
usual methods. " If Charlie ever heard that I
called him a detestable old beast, it would be
aU up with me."
They had by this time crossed the plank bridge
that parted park from pleasure-grounds. The
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 207
sluggish river, by which her bored feet had so
often stepped, gleamed beside the path ennobled
by moonlight ; and Bonnybell began to feel safer.
In this extremely tight place she must invoke
the subtlest diplomacy to her aid. The high line
of injured innocence which a few minutes ago
had seemed out of the question, now, thanks to
Edward's changed and humbled attitude, appeared
more practicable than any other, and without delay
she adopted it.
" It is the want of trust," she sighed, her
head bowed on her chest, and one brilliant tear
deftly shaken off on to her muiF — " the absolute
want of trust, that is what does the mischief."
" Have you given me much cause to trust
you ? " he asked sadly.
To this question she found it not convenient
to respond directly, but she resumed her melan-
choly rhetoric.
" It is the readiness to believe evil of one, to
put the worst construction upon one's words and
actions, that takes the heart out of one's efforts to
do right."
There was silence for a minute, while they
still speeded homewards under the quiet trees
that detached loose leaves to drop on their heads,
and while a painful conflict raged in Edward's
mind. Was she speaking truth ? It was just
possible ; as long as the music of her breaking
voice was falling on his ear it was even probable.
" If I have wronged you by my accusation,"
he said in a voice as unlike his usual air as her
own, " 1 do not know any penance that I can do
2o8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
heavy enough to wipe out the insult. If I have
wronged you, can you ever forgive me ? "
" As I hope to be forgiven ! " she answered,
lifting a little saintly wet face to heaven. It
was a tag strayed out of some tale or rhyme
which came blessedly to her aid at the moment
she most needed it.
It was not till some time after he had left
her, and the emotion caused by her angelic unre-
sentingness had somewhat subsided, that Mr.
Tancred remembered that his young guest had
given him no explanation which could by any
means be made to hold water of the equivocal
situation in which he had found her.
CHAPTER XIX
It was impossible that such an experience, or group
of experiences, should not leave traces on the com-
plexion ; yet it had to be left to its fate, Camilla's
eye for paint being as the nose of the truffle dog
for truffles. Nor, if the cause of her pallor
were inquired into, would Miss Ransome have
the harbour of invention to steer her dismasted
vessel into. Invention, however harmless, had in
her present circumstances, standing at the bar of
Edward's judgment, to be shunned like the plague.
But Camilla's questions were fortunately diverted
to her husband rather than her guest.
" You went to the Dower House ? "
" Yes."
" I am glad."
A pause long enough for Bonnybell to say to
herself that Edward had begun by jibbing at the
attention to her foes alluded to.
" Did you see them all ? "
" All but Toby ; he was out."
" Were they well ? "
" Catherine had a bad cold."
" The result of a pneumonia blouse, I suppose !
As long as girls strip themselves naked in January
2C9 P
2IO A WAIF'S PROGRESS
they cannot be surprised at their chests and
lungs resenting it,"
" Certainly not."
" The following such a fashion is the solitary
lapse from common sense I have ever detected
in Catherine."
The amende was honourable, and in consonance,
as Edward felt, with Camilla's principles, and the
line she had adopted with regard to the woman
whom she contemplated as her probable successor.
" Did they tell you any news ? "
The question was unlike Camilla, habitually
severe upon gossip and incurious of her neigh-
bours' affairs. It was evidently born of that
Sunday serenity of mind which made her wish
to keep up the cheerful trickle of family talk
which her own grim paucity of words and severity
of aspect quenched.
Edward hesitated for a moment, and Bonnybell
gasped. Too well was she acquainted with the
piece of news communicated to Mr. Tancred by
his friend with the cold in her head, or more pro-
bably by that mother whom she had before utilized
as a cat's-paw.
" News ? Did they ? Oh yes, by-the-by,
they told me that Lady Tennington is leaving
Tennington at once. She has had such heavy
losses at bridge lately that she wants to let it on a
long lease."
" I wish her sincerely success."
That dry comment closed the subject, and
dinner passed without any nearer approach to
peril.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 211
But it was a wakeful Miss Ransome who sur-
veyed that night, from a bed where sleep was for
a long time not even sought, the dangers of the
past and the perplexities of the future. Thank-
fulness, deep and pure, at the tidings conveyed at
dinner by Edward took the first place. If Flora
left the country, her abhorred guest would have
no excuse remaining for frequenting it, since no
other house in the neighbourhood was open to
him ; and not even for the pleasure of persecuting
herself would Charlie face the discomforts of a
country inn. What a dirty trick, and how like
him, to have her shadowed I to waylay her as soon
as he saw her alone and unprotected ! to try to
frighten her into unjustifiable promises of giving
up what he knew would be the making of her, by
threats and reminders ! If she had been com-
pelled to promise, if Edward had not appeared in
the nick of time, much she would have kept to
it ! She laughed among her pillows. One ad-
vantage of her enemy's disreputabllity was that,
whatever he said no one would believe him ! But
if she had not been a fool she would have con-
sented to the other man's urgent entreaties to be
allowed to escort her as far as the bridge, to see
her safely inside the pleasure-grounds. In the
dread of incurring one risk she had run head
foremost into another and far more serious one.
Though now safe as in the heart of a cloister, a
shiver of disgusted fear at the remembrance of
that hated rencounter ran over her.
Well, " All's well that ends well." Of course,
it — the other thing — must come out now. She
2T2 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
would have preferred that the announcement, with
its attendant clamour — she gave an anticipatory
chuckle of enjoyment at the thought of the Dower
House faces, as she had last seen them, sitting in
awful judgment upon her — should have followed,
instead of preceding, Charlie's departure from the
neighbourhood. But, of course, it must come out
now. Edward had behaved well on the whole,
but he had not pretended to believe her cock-and-
bull story.
" If I had had time, I could have made up a
better one. Time is everything," she reflected
regretfully. " Charlie said one true thing. I
shall be bored to death 1 Bored will not be the
word for it ! And how I hate being kissed ! If I
could only persuade him that I am so excessively
modest that I cannot bear it just yet ! The dia-
monds ! I wonder, are they really fine, or only
the usual sort of thing ? The stones in the ring
were good, but they are frightfully set." Here
she fell asleep.
It was on her return next day from a perfectly
legitimate and safe constitutional within the limits
of the garden that Miss Ransome was met by the
announcement that Mr. Tancred would be glad to
speak to her in the library. With no preliminary
preening of her feathers, she followed the servant's
lead. Her heart rather dumped down, not from
fear of the unknown, since she knew pretty well
what was coming, but from a failure of exhilara-
tion at the prospect.
Edward was standing, his graceful height
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 213
seeming to be even better in keeping with the
grave stateliness of the room, warmly red and
brown with book-backs gently redolent of Russia
leather, than usual, when contrasted with the
rather fleshy and extremely agitated young man
beside him.
" I have taken the liberty of sending for you,"
Tancred said, addressing Bonnybell with a cold
perfection of politeness, " because Mr. Aylmer
tells me that you have authorized him to give me
a piece of news about you."
Miss Ransome's only immediate answer was
to direct her beautiful eyes successively towards
the faces of the two men who confronted her.
Happily the thought behind them could not be
read upon those pupils : " If it must be, I wish it
could have been the other one."
" It has rather taken me by surprise, as I did
not know that you were acquainted."
The tone in which the implied reproach was
conveyed was of the gentlest, yet it bent the
head of one of the culprits in a not wholly cal-
culated expression of shame on her breast. It
drove the other into blurted speech.
"The fault was entirely mine. Our first
meeting in the park was purely accidental,
wasn't it } "
"Purely," replied she, still keeping her head
down, and wondering whether, considering the
very minute instructions as to the direction of her
walks, instilled into her by him at Tennington,
her suitor could possibly be such a fool as to
believe what he said.
214 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" And after that — after that "—floundering a
little, but still stout in defence of a cause of whose
badness even he must be aware, " she was afraid
of my people. No wonder, after the way they had
treated her 1 "
At that she lifted an eye-beam of meek
gratitude towards her advocate's face, but it ended
its journey on the other's.
" If you had taken my wife and me into your
confidence we might have helped you a little."
Behind the perfect restraint and courtesy of
his words, BonnybeU detected the profundity of
his contempt for her methods. Had they been
alone she would have tried to cajole him into a
more lenient view of her, but the presence of that
stodgy pillar of defence — beefy was, to speak
truth, the epithet that his love internally applied
to him — which would henceforth for ever be in-
terposed between her and all assailants, kept her
silent.
Edward had by this time turned away from
her — she looked upon the action as typical — and
was directing a grave question to the scarlet Toby.
" You have not yet told your people ? "
" Why should I .'' I am absolutely indepen-
dent of my father. I owe none of them anything
after the way in which they behaved to her"
The red god of war spoke through his sullen
voice, and Miss Ransome saw and grasped her
opportunity.
" Whatever else happens to me, do not let me
be a cause of quarrel between you and yours,"
she said angelically. " If I thought I was going
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 215
to be a firebrand I would run away and hide
myself somewhere where no one would find me."
Then she pulled herself up. " I must not
be melodramatic, he would see through it in a
moment." The he did not refer to her future
husband. Her inspiration took a wiser form.
Going up to her fianci, and laying her hand on
his shoulder, she said with a calculated impulsive-
ness that had yet the curious one grain of truth
in it which her lies, spoken and acted, so often
held—
"Ask them just to tolerate me. I do not
expect them to like me. Poor things, it would be
too much to hope " — the corners of her mouth
twitching with irresistible, if rather nervous, and
happily not evident mirth at the picture that
rose before her quick brain, of the imminent
announcement and its effect — " but if they would
give me just a chance ! Every one has a right to
ask to be given a chance."
Of the two pairs of eyes towards which her own
rolled in a lovely candour of appeal, one met her
glance with a besotted ecstasy of approbation.
The other pair fell. Oh, if she could only get
Toby out of the room, out of the house ! Her
situation between the two men was fast becoming
intolerable to her. If only Toby was out of sight
and hearing, she could manage Edward so far
better. And the contrast between their appear-
ances was getting on her nerves.
" Go," she said with a charming air of self-
denying insistence, "go at once. I can't bear
you to delay a moment. Whatever they may
2i6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
have done to me — and indeed, indeed you exag-
gerate — your first duty must always be to them."
Metaphorically she pushed him out, entirely
ignoring his distressed signals to her to accom-
pany him to the hall door, on the very ofF-chance
of snatching a moment of that privacy which was
the last thing she desired. Her manoeuvre did
not at first seem to have achieved a particularly
pleasant result.
"It was not Mr. Aylmer, I think, to whom
you were talking in the park last night ? "
" Have you been asking him ? "
A certain scorn in his eyes at once set her
mind at rest on the point, and made her sharply
repent of the tell-tale rush of her question.
" If it was not Mr. Aylmer "
" Why do you call him Mr. Aylmer ? I
thought to you he was always Toby."
" If it was not he, who was it ? "
" I thought I explained to you that I did not
know. I took him for a tramp, but you said that
he couldn't be one, because he wore something —
what was it ? — that tramps do not wear. I sup-
pose I was too frightened to notice. Anyhow,
he" was not anybody whom I had ever seen
before." She was lying with inartistic redundancy,
and, she also felt, in vain.
"You must have lived with very credulous
people," he said slowly, the contempt in his tone
veiled a little by courtesy, and tempered with
pity, and so turned towards the door. She fled
to intercept him.
" Are you going to tell Mrs. Tancred ? "
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 217
"No, I think it will be better that you should
give her your own version."
She threw all that she knew of entreaty into
her voice.
" Will you let me give it to you first ? "
He hesitated. What a walking lie she was !
The black gown that she wore proclaimed an
entirely non-existent grief. But, on the other
hand, what a very, very juvenile offender she
looked I Would it be indulging a culpable
curiosity, would it be leading her into fresh false-
hoods, to hear by what ingenuity she could gloss
over and whiten her abominable behaviour ?
She saw the momentary weakness of doubt, and
plunged.
" You know that our first meeting was purely
accidental .-' "
"Toby told me so." The return to the
familiar nickname was balm to her.
" I had just lost Jock, and he helped me to
find him. It was all en regie. He had been pre-
sented to me that day — at Tennington."
Edward did not in the least believe in the
accidental meeting, though he did believe that the
direct and truthful Toby had been the dupe of
its fortuitous character, but all he said was —
" And then ? "
" Then — we met again — perhaps not quite so
accidentally. I would not let him come here, as
he wanted me. I knew that Mrs. Tancred would
think it her duty — as, of course, it would have
been — to warn Mrs. Aylmer, and the whole
thing would have been blued/"
2i8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
There was a silence. He saw it all. For once
she was speaking truth. The poor little waif,
seeing the goal of toilettes, diamonds, automobiles
ahead of her, and making for it, fighting with all
her thief s weapons of deceit and evasion to reach
it before it was removed beyond her grasp. Her
next sentence looked as if she had read a part of
his thoughts.
" If I had been in any other position, the last
thing I should have wished would be to marry.
I think it a very repulsive institution."
She said it with quiet conviction, and without
the slightest suspicion of anything shocking, con-
sidering her present position, in the utterance.
But it so completely tied her hearer's tongue that
she had to go on unhelped even by one of those
half-doubtful yeses with which Edward had a
trick of punctuating their talk.
" It was a far better provision than I had any
right to expect, and it would free both of you
from an incubus."
The worldly wisdom of the first half of her
sentence might have kept him still tongue-tied,
but the uncertain voice and twitching lower lip
that set off the last half drove him, as she knew
it would, into speech. (" I must bring home to him
what an orphan I am, _but I must not cry yet.")
She winked away a real tear.
"Is it possible," he said, holding back with
difficulty, as she triumphantly and yet tremblingly
saw, the expression of an emotion far deeper than
she had any suspicion of having been able to evoke
— "is it possible that you have run your head
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 219
into the noose because you have fancied yourself
an unwelcome visitor here ? How have we shown
it ? By what shameful lapse from courtesy and
hospitality in us have you gathered such an idea ? "
She put up her hands over her ears, hands
whose affecting black Suedeness gave no hint of
Toby's diamonds.
" I will not let you say such things ! " she said
with something nearing a little cry ; " you who
have been so astonishingly good to me. Even
when you made me feel a little out in the cold of
late, I know it was because you thought I deserved
it ; you did it for my good ; but " — dropping her
large white eyelids and making them quiver a
little — " though I am not very clever, I could not
suppose that you kept me here because I was
a pleasure to you."
Her words, though soft as a baby-zephyr in
their gentle implication that his coldness, his
Pharisaic want of charity in interpreting her, his
inability to see things from her poor little point
of view, had driven her to her present precipice
seemed to hit him a blow full in the chest.
" If what you have done is owing to an
extraordinary misapprehension," he said in a
penetrating low voice, "it is not yet too late
to
But she did not let him finish his sentence,
breaking in in real panic. " Good heavens ! how
I have overdone it ! He is quite capable of sack-
ing my Toby under the impression that he is
delivering me."
"Oh, you mistake me," she cried with a
220 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
bewitching gesture of irritation at herself for
having so ill conveyed her meaning. " Though I
dislike the idea of marriage — I have seen such
unhappy marriages — yet I am quite incapable of
accepting him from mercenary motives ; he is far
too fine a character."
Then Miss Ransome pulled up rather abruptly,
conscious of having struck a false note. (" I am on
the wrong tack again. Toby has no more a fine
character than I have.") She took up her parable
in another key.
" He will be very kind to me, and he can make
excellent settlements. His father's property must
come to him, as it is entailed, and he can make
ducks-and-drakes of the estate he inherited from
his cousin. He told me yesterday that it could
all be settled on me and the younger children."
Was she quite on the right tack, even now ?
Did she hear a low gasp from Edward at the
revelation of the delicate choice of topics discussed
between Miss Ransome and her lover ? Probably
not, or she would not have added the rider which
presendy followed, uttered with nonchalant matter-
of-factness.
" That is to say, if there are any younger
children ! "
CHAPTER XX
After all, Edward was better than his word, doing
what he had at first wisely declined to do, "break-
ing" the news to Camilla, and receiving on his
own devoted head the first rush, the deadliest
Levin bolts of the thunderstorm of her wrath.
The skirt of the deluge was quite enough for
poor Miss Ransome. The interview opened with
an amenity which gave the keynote.
"Had a scullery-maid in my service," Mrs.
Tancred said, framing each word with such slow
care, as if she feared even one of her pearls of
speech should be lost — "had a scullery-maid in
my service conducted her courtship in the way you
have, I should have made my housekeeper dismiss
her at once without a character."
No etiquette book or guide to polite con-
versation having provided a suitable reply to such
an address. Miss Ransome took it in acquiescent
silence, not attempting to put up the umbrella of
any useless palliative against the hurricane.
"It would be a mockery to hope that any
blessing could attend a marriage resulting from
an acquaintance so disgracefully made and scanda-
lously cultivated. It is a gratifying reflection
222 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
for me that it is I who have brought such a
calamity upon my friends ! I pity them ; I pity
him, poor deluded fool, from the bottom of my
heart."
It was in vain for the young creature so agree-
ably apostrophized to hug her favourite maxim
that " hard words break no bones." It began at
this point to escape from her rather convulsive
embrace. Two salt drops hung unshed on the
lengthy eyelashes — one of her most uncommon
beauties — of her lower lids.
" Do not you pity me a little too ? " she said
with half a sob.
« You ! "
The lightning must have struck her that time.
She felt as if she were black all down one side.
The tears dried up on her lids.
" I had only just begun to lessen your and
Mr. Tancred's dislike for me," she said, not as
if in complaint, but with humble acquiescence in
an accepted fact ; " and now I have to face a
whole hostile family, all of whom dislike and
disapprove me more than even you can do ! "
Nothing could be less civil than the "That
would be difficult ! " here interjected ; but Miss
Ransome had a closer acquaintance with her
judge's character than when once before she
had stood a criminal at that judge's awful bar,
and an instinct telling her that the rudeness
of the ejaculation possibly had its rise in the
suspicion of a temptation to leniency under
her own disarming oratory, encouraged her to
proceed.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 223
"Don't you think I am to be pitied for
knowing that, if I were to search high and low,
I could never in the whole length and breadth of
the land find a family who would be ready to
welcome me into it ? "
" They would certainly be very oddly con-
stituted if they were."
The comment was even more stinging than
its predecessor ; yet Bonnybell's fine ear detected
a little uncertainty in its brutality.
" Yes," she answered, with a little ring of
miserable humiliation in her tone, " you are
right. Wherever I go, I must force myself;
nobody in their senses would hold open their
arms to me."
That night Miss Ransome begged to be
excused from appearing at dinner, not unwilling
that it should be known that her eyes were too
extinguished with crying for her to be decently
visible ; and, as she reflected, " When you are in
disgrace a consommi and the wing of a pheasant
are better enjoyed beside your dressing-room
fire than under the eyes of your exasperated
patrons."
The husband and wife faced each other in the
gravity of their original tete-h-tHe. Only such a
thin rivulet of remarks irrigated the drought
of their silence as saved them from provoking
among their servants the comment that they
must have had a "row." Facing the Spartan
abstinence of his companion, Edward was com-
pelled to eat almost entirely alone, and even he
224 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
had to force an appetite. When the men had
finally retired —
"I suppose that you were" — he paused to
reject one adjective and pick another — "rather
severe to her ? "
" I told her the truth."
« Yes ? "
"Do you wish to hear the exact words I
used?"
" If you do not mind."
" I told her that if a scullery-maid in my
employment had behaved as she had done, I
should have had her discharged on the spot
without a character."
' _L n3.nics
"Thanks? What for ? "
" For gratifying my idle curiosity."
To himself he said, " How inconceivably
barbarous women are to one another ! " and
the thought was coupled with an ignoble wonder,
which had often assailed him in the earlier days
of their wedded life, as to whether there was any
end at all to Camilla's forehead, or whether it
had really gone to look for the back of her head ?
But his voice was well under control before he
asked —
" And she ? How did she take it ? "
" How did she take it ? " repeated his wife, with
a sombre wrath in her tone that testified to the
intensity of the annoyance that the transaction
discussed had caused her. " How does she always
take slaps in the face ? With turned-up eyes and
turned-down mouth, and a Sainte Nitouche air that
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 225
would almost convince one in the teeth of one's
senses that she was the innocent lamb and one's self
the butcher."
"Did she give any explanation — make any-
palliating statement ? "
The question was inspired, not by the idle
curiosity of which Edward had accused himself,
but by the forlorn hope that, since she was
presumably making a clean breast of it. Miss
Ransome might have added to her confession an
explanation of the still uncleared-up mystery of
her meeting in the park with that other person,
whose moonlit outline had worn such an ominous
resemblance to Colonel Landon's.
" Explanation ! Not she ; she was far too
shrewd. No, her line was an appeal to the
feelings. She addressed herself to the wrong
quarter for that ! " — with a short laugh of scorn.
Edward's was naturally a questioning spirit,
and he was still asking himself whether, after all.
Miss Ransome's guns had been so ill laid and
pointed when Camilla spoke again.
" It is criminal to rejoice in one's friends'
calamities, more especially when one has brought
those calamities upon them ; but, at least, we are
the gainers."
" Yes."
"We have learnt the mortifying lesson that
no influences we can bring to bear have any power
against hereditary depravity."
At that something in him rose and cavilled.
" Depravity ! That is scarcely the right word I
There is no depravity in an engagement to
226 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
marry between two free people, however brought
about."
Engagements to marry had always been sub-
jects for wincing to Camilla ever since her own,
and the phrase " however brought about," though
uttered without the slightest arrihre-pensky was
perhaps not happily chosen. She feU silent, and
later in the evening, after a prolonged pause,
evidently given to painful reflection, said —
" I thought I had never seen a path more
plainly indicated to me as the right one, never
taken a step more unmistakably under guidance ;
but I now see that I was misled hy that exaggerated
value for physical attractions which has led me
into all the gravest errors of my life."
Edward was no coxcomb ; yet it was impossible
to mistake what the gravest of the grave errors of
her life had, in his wife's opinion, been.
Next morning Mrs. Tancred came down to
breakfast in her bonnet.
" You are coming to London with me ? " asked
her husband, looking up from his coffee.
" No."
The negative was naked, and did not seem to
invite further questioning ; but Mrs. Tancred
presently volunteered the unasked information.
" I am going to the Dower House."
Neither of her auditors hazarded a comment,
but the sinking heart of one of them inquired of
itself, " Does she mean to take me with her ? "
There was a pause as of Nature between two
thunderbolts.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 227
" I am going to ask pardon of my friends."
Edward was apparendy run out of his stock of
"yeses," and the white face of the object of
Camilla's apologies dropped towards its heaving
chest. The whiteness was partly artificial, due to
an annoyed comment by the artist on her own
carmines at an earlier period of the morning.
(" I am incorrigibly rosy ! One ought never to
be pink at a crisis ! I can do it so that even
without her spectacles she will not be able to
detect it ! ") " And, moreover, I wish to find out
what their attitude will be towards "
She paused before the name of Bonnybell, as
before an unclean word with which she was un-
willing to sully her lips. The unclean word lifted
up its little pitiful voice.
"Will you ask them just to give me a
chance ? "
Instinct dictated to her the phrase in its un-
defended humility ; and though the ungracious
"It is no part of my mission to be your
messenger ! " could hardly be said to be en-
couraging, Miss Ransome felt that she had struck
the right note. She was alone with Edward for
one moment in the hall before his diurnal
departure.
" How I wish you were back ! " she cried in
such a subdued plaint, as seemed forced out of
her maiden reticence in spite of her.
" Do you ? " He could only hope that the
surprise he tried to throw into his words was
more perceptible to her ear than the emotion that
entered into them without any throwing.
228 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Yes, I do. I suppose that, in my dire need,
I catch at straws."
The phrase went with him through the day.
Mrs. Tancred's absence was prolonged enough
to give its cause ample time to consider her
situation in every light and from every angle.
The season of suspense was passed, like all ordi-
nary mornings, in the schoolroom, but Miss Ran-
some gave herself a whole holiday in honour of
her betrothal, and also because, as she sensibly
reflected, an equipment of elegant learning would
be wasted upon the mate of Toby.
" If they refuse to entertain the idea at all —
and I am a. pill for them " — she laughed maliciously
— " and Camilla insists on my giving him up to
oblige them, I suppose we shall have to be tied
up at once in some hugger-mugger way at a
Registry Office. Pah ! how can any one marry
who has any other means of subsistence ? I may
give up living by my wits, but I shall have Toby
pour tout potage for all eternity ! "
The thought was so unexhilarating that it
stemmed the current of her ruminations for a
time, while she dwelt upon it, her eyes resting
on the trees which masked her windows, but
through which, owing to the fall of their leaves,
little loopholes into the beyond had become
apparent.
" It is ridiculous — deadly dull as it has been
— but I believe I shall be sorry to go. One
cannot enjoy the old camel's pummellings, but I
do not dislike her as much as I ought, and
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 229
Edward, dear, courteous, hesitating, incredible
Edward, who has never once tried to kiss me !
Oh that I could say the same of Toby ! "
The last and most grotesquely fervent of Miss
Ransome's aspirations was drowned in the sound of
wheels, and all her being passed into her ears as
she listened to hear her fate. She had not long
to wait. Camilla herself — no messenger footman
— opened the schoolroom door, and shut it care-
fully behind her.
" They will have nothing to say to me ? "
The just-enough-panted inquiry was accompanied
with a little rush forward.
" They have no choice," replied Camilla,
dryly ; " Toby is his own master."
" I know that he is independent of his father
in money matters," rejoined Bonnybell, with an
excursion into the realities of truth as injudicious
as unusual, " but "
"You would not have risked your patent-
leather shoes in the park in pursuit of him if he
had not been."
The girl drew up her head with a meek air of
hurt self-respect.
" I was going to say that it was not the money
question that I cared about. What I want to
know is whether they can bring themselves —
by-and-by — in time — to look upon me as a
daughter and sister."
" They will try." The tone in which Mrs.
Tancred uttered the sentence plainly showed
what, in her opinion, the upshot of the effort
would be.
230 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" That is all I can ask of them."
" And to show that they are in earnest and
are willing to give you the chance you asked for,
they have generously invited you to stay at the
Dower House ; I am to send you over this
afternoon."
Perhaps it was excess of joy at this news of
her acceptance into the bosom of the Aylmer
family that caused half a minute to elapse before
Bonnybell was able to ejaculate, with quite the
proper emphasis —
" "What have I done to deserve such
goodness ? "
And after the matter-of-fact frankness of
Camilla's answer, " Nothing," there was another
pause.
" Was — the news a great shock to them ? "
"Yes."
" Will they " — there was nothing spurious
this time about the quailing accent — "be very
severe to me ? "
" You must remember that it takes time for
decent people to become acclimatized to your
methods, but they wiU do their best."
Miss Ransome's heart — though, in its wrong,
shifty way, not uncourageous — gave a dull thud of
dismay. To accept with disarming humility the
admission thus cordially offered, and go with
smiling readiness to meet the buffets in store
for her, was plainly the only wise course to
pursue, and no one was better aware of it than
herself. Yet at the awful ordeal ahead of her the
flesh jibbed.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 231
" Is not this afternoon rather soon ? " she
asked diffidently.
" What is there to wait for ? "
The trenchant question could have but the
same answer as Bonnybell's own inquiry as to
what she had done to deserve such goodness had
elicited from Mrs. Tancred. After a moment
the latter resumed —
" I cannot pretend to you that your visit will
be a pleasant one, but, as I said, they will do their
best."
At the terrific view thus conjured up of
Catherine and Miss Barnacre's best, Bonnybell's
artifices fell away from her, and in a spasm of most
real consternation she dropped down on her knees
beside Camilla, in the attitude most reprobated by
that lady, and cried out —
" Oh, I do not think I can bear it ! They
will put their fingers on all my weak spots, and I
have so Inany — many ! "
Mrs. Tancred's answer was to twitch the gown
clutched by the bride-elect's convulsive fingers
out of them, and say —
" They cannot well be more uncomplimentary
to you than I am."
"That is true," replied the other, sobbing ;
" but when you are down upon me I know that it
is for my good. Unworthy and wretched as I am,
I have always known that you did not really hate
me, since that night when you came up to my
bedroom and kissed me when you thought I was
asleep."
Bonnybell's wet eyes were cast down, but she
232 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
heard her benefactress give a start at this masterly
communication.
" It was of a piece with the rest of your con-
duct to pretend that you were asleep," she said
harshly.
But the poor innocent knew that her shot had
told.
CHAPTER XXI
A STEADY fine rain had set in, which had lasted
with scarcely any daylight intermission, though, as
often in wet weather, the nights were fine, since
Bonnybell's absorption into the bosom of her
future family. Three days had passed since that
event, and from inside the walls of her prison-
house had come no sign of how things were going
with her there. Sometimes Edward felt Darius' s
wish to go to the edge of the lion's den and cry
out " In a lamentable voice " to a little modern
Daniel to know how she was faring there. The
only difference was that he did not indulge it.
Mr. Tancred had returned to find his guest
already gone, and told himself at once that he was
relieved. That there might be no mistake about
it, he repeated the statement several times.
" She is absolutely indifferent to the young
man," Camilla said, using the generic term for
humanity instead of the colloquial, on the same
principle as she always spoke of Jock as " the
dog " when he was in disgrace. " She went off in
a flood of tears."
" With such an ordeal before me, I think
I should have done the same," he answered.
233
234 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"I reminded her that she would have the
support of her accomplice ; but that did not seem
to give her much confidence."
For not the first time in his life Edward
wished that his wife would give him a holiday
from the dry irony whose use had become a
second nature to her, but he did not, it is
needless to say, tell her so, and Mrs. Tancred
continued in the same strain —
" She repeated what a noble character he was ;
but said that in this case it was some woman-friend
whom she needed to cling to. I was unable to
advise her to cling to " — " Catherine Aylmer "
was on her tongue, but she substituted — " the
ladies of the Aylmer family in their present
frame of mind."
Edward suggested weakly, " Meg, perhaps ? "
" Meg was sent away this morning."
"And Miss Barnacre ? "
"No, they have kept her. They think that
she will be invaluable to them."
He gave a slight shudder, and glanced at the
clock. It pointed to 10.30. For five mortal
hours the lions had been crunching the tender
bones of the little new Daniel.
" It seems," continued his wife, " that she has
always liked women better than men." An arid
little laugh showed how much credit Camilla
attached to the statement. " I wonder, while she
was about it, that she did not add that her mother
had done the same." After a pause, " She must
indeed have been in sore need of some one to
cling to, for she tried to cling to me !'"
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 235
There was an angry ring in the voice that
uttered the last clause, which showed Mr. Tancred
that his wife had not been so untouched by poor
Miss Bonnybell's frantic gymnastics as she wished
it to be believed ; and for the first time he felt less
intolerably grated upon by her tone.
"Are you determined to make her always
carry that unfortunate mother upon her back ? "
he asked, rather wearily. " The poor creature will
have enough to do through life to get away from
her without your help."
The rejoinder tarried, but when it came there
was a tinge of compunction in it.
" You are quite right. I do not think that
the Aylmers will let her forget her parentage in a
hurry."
Both fell silent.
Three days had passed ; and during them the
married pair seemed to themselves to be always
falling silent. A tacit convention prevented their
perpetual discussion of one subject ; yet none
other seemed to present itself, and the eschewed
theme kept cropping up continually, like gout
weed in a garden. The house seemed to
both extraordinarily silent. Their late guest had
never been noisy, and it would have seemed im-
possible that the removal of so small and sound-
less a presence could have made any difference
in a great house's contribution to the noise of
the world. Yet the absence of so — as one would
have thought — imperceptible a footfall on the
deep-carpeted stairs ; the extinction of such tiny
236 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
trills of song and wafts of laughter made the
rooms seem void, as if uninhabited, and hushed
as if one lay dead in them. It was strange that
this deliverance from a little adventuress, of
whose existence they had six months earlier been
ignorant, should have made the woman feel the
bitter curse of her barrenness, and the man the
contemptible vacuity of his self-murdered life more
acutely than ever before.
It was under a variety of aspects that the
subject reared its shunned head. Camilla was
always the one to introduce and then curtly
dismiss it.
" I imagine," she said one evening, after
having been observing for some moments the
idle flutter and dip of the leaves of the book
her husband was ostensibly reading, "that you
are feeling as if all the little colour that was in
them had been withdrawn from our somewhat
grey lives ; is it not so ? "
There was no anger nor even surprise, only
a sort of compassion in her tone, as of one gaug-
ing anew the drabness of an existence in which
such an illumination could be felt as a loss.
Edward regained a firmer grip of his paper-
knife.
"Are you judging me by yourself.?" he
asked, with a smile not more melancholy than,
and as calmly kind as usual. "Are you sure
that it is not you who are missing our patch of
scarlet ? "
" I should miss a blister when it was taken
oiF," she answered, and the subject dropped.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 237
It rose again, however, and yet again, im-
possible apparently quite to submerge. On the
third evening it came up suddenly, emerging
from silence in a fresh dress.
" It would be difficult to find a worse way for
disposing of money," Camilla said, her rather
grating voice breaking on the absolute stillness
of her surroundings — Jock never snored and
Edward never cleared his throat — " but I suppose
we must give her a trousseau."
" It would be like you," he answered, carefully
dissociating himself, as he invariably did, from any
share in her generosities.
She must have grown too much used to this
habit of fifteen years to be annoyed by it ; so
perhaps it was some warmth in his acquiescence
that ruffled her, or simply that her stock of
amiability had run low, but her rejoinder was
certainly not amiable.
" She shall have no voice in the choice
of it."
Ten minutes more must have elapsed before
Jock pricked his ears, the finer dog-sense out-
running human hearing. Camilla looked with
wondering tenderness at him over the pins on
which her philanthropic sweater was growing into
fleecy life.
" What does he think he hears ? "
Edward shook his head, and Jock jumped
out of his basket and made for the door, which
opened as he reached it to admit a figure racing in
at the top of its speed.
Before the astounded couple realized its
238 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
presence, the figure whose flexibility of knee-
joint had often been a trial to its female patron
had flung itself in an attitude of prayer between
them.
" I have come back to you ! Do not drive
me away ! "
" You have been turned out ? "
The ejaculated inquiry was Camilla's. The
same idea had occurred to Edward, yet his wife's
outspoken wording of it gave him a galvanic
shock at her brutality.
The kneeling angel gave pause to the pants
which were heaving her black chiffon breast, to
gasp out, with a reproachful look from one to
the other of her listeners —
" Turned out ! Oh no, I turned myself
out."
The extreme improbability of this statement
entirely " dumbed " that one of Miss Ransome's
hearers who was never much addicted to speech,
but the other cried out in a key from which
no great pains had been taken to extract the
incredulity —
" You ran away ? at this time of night ? "
" I did not run away ; I asked them to send
me " She made a dramatic pause. " I was
going to say homer
It was not quite at once that Camilla could
bring out her curt query —
" And why, pray ? "
By this time the slender darkness had risen
to its feet, and was drawing itself up, not without
a touch of unfamiliar dignity.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 239
" When I found that they believed some-
thing that they had heard about me, I felt that
I could not spend another night under the same
roof with them."
For a moment the vague " something " re-
mained with no demand for an explanation of it,
Edward's silence being due to a dreadful suspicion
that whatever the accusation that had been brought
against Bonnybell it was in all probability true ;
Camilla's to a fear of hearing a fact or facts about
her protegee even more shocking than those that
had already wounded her ears. But as a shrink-
ing from the disagreeable was certainly no part
of Mrs. Tancred's character, she pulled herself
together, and asked brusquely —
" What was it ? and was it true ? "
" True ! " repeated the other in a heart-
wrung voice. " Oh, if you, too, are going to
believe it ! " She threw her hands out before
her with a gesture at once of finality and
desperation.
" I should have a better chance of disbelieving
it if I knew what it was."
"They received an anonymous letter about
me. It came by this evening's post."
" H'm ! "
" It accused me " — there was worldly wisdom
in bringing out the accusation with difficulty ; but
the difficulty was real too — "the writer s^id he
thought that the man whom I was going to marry
ought to know that he had seen me one night
last year in Paris at M 's."
The confession seemed at first to fall flat ; at
240 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
least, with regard to the person to whom it was
directly addressed.
" M 's ! " replied Camilla, with the uncon-
scious ease with which an innocent young girl
might pronounce an improper word. "What is
M 's ? "
Bonnybell's distraught orbs rolled with involun-
tary confidence towards Edward.
"You know, don't you ?"
" I have heard of it."
" I suppose it is some very disreputable haunt
of vice," said Camilla ; " but I am thankful to
say I never heard of it."
" It would be absolutely out of the question
for any femme du monde to be seen there if she
wished to keep a rag of character ; and as to a
jeune filk ! "
" It was not true, then ? "
The question was point-blank, as was the
searching eye-beam that lit it, and Bonnybell felt
that the answer must be to match."
" 'True ! " she repeated, with an anguish of
upbraiding in her voice. " Oh, I cannot have
explained properly ! How can you ask me ? I
know that poor Claire was not careful enough in
the places she took me to ; but M 's ! and I
never went anywhere without her ! "
If Mrs. Tancred here had to struggle with
some difficulty in suppressing her opinions of the
chaperonage thus waved in her face, she came oiF
conqueror ; and "poor Claire's" laurels, and even
the objectionable pet name itself, went unim-
pugned.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 241
" Have you any idea who wrote it ? "
" Not the slightest ! " — with wounded emphasis.
" How should I ? I did not know " — with inno-
cent sorrow — "that I had an enemy in the world."
A diversion was here efFected by the fact that
Edward, usually so quiet and noiseless, by some
awkward movement of his foot displaced one of
the fire-irons, which fell rattling from its andiron
on to the hearth, before which the master of the
house was standing.
Bonnybell's heart, though in a certain sense
a stout one, sank. " He knows that it was
Charlie ! " she said internally. " I was afraid that
he must connect the letter with that unlucky
episode in the park ! Well, since I have begun, I
must go on — ' in for a penny, in for a pound ; ' and,
after all, it is nearly all truth that I am telling."
" It came by the afternoon post," she con-
tinued, confining the appealing tragedy of her eyes
to her female auditor for the present, as being the
easier field of action. " I saw at dinner-time that
something must have happened, they were so cold
to me ; not " — in plaintive, though not accusatory
parenthesis — " that they have ever been anything
else. Miss Barnacre kept talking all the time
about — adventuresses " — the speaker's sunk voice
made a slight shamed pause before the last word —
" and Catherine was like ice ! "
A long sighing breath bore on its wings this
last cruel reminiscence ; no other sound broke
upon it, and It was with a heartened sense that
the air was getting warmer that the narrator
presently went on with her narrative.
242 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Toby did all he could to prevent their show-
ing it to me ; he at least believed in me. I am
afraid their doing it in spite of him will make a sad
quarrel between them" — another sigh — "but they
thought it right I should know ; perhaps it was."
Miss Ransome paused on the meek acquies-
cence in injury of this note.
" 1 suppose that they thought it their duty to
give you an opportunity of clearing yourself,"
Camilla said, in a voice whose chronic severity
was tempered by some unusual relaxing of its
harshness, "but for myself I should have put
such a thing into the fire."
"They gave it to me in the drawing-room
after dinner. There were only Mrs. Aylmer, and
Catherine, and Miss Barnacre there. I thought
they need not have had Miss Barnacre ; but you
know how she always gives her opinion about
everything, even about your religious views."
Bonnybell sank her voice at this last proof of
the Barnacre' s presumption, and was rewarded
by hearing a muiBed snort of contempt from the
direction of Mrs. Tancred. " I could not make
anything of it at first, never having seen the
handwriting before." (O Bonnybell ! why the
inartistic superfluity of this touch ?) "I asked
what it meant."
"Yes?"
" When at last I made out what I was accused
of, and saw that they — I am not quite sure about
Mrs. Aylmer, but ihe other two did not even
attempt any disguise — believed it, I — I did not
say anything at all. I just gave them — gave
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 243
Catherine, I think it was, but I did not seem to
see very well — gave Catherine back the letter and
left the room."
The foot of the figure on the hearthrug must
have been on this particular night out of its
owner's control. A while ago it was the fire-irons
that innocently suffered, now it was Jock ; and, to
his intense astonishment, nobody apologized.
Camilla said, " Well ? "
" I knew that I should find Toby in the
smoking-room, so I went there, and asked him
to send to the stables and order something to take
me — I am afraid I said," with a humbly apologetic
smile, " home ! "
The wronger of Jock and of the fire-irons spoke
at last, though his voice was not quite what he
could have wished.
" And he let you go ? "
" He had no choice, poor fellow ! " replied
the girl, with an unpretending dignity which made
it seem to her hearer as if he saw her for the first
time. " He was in a dreadful state. I never saw
any one in such a dreadful state ; but I was firm.
I said, ' If it is true, I am not fit to be here ; and if
it is not true, I ought never to speak to them
aeram.
" And he acquiesced r
" When I said that, oh, he was in a dreadful
state ! " — with a, for once, not manufactured
shudder at the recollection. " He answered that,
for his part, he had every intention of speaking to
them again, and he did not think that they would
forget what he meant to say in a hurry."
244 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
The narrative, pregnant though it was, had not
taken long, and now it was ended.
" If your statement is true " Camilla began
with a judicial slowness.
But Bonnybell, contrary to the humble polite-
ness of her wont, broke in with a little cry.
" True ? Would it be much use my telling an
untruth when ' they ' are so close by to show me
up if I did ? "
The logic was as sound as the veracity of the
appeal was obvious, and the little cry was, and did
the work of, more than a rhetorical flourish.
" If, as I am induced to think, you have stated
the facts as they occurred," began Mrs. Tancred
again, with no apparent resentment of the inter-
ruption, " I confess that I do not think there
was any course open to you but the one you
adopted. For once in your life you seem to have
behaved with decency and dignity."
The concession, though not very graciously
worded, was an enormous one, and the relief con-
sequent upon it proportionately great, for poor
Miss Ransome had been very, very far from sure
of her reception.
"Then I may stay ? " she faltered.
" Stay ! " repeated her hostess, with an energy
of scorn which warmed the inmost core of her
silent husband's heart towards her. " Do not
ask preposterous questions."
Thereupon the returned waif flung herself
incontinently upon the rigid neck whose stiff
ruffles and frills no fond daughter-arms had ever
disarranged. The action bulked colossal to the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 245
executor of it in retrospect. " How could I have
done it ? " she asked herself in a cooler after-hour,
looking back upon her feat as the man who in
youth has mounted a cannon-swept, bayonet-brist-
ling breach into a burning town may regard the
feat from the armchair of placid old age. Of
course, I had had a good deal to upset me, but I
must have been off my head.
The embrace, if so one-sided a transaction
could merit the name, did not last long. Bonny-
bell was curtly told to sit down and not make a
fool of herself, and Camilla began almost at once
to scold her ; but yet it was with a sense of
extreme well-being that the little gutter-snipe, as
in frank soliloquy she often called herself, settled
her lithe body into a familiar armchair. Edward
had sat down too, and Jock, making up his mind
that reparation for his wrongs was unaccountably
not forthcoming to-night, stepped into his basket,
which stood raised on its accustomed tripod to
keep him from imaginary draughts. The girl
might never have been away. Yet to herself
what odious aeons seemed to have rolled between
her last and her present occupancy of the Hep-
plethwaite chair that now held her !
To a casual observer all would have seemed
as before, but a nicer eye would have detected
that Mrs. Tancred had not resumed her labours
on the nightly sweater. She sat looking straight
before her with knit brows for some good while
before she at last opened her mouth to utter slow
and evidently well-weighed words.
"If you have told me the truth" — oh, why
246 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
that cruel preamble ? — " I think, as I have already
said, that your course was the abstracdy right
one. Worldly wisdom would, of course, have
dictated a more conciliatory line of action. To
be on terms of open hostility with your husband's
family will not conduce to the happiness of your
married life."
At the beginning of this harangue Bonnybell
had sat straight up in her chair to mark her
respect by an attitude of close attention. Her
hands now clutched the arms tiU her knuckle-bones
stood out through the white skin.
" But I shall not have any married life," she
sighed in a trembling tone that yet seemed to
mean what it said.
"Not have any married life!" repeated Mrs.
Tancred, with such an accent as made Miss Ran-
some wonder whether the words could indeed be
her own. " I am quite at a loss. I thought I
understood you to say that your Jianci" (never
since his clandestine courtship had the young man
been Toby) — " that your Jianci did not share his
family's suspicions ? "
" He does not, he does not ! " cried Bonnybell,
in a sort of half-real, half-bogus rapture. "He
is absolutely stanch. He would marry me to-night
if he could. Oh, it is something to have one
person believe in you like that ; but it is / who,
after what has happened, will not marry him,"
CHAPTER XXII
The hour was late before the junta that sat upon
Miss Ransome's affairs of the heart separated for
the night.
" Not marry him" Camilla had repeated, with
a terrible trenchancy, " after all that has happened
— after the way in which you pursued him ? "
Miss Ransome waived, with wise magnanimity,
discussion of the unflattering phrase.
"It is for his sake," she said, in sweet re-
nunciation. *' There can be no happiness in
married life without confidence, as you have
often told me, and since I seem to have enemies
who stab me in the dark, this thing may happen
again ; and though he does not believe now, he
may gradually grow to suspect that there may
be something in it, and his people will work
upon him till they persuade him that I am — what
they think me."
Her voice was broken, and her air so much
that of the widowed dove, that it took her hearers
a minute or two to disentangle the cool common
sense of her utterances from its emotional fringes
and tags.
" You seem to be ready to give up rather
247
248 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
easily what you stuck at nothing to secure,"
Camilla said, in a voice of vexed puzzledom ; and
Edward's voice raised itself for almost the first
time in one of those tentative utterances that
always gave the impression of his thinking every-
body's opinion more valuable than his own —
"It does not strike you that it is rather hard
on Toby ? "
Miss Ransome turned on this diffident new
interlocutor eyes glorified by a lofty self-abnega-
tion.
" He will think so now," she said, " but in
ten years he will thank me."
" I have known more unlikely things than
that happen," Camilla said caustically, " and there
is more sense and rationality in what you say
than what I have hitherto thought you capable
of; but still, if you are sincerely attached to
the man — and I suppose that, after having sacri-
ficed so much in the way of delicacy to gain his
affections, you must at least be fond of him ? "
She paused, leaving her sentence unbalanced,
with an evident intention of obtaining an answer
to its first half before proceeding to the second.
Bonnybell hesitated a moment. Even if she
had been enamoured of her Toby, she would have
much preferred not to say so before Edward, and
things being as they were However, she got
out of the dilemma fairly well.
" Need I answer that question ? " she asked,
with virgin reticence.
Camilla received this graceful parry with a
puzzled " Humph ! " adding presently —
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 249
" It does not seem to strike you that there is
an injustice in punishing the man for what he
has not done."
" Punishing him ! " repeated Miss Ransome,
in a tone of startled anguish. " Oh no, I am
only giving him a little pain now, to save him
a great deal of pain later."
The baffled keenness on Camilla's face grew
more acute, and its young object was also made
aware by some sixth sense that Edward's acumen
was also at fault through this new double in a
course that had never run particularly straight.
"You must have had an uncommonly un-
pleasant three days," Mrs. Tancred remarked,
after a ruminating space, " to be so anxious to
loose what before you were so determined to
grasp."
Bonnybell could have spared these repeated
allusions to the methods by which her conquest
had been achieved, but she took it beautifully,
and with gentle head drooped.
"That is true. Whatever happens to me in
the future, 1 do not think I can well have a
bitterer cup to drink than what they have held
to my lips for the last three days."
A caught breath in one direction and a
fidgeted foot in another here assured Miss
Ransome that her simple oratory had told, and
she hastened to go on striking while the iron
was hot.
"It was not only this last blow," she said,
with a long shuddering sigh, " but all along
they took pleasure in humiliating me, in showing
2 so A WAIF'S PROGRESS
up my ignorance and my foolishness — Heaven
knows it was easy enough — and they were glad
and ready to believe evil — even such unbelievable
evil as this — of me ! "
A mental gloss followed this last statement.
" I am speaking truth, in a way ; it is unbelievable
that any mother could have taken her daughter to
M 's ; and even poor Claire would not have
done it if she had not been even less herself
than usual that night."
A distinctly emotional pause ensued, which
Camilla, with a movement of the shoulders as of
one shaking off an unwelcome burden, broke.
" Come," she said brusquely, " this will not do.
You must not try to work upon our feelings.
For once in your life you have been the aggrieved
person. I own that I cannot myself comprehend "
■ — drawing up her bony figure with a scornful
dignity that for once made it seem beautiful in
Bonnybell's eyes — " stooping to notice any accu-
sation that took so low a form as an anonymous
letter ; but we must not allow ourselves to be led
away into an exaggeration of feeling. After all,
the whole thing rests upon a misconception.
They are good and conscientious people," (Miss
Ransome was glad to verify that to make this
admission cost Camilla what is vulgarly called a
" swallow.") " When your innocence is proved,
they will be the first to own themselves in the
wrong."
" How can it be proved ? " answered Bonny-
beU, dejectedly. " How can any one rebut a
charge that comes one does not know whence.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 251
and one does not know why ? " The falsehood
came more easily this time, but prudence and
something, too, of authentic feeling bid it not
stand alone. "I would not thank them for
believing in me when my innocence was proved.
The people I love and bless are those who
believe in me first, and do without proof."
The description, though perhaps not quite
accurately fitting her present audience, was ob-
viously meant to cover them, and it was not very
harshly that Camilla repressed this new excursion
into the realms of the emotional.
" If it is false," she said, not unkindly, though
without any direct acknowledgment of Bonny-
bell's magnificent compliment to her own and her
husband's credulity, " you have only to wait, and
it will die of itself. It is the essence of the false
to perish." ("That is a bad look-out for me,"
thought Bonnybell, humorously, but she only
bowed her head.) " The very monstrousness of
the accusation " — indignation gave an unwonted
quiver to the speaker's voice — "will kill it the
more quickly, and even if it takes time, you can
well afford to wait. A year, two years, might
make you a little less grossly unfit for the duties
of a wife and mother than you are now."
Again Bonnybell bowed her head, and across
Edward's memory there flashed in ludicrous in-
congruity the recollection of Miss Ransome's
views on maternity, as slightly but graphically
sketched for his own benefit a few days earlier.
" I have always heard that there is nothing so
wearing as a long engagement," suggested Miss
252 A WAIFS PROGRESS
Ransome, presently, with much hesitancy — " nor
so ruinous to the appearance," she was about to
add, but thought better of it.
The severity, singularly absent from her
latest utterance, here showed signs of returning
to Camilla's eye and tone.
" I do not quite understand the drift of your
remark. You cannot be suggesting the advisability
of thrusting yourself into a family which would
receive you in the spirit that characterizes the
Aylmers' present attitude towards you."
" No," replied Bonnybell, with a little heart-
broken gesture of renunciation. " I meant that
there is nothing for me but to give him up."
She held to the same text through the hour
and a half during which the debate lasted, although
listening with the most attentive and sorrowing
mildness to all the arguments that could be
adduced on the other side.
Arrived at the haven of her own room, she
cast herself on the bed, and kissed it hysterically.
" Was ever any one so glad to be back anywhere
as I am to be here ? " she sighed out. " Oh,
what a three days ! Did ever any one before go
through three such days .'' I thought at the
beginning of them that I had as tough a hide
as most people. But oh, in five minutes they
were through it. Barnacre, Catherine, shall I
ever get their needles out of my skin ? "
She turned over on her face for a moment or
two to bury the memory of those poisoned pricks
in the soothing softness of that hospitable pillow,
then sat up on the edge of the bed, with her legs
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 253
dangling, while her reflections took a less painful
turn. " I suppose there is some truth in what
poor Claire used to say, that all respectable
women are ill-natured."
She ruminated awhile upon this wise, witty,
and tender saying of her departed parent. Then
her thoughts returned to fact, from their excur-
sion into theory. " And to think that Charlie
should have turned out a blessing in disguise !
Without the help of his blackguardly letter —
what an unspeakable sweep he is — how could I
ever have got out of the impasse f Toby would
never have let me go. Even now I should not
be surprised at his putting a bullet into me
to-morrow, as one is always seeing in the papers
that grooms do to faithless kitchen-maids, when
I give him his final congL Well, that would
be the end, and the dear old camel and
Edward would be rid of their incubus. Poor
Toby ! How sea-sick the mere thought of
him makes me ! How very sincerely I dislike
men !
By this time she had jumped down from the
bed and strolled to the cheval-glass. " I ought
to do better — much better — than Toby," she said,
appraising her reflection. " Of course, the last
three days have ravaged me and added five years
to my age, but that is only temporary. I shall
probably go on improving up to twenty-five, and
Toby has so very much less in his power to settle
than I at first understood, and he unwisely let me
see that he meant to keep me ten months of the
year in the country. I am sorry to play into the
254 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
hands of that detestable Barnacre, but it is
really all for the best."
With this piously optimistic reflection on her
lips, she fell sweetly asleep. It was not the
winter dawn, nor the voice of the tea-bearing
housemaid, that awoke her. The electric light
full on her eyes, shot her back from the land
where all things are forgotten, into a consciousness
that was at first but semi. Some one was standing
over her, and a voice was in her ears, uttering
sounds which presently resolved themselves into
words.
" You need not pretend to be asleep ; I was
taken in once, but it is useless to try and deceive
me a second time."
Bonnybell sat up, hazily blinking, still only
half outside the gateway of sleep, and gradually
realized that the form towering above her in the
grimness of its snuif-coloured toga, and the
inexorability of its dragged-back grey hair, was
no other than Camilla.
" Is there anything wrong ? " she asked,
rubbing her sleepy eyes with her knuckles — a
delicious gesture for once perfectly natural. " Is
it a fire, or burglars, or what ? " The empire
of slumber was still too strong for there to be
anything but misty indiiFerence to the calamities
suggested in the speaker's tone. Then, with a
sprmg back into full consciousness, and a
frightened opening wide of the startled eyes,
" Toby cannot have come already ? "
"My conscience would not let me rest,"
replied Mrs. Tancred, with a ruthless lack of
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 255
apology for her intrusion, and a still incomplete
belief in the genuineness of the drowsiness so
ably presented. " Reflecting afterwards on the
lightness with which you spoke of ' throwing
over ' and ' giving up ' what you had sacrificed so
much to win, I felt you could not realize that you
were sacrificing what may never be offered to you
again, the disinterested, protecting, shared devotion
of an honourable English gentleman. To love and
be loved worthily, perfectly — the most aspiring
of us cannot hope to get nearer heaven on this
side the grave than this ! "
Camilla spoke the last sentence more as if to
herself than to her auditor, and left the room
immediately afterwards, as if ashamed. The
dignity and solemnity of her utterance dispersed
the ridicule attendant on such a Priestess of Eros,
even in the trivial and hopelessly flippant mind of
Bonnybell, and converted her mirth into a more
human compassion.
" Poor dear old woman ! I wish Edward
could bring himself to be a little more demon-
strative to her ; but it would never do to give
him a hint. So I am never to have another
Toby! Well" — chuckling and yet shuddering
too — " that is a deprivation I can well bear."
CHAPTER XXIII
The morning had come, and with it Toby, As
Bonnybell, propitiatingly punctual, appeared at
the exactly nine-o'clock breakfast-table, she was
informed by the butler, whose tone — the really
perfectly colourless one of a well-trained servant
— seemed to her ear vibrating with the com-
passion which all creation must feel for her, that
Mr. Aylmer had been waiting for an hour and a
half in the morning-room, and would be glad to
speak to her as soon as she was at liberty.
The object of this very morning call cast a
dismayed glance at her protectors.
" At home he is never down till long past
ten ! "
" An extremely bad habit, and a very good
thing that he should be broken of it," answered
Camilla, unable, even at so dramatic a moment, to
refrain from lifting up her voice in testimony
against the vicious indulgence aUuded to ; but
her hand rattled the cups of tea which, in con-
tempt of servants and sideboards, she always
made herself.
" I suppose I ought not to keep him wait-
ing any longer," said Bonnybell, turning with
256
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 257
extreme reluctance from the tempting, gleaming
table, with its beautiful old green dragon china
and its Queen Anne silver, towards the door of
doom.
" You had better have a cup of coffee and
something to eat first," Camilla said peremptorily.
" A painful scene should never be faced upon an
empty stomach."
The homely common sense of the advice
came to the aid of its imperativeness, and
Bonnybell eagerly drank the offered coffee, and
with some difficulty swallowed a scrap of toast.
But still she lingered. The entrance of a servant
with a lengthy message for Mrs. Tancred gave
the girl the opportunity for a word with Edward,
who had not yet sat down to the table.
" You would not come too, I suppose, to back
me up ? " she asked with low precipitation, casting
a glance out of the corner of her eyes towards
Camilla. But her alarm in that direction was
unnecessary, as it was one of the rules of Mrs.
Tancred's life always to give her whole attention
to the subject that at the moment engaged her ;
and though her interest in Miss Ransome's love
affair was undoubtedly keener than that she felt
for the third housemaid's quinsy, the latter, while
she was being informed of it, entirely swept the
former from her attention.
At the strange request made him, Edward's
features took on an expression which the petitioner
at once recognized as not one of acquiescence.
" Poor chap, don't you think he has a right
to his last chance ? "
258 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"Very well," she rejoined, with a hysteric
laugh, and half holding out a hand. " Good-bye,
if you never see me again."
" What do you mean ? "
" I mean that when a person is in the state of
mind he is, poor fellow, one does not know what
may happen."
Her face was white as a magnolia, and yet
contradictorily lovelier for the very absence of
those reds which had seemed, when present, to
make up half its beauty, and her eyes were full
of a valedictory solemnity ; facts of which, for
once, she was all but quite unconscious.
" Do you mean to say that you are afraid of
his being personally violent ; if so "
To her disordered fancy there sounded an
echo of contempt in the form of the question.
"I am not much apt to be afraid," she
answered quietly, and a something in her tiny
face, for all its blanching, confirmed the assertion.
" I do not much mind if he does shoot me.
What have I to lose now ? "
" Do you care as much as that ? "
There was a horrified astonishment in his
tone, as if remorseful for some former incredulity,
and for once Nature was too strong for Bonny-
bell. She saw in the mirror of Edward's face
that there must be a scornful denial of his accusa-
tion on her own. But in a flash she had again
taken hold of herself and of her part. Not for
a second must she forget, or let others forget,
that she was broken-hearted at the loss of Toby.
" It would be a solution : and — and — it is
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 259
not easy to have two people to fight, myself as
well as him ! Wish me well through it 1 " She
was gone.
The engagement had lasted three hours, so
the clock told the watchers, who — not together,
for Camilla had rigorously forced herself to her
daily desk — were awaiting the issue of the duel.
"I am glad that you let yourself be per-
suaded by me not to go to London to-day,"
Edward's wife had said to him before withdrawing.
"I do not quite know what good I do by
staying," he answered restlessly.
" In the case of two such perfectly undisci-
plined natures one never knows what develop-
ments may arise," she rejoined.
With this imperfect consolation for his
wasted morning, she left him. Since then,
against his will, chidden by his common sense —
for was not the smoking-room that held his
uneasy idleness miles away from the morning-
room } — he had been listening, asking himself
whether, although unquestionably out of reach
of any ordinary sound, the noise of — say a pistol
or revolver shot might not penetrate to his
straining ears .? In vain to argue down the
ludicrous idea. Did the danger seem real to her.
or was the suggestion only thrown out to give
herself a heightened interest in his eyes ? She
was quite capable of it. Not frightened either.
Seldom as — he now realized — she spoke truthj
she had spoken it then. Blanched with excitement,
not fear.
2 6o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
Had Mr. Tancred's eye been able to verify or
correct the notions upon the current melodrama
presented by his imagination, he would have seen
the object of his speculations in even sorer straits
than he had pictured her. The end of those dire
hours left her and her antagonist exactly where
it found them. From the engulfment of the
initial embrace her spirit had cried out to itself,
" This is exceedingly disagreeable, but I suppose
it will end some time. How glad I am that I
drank dear Camilla's coffee ! I do not think
I could have gone through with it if I had not !
His tears are taking all the curl out of my fringe.
Poor devil, if he only knew how little worth while
it all is ! "
The same inward ejaculations were pouring
themselves forth in her inmost soul at the end
of the three hours, when her situation was no
further amended than that she was sitting on a
chair — a simulated swoon had gained her this con-
cession — with Toby kneeling before her, his un-
invited head rolling about upon her knees —
while between loud sobs he formulated, with the
iteration of a jay or a pie, his simple thesis :
" You said you loved me ! You promised to
marry me ! I have done nothing to make you
change your mind ! You cannot, and shall not
chuck me."
Against the rock of this unanswerable logic
her rhetoric had for one hundred and eighty
minutes broken in vain. There was not a single
weapon in her not ill-furnished armoury that she
had not employed ; and all with a like result.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 261
" Wounded honour ? " His family en bloc or
severally should follow her round the room on
their knees, imploring her pardon, and eating
their words. "Tears?" He beat her hollow
at them, " A vow never to love any one else ? "
This in her present nausea of endearments seemed
a vow easy indeed to keep, but it was received
with frenzy at the mere suggestion of such a
possibility. The offer to be a sister to him and
to be god-daughter to his eldest child when he
was happily married to some one else were not
up to her usual level of cleverness, and would not
have been put forward had her mind been in its
normal condition. Their effect was terrifying !
Physically exhausted, she leaned back in her
chair, quite at her wits' end, mechanically strok-
ing with some dim hope of keeping it quiet the
distraught head which, rolling about in sandy
abandonment on her lap, pinned her to her
seat. Never did a more poignant regret at the
success of its own handiwork fill a human
mind. " I ought to have known more about
him before I went in for him so thoroughly,
but who would have guessed that under that
stodgy outside there was " anything like this f "
Another hour had passed, and yet another,
and still the situation remained at the same hope-
less deadlock. Occasionally the head lifted itself
and the mouth repeated its pitiful parrot cry, and
once, twice, thrice again, Miss Ransome went
through the weapons of her armoury. In her
desperation she tried a new one ; offered — in utter
hopelessness of ever ridding herself of him on
262 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
cheaper terms — a compromise. If he would go
away for a year, round the world — every one went
round the world nowadays — in a year she might
be cleared and made more worthy of him ; and at
the end "
He interrupted her with the brutal directness
of one who had got through the civilized surface
of things to the bed-rock of mere Nature, while
a sort of cunning flashed into his dimmed and
bloodshot eyes.
" I should find you waiting for me ? "
" That you undoubtedly would not ! " was the
reply made by herself to herself, but for him there
was a little tired sigh, and an "Ah ! if you
cannot trust me "
At that he went oiF into extravagances, in-
coherent assertions of the impossibility of any one
seeing without longing to possess her ; of the
madness of leaving her as a mark for other men's
desires.
She coUapsed into silence. " Will no one
ever arrive to rescue me ? " The answer seemed
to come in a loud whirring familiar sound, the
prosaic boom of the gong.
" It is luncheon ! " she cried. " You must not
keep me ! "
" You can think of luncheon now ! "
" They are very particular, very strict about
hours," she answered, casting wildly about for the
rope that even now seemed to dangle just out of
her reach, " and — and — dreadful, agonizing as it
is to part thus, I must not — now of all times —
do anything to alienate my only friends."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 263
He had lifted his head to make his protest,
and she had nimbly taken advantage of the fact to
slide eel-like away from him, and make for the
door. He was there before her. But just as he
reached it the mahogany portal swung open, and
in the aperture stood a tranquil black form.
" If you please, sir, Mrs. Tancred wished
me to say that she hoped you would stay to
luncheon."
There was a moment's pause while the full
bathos of the situation made itself felt. Then
civilization resumed her sway, the primaeval
instincts retired into the background, and the
unfortunate Toby, averting his hideously dis-
figured face, and swallowing his last sob,
answered thickly —
" Oh, thanks very much, but I am afraid I
am engaged."
This, however, in one sense was just what he
was not.
CHAPTER XXIV
" She would, I should think, be glad if you let
her have luncheon sent up to her."
"I have no opinion of food eaten in bed-
rooms. If people are well enough to eat, they
are well enough to come downstairs ; but she is
probably not fit to be seen, so for once I will
relax my rule."
These two remarks, to which it would be
superfluous to assign their respective ownerships,
were all the comment upon the recent melodrama
at first possible to the reluctant managers upon
whose stage it had been played. They ate their
luncheon in ruffled silence.
The revolt in Camilla's Puritan soul against
the orgy of ungoverned passion which had chosen
her house for its scene was incongruously mixed
with an angry compassion, which suspected itself of
being something even more lenient towards the
cause of the whole uproar, while a very sincere
annoyance at the unavoidable and imminent split
between herself and her nearest and most con-
genial neighbours threw in its pinch of bitterness
to the distasteful brew.
Edward's feelings on the subject were even
264
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 265
more complicated and less agreeable. Vexation at
his own folly in allowing himself to be persuaded
to forego his day's work on the chance of a need-
less intervention in what no wise concerned him,
a compassion even keener than his wife's, but in
his case dedicated chiefly to Toby, coupled with a
dim but still existing satisfaction in his discom-
fiture, and that again with a biting self-disgust
for being capable of such a sensation, — these
ingredients composed no pleasant potion.
" It is to be hoped that, at all events, this will
end the affair," Camilla said, when at length they
were alone, with a sigh of stretched endurance.
" I suppose that the length of the interview
looks like it," he answered.
" Does it ? " she rejoined, her nervous irri-
tation wreaking itself, as it had so often done
before in their married life, in causelessly stinging
words upon him. " I dare say you know more
about these kind of extravagant love scenes than
I do. You certainly cannot know less."
He smiled a little sadly. " Mine was a very
simple deduction ; if she had relented, Toby
would not have foregone his luncheon."
" That is true," she said, mollified by his
gentleness, a gentleness that yet never prevented
the recurrence of her stings, " and I was un-
necessarily snappish, as you must often find me.
Poor little wretch ! She has shown more principle
and grit than I gave her credit for, if she has
kept to her renunciation of him."
Edward was silent. The having lived in the
house with Bonnybell for several weeks had
266 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
possibly made him more attached to rigid truth
than ever before ; and the motive of her heroic
abandonment was still too obscure to him for him
to be able to join as cordially as he would have
liked in encomiums of it.
" It is, of course, a severe trial to have her
returned upon our hands, when we had thought
our responsibility nearly ended ; but we must try
not to let her see it — a needless caution to you,
whose tendency is always towards over-indulgence
— but in this case I should be in agreement with
you ; in a mind like hers, the first germs of good
cannot be too carefully fostered."
Edward's acquiescence in this plan of campaign,
though really a fervent one, was indicated only
by a slight nod, and Mrs. Tancred went on,
the leniency and forbearance of her first pro-
posal sliding into a withering sarcasm.
"Our friendship with the Aylmers is, of course,
at an end ; and doubtless this is only the begin-
ning. An easy calculation will tell us how soon
we shall be deprived of all acquaintances who
number an unmarried male member among their
family ; perhaps " — the edge of her weapon grow-
ing keener, and fancy taking a bitter flight —
"perhaps, indeed, the limitation to a«-married
male members is superfluous ! "
Was it a happy moment for the object of
this philippic to appear in person to answer it ?
Happy or unhappy, there she was. Scarcely had
the climax of her forebodings as to the ultimate
result of her hospitality passed Camilla's lips
when Bonnybell stood before her. But what a
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 267
Bonnybell ! What a blurred, dimmed, dishevelled,
altogether lamentable Bonnybell ! A drowned toy
terrier is the only image that for wretchedness,
smallness, dilapidation, and pathos, could at all
convey the idea of the figure that now presented
itself to its protectors.
" I do not want any luncheon," the dim ghost
said in a voice that matched its face, " and I
know that you do not approve of people eating
things in their rooms ; but thank you so much,
all the same, for thinking of it ! Oh, if I once
begin to thank you, when shall I stop ? " She
ended with a low wail.
" Don't be hysterical," replied Camilla, hastily.
" Edward, go and fetch her a glass of port wine and
a biscuit. The servants must not see her. There,
lie down and go to sleep. What is the use of
crying yourself into a jelly just because for once
in your life you have behaved properly ? "
Edward departed on his errand with the
greatest alacrity, glad to escape from the horrible
yearning of angry pity that the sight of Bonnybell
in her distorted misery inspired him with, and
from the grating severity of his wife's voice. Yet
he took with him a feeling more subtly unpleasant
than those from which he fled — the suspicion,
namely, that the very abandonment of Miss Ran-
some's woe was in itself partly a pose. " She
might have washed her face and combed her hair,"
he said to himself wrathfuUy ; but the wrath, if
not quite the suspicion, died down, swallowed in
an immense pity as her trembling hand took the
oflfered glass from his, and her sunk and diminished
268 A WAIFS PROGRESS
eyes lifted themselves in mute gratitude. " Poor
little soul ! It can be no parti pris that has
dwindled her to half her size ; and even if she has
tried to make a bid for the compassion of the only
friends left to her in the world by intentional
accentuation of a forlornness real enough in all
conscience without accenting, isn't she even for
that poor deceit the more an object of the pro-
foundest, most lenient sympathy ? "
By this time Love's victim had been ordered
to a sofa ; and Camilla's knuckly hands were
arranging a crocheted shawl of their own manufac-
ture over the little shivering body with an air of
protest that was yet not ungentle.
"You may go now," she said, addressing her
husband brusquely in a key that, though also
protesting, yet seemed to convey the impression
that her unwonted occupation was not altogether
disagreeable to her ; " there is nothing to make
a fuss about. She will have quite recovered from
this silly lapse from self-control by teatime."
This, as it turned out, was a slight over-state-
ment of Miss Ransome's powers of recuperation,
and when Edward forced himself to reappear at
five o'clock, mastering a strong spasm of aesthetic
dread at the expected sight of the miserable
little object that he had carried on the retina of
his eyes throughout his ride, he found, to his
relief, that she had asked leave to retire to
bed.
" Would it be wise to send for the doctor ? "
Edward asked rather futilely, and received the
withering response he deserved.
A WAIFS PROGRESS 269
" The doctor ? Why, Hutton would laugh
in my face. She is simply sharing the necessity,
common to us all, of enduring the consequences
of her own actions. If she will lash up men by
illicit means into the state to which she has reduced
this headstrong and rather brainless young man,
she must not complain of the result. One can
only hope that it will be a lesson to her not to
repeat the achievement. From what 1 can gather,
I do not think that she had a very agreeable
forenoon."
The marks of the forenoon alluded to were
still plainly visible on Miss Ransome's face when,
punctual to the moment, she placed herself next
morning at the breakfast-table. Her eyes were
stiU reduced to half their size, and the reds still
absent from her cheek. She had regarded her
own countenance in the glass before coming down
to breakfast, with an artist's regret at the prohibi-
tion laid on her by prudence to throw in the little
repairs and improvements which might have been
easily effected in the mirror before her. " I
begin to be afraid," she said to herself, thought-
fully, " that I shall 'go off' sooner than 1 expected.
I depend very much upon colour, but it would
be madness to touch up. I must try and keep
pale, without whitening, for at least a week. I
wonder when my spirits may begin to improve
after such a blow ? "
She chuckled a little, but not very heartily.
"It has shaken me a good deal, all the same.
Poor devil, I wonder how he is feeling this
270 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
morning ! I would give a good deal — a safe offer,
as I do not possess a sixpence — that I had let him
alone. But how is one to tell ? He looked so
stodgy."
With a sigh of real regret for the accomplished
mischief, she went downstairs with the spring-
less step that her really shaken nerves and the
maintenance of her supposed condition of spirits
dictated. A fresh blow awaited her.
" I am afraid that you are not yet at the end
of your difficulties," Camilla said, and the rigidity
of her tone revealed that some unpleasant new
development of the situation had shown itself.
Miss Ransome gave a gasp. She had come
down thinking that a little chastened demon-
strativeness towards her benefactress might not,
under the circumstances, come amiss, but Camilla's
tone froze the little rill of gush at its source.
" He has not come back ? " The words
would scarcely form themselves for the terror
behind them.
The question was ignored, and Camilla, faith-
ful to her principle of never blinking, veiling,
or delaying the conveyance of bad news to its
lawful owner, explained her announcement of yet
unaccomplished calamity.
" Mrs. Aylmer has written to announce that
she and her eldest daughter propose to be here
at eleven o'clock this morning, for the purpose
of begging you to reconsider your decision."
The carefully matter-of-fact key in which this
fact was delivered did not disguise from Bonny-
bell the profound annoyance underlying it. Her
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 271
own stupefaction at it was so great as to restore
her wholly to Nature.
" And is Miss Barnacre coming too ? " was all
that her white lips could stammer. A reassur-
ing snort from Camilla — the war-horse snorl
which the name of the too progressive governess
always evoked — reassured Bonnybell on this head,
and she was presently able to add, " He has made
them do it."
"So Mrs. Aylmer says," referring to a lettei
lying open before her, and relentlessly reading
aloud the sentence alluded to. " I cannot, cannol
lose my boy — my only boy 1 And the state he h
in gives us well-founded fears for his life or
reason."
A flash of wondering contempt for a life so
lightly forfeited and a reason so easily upsetj
darted across BonnybeU's brain ; but it is need-
less to say that no hint of such a feeling was to be
read on her tiny woe-wrung visage.
" Oh, how little worth enduring so much for
I am ! " she moaned.
" Very little indeed ; but truisms will not
help us."
"What is the use of their coming?" con-
tinued the young creature, still with that moaning
intonation, but gathering her wits about her, and
seasoning pathos with common sense. "What
is the use of my seeing them .'' Nothing is
changed. It cannot be that in so short a time
they have found out that they have wronged me
— that — that the accusation they were so ready
to bring against me was a false one ? "
272 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
A pang of real apprehension nipped Miss
Ransome at this supposed solution, but she was
quickly reassured.
" Nothing is changed," replied Mrs. Tancred,
solemnly. "Least of all the immutable, eternal
law, that we must abide the consequences of our
own actions. You have made your bed, and you
must lie on it. You had better be in the morning-
room by eleven to receive them."
There was no need for artificial face-whitening
now.
" You will be there too ? "
" Why should I .'' It is not I who have
brought discord and disunion among them."
A transient — very transient — gleam of amuse-
ment shot through Bonnybell's brain at the idea
of Camilla's charms working havoc in any happy
home, but it was gone, engulfed in gloom before
she had realized its presence.
" I know that 1 have no right to ask it," she
said, throwing all she knew of humility, deference,
and desperate beseechment into her voice, " but
the knowledge that you were near me — that you
thought I was in the right — it is so seldom that
you have been able to think me in the right
— would be the one thing that could enable me
to go through with it. I — I feel rather shaken,
after yesterday, and — and as if — I could not bear
much more."
There was a pause. Perhaps the appeal,
borne on its helpless low wail, went straight to
the ever-empty mother heart of Mrs. Tancred.
The girl before her was an ill-conducted little
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 273
adventuress, but if everything about her, except
that clinging attitude of prayer for help and
belief in her power to aid, had been different,
it would have been sweet to have called her
daughter.
CHAPTER XXV
The visitors, arriving ten minutes before their
appointed hour, were welcomed — though that is
scarcely the word to express the profoundly grave
and fully armed civility of Mrs. Tancred's
attitude — by Camilla alone.
" She will not see us ? "
The primal emotions had, in one respect,
acted upon Mrs. Aylmer in the same manner as
upon her son. Gentle and suave-mannered as
she usually was, to-day she had evidently for-
gotten, or at least brushed aside, all the conven-
tions. What place had they in the map of such a
calamity as hers ?
" Of course, she will see you," replied Mrs.
Tancred, with a dignified acquiescence in the
abolishing of all preliminaries, and ready, as usual,
to go direct to the heart of the matter ; " that
is to say, if, after what I have to tell you from
her, you still think it advisable."
" What have you to tell us ? " — coming a pace
or two nearer, as if to snatch the answer more
quickly — " that she is ready to renew her engage-
ment ? Oh, it must be that."
274
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 27
"She is «o/ ready to renew it," replied Camilla
coldly ; " why should she be ? "
For a moment the other was too knocked ou
of time by this answer to do anything more pur
poseful than give a sort of stagger, and the com
batants looked at each other in silence, Camill;
noting, with a rather grudging, yet not shallov
compassion, how dreadfully ill and aged he:
friend looked. She and her daughter were botl
dressed in black, as Volumnia and Virgilia had beei
on their mission, and though Mrs. Aylmer wa:
as litde like Volumnia as Bonnybell was lik(
Coriolanus, the motive of their dusky habit wa:
the same.
" I am sure that you would be the last persor
to encourage her in such a revengeful spirit,'
Catherine said presently, speaking for the firsi
time, and with a good deal less of heartbreali
and a good deal more of resentment in her voict
than had found place in her mother's. "Ol
course, we had never wished to be connected with
her. How could we ? And when this hideous
accusation came, we naturally waited for an ex-
planation of it, but she would give none. She
simply walked out of the house."
" And in my judgment it was the only course
of action open to a decent woman after such an
insult," replied Camilla, incisively. Mrs. Tancred
had never been very fond of Miss Aylmer, but
her conscience, alarmed now at the pleasure she
was aware of deriving from snubbing her, drove
her into an admission of the justice of a part,
at least, of Catherine's contention. " I perfectly
276 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
agree with you in your unwillingness to be
connected with Miss Ransome, and congratulate
you sincerely on having escaped so very real a
peril."
*' But we have not escaped it ; we do not
want to escape it ! You must not call it a
peril," cried Mrs. Aylmer, incoherently, dis-
tracted at the injury which was evidently being
done to the cause she had come prepared to
spend her heart's blood in pleading. " I dare
not go back without her. You have no concep-
tion of the state he is in. He has renounced us
all. He swears he will never see one of our faces
again. He has said things that I could not have
believed possible to me — his own mother. Oh,
if you had children of your own, you would
understand, but of course you cannot ; how
should you ? "
Mrs. Tancred met the half-unconscious cruelty
of this tearing open of one of the two lifelong
raws of her life with Lacedaemonian fortitude.
If she suffered she showed it only by a slight
addition to the cold kindness in the controlled
and measured words of her next speech.
" I am extremely sorry for his and your
sufferings ; even my naturally defective sympathy
tells me how acute they are. My concern is the
deeper as they have been inflicted by a member
of my household."
" Oh, we do not blame you for that ! " put in
Catherine, resuming the rok of spokeswoman
with something like eagerness. " We are not so
unjust. Of course, when you took her in you
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 277
had as little knowledge as we of what she really
was."
Camilla turned upon her apologist with a
frosty rebuke in her keen eyes.
" I have no wish to be exonerated from
blame for doing what I — mistakenly, perhaps —
conceived to be my duty. Nor, since you need no
longer lie under any apprehension of nearer con-
nection with her, can it concern you what Miss
Ransome really is or is not."
" Oh, Catherine, what a false impression you
are giving," broke in Mrs. Aylmer, with some-
thing of the distraught readiness of the real
mother in the Judgment of Solomon to say any-
thing or do anything that would save her son.
"It is no question of what she is or is not, and
we are sure that she is everything that is nice and
right, and we ought never to have taken any
notice of that abominable letter. It was against
my judgment that we did it."
" It seemed right to give her an opportunity
of clearing herself," replied Miss Aylmer, in a
crestfallen voice, and with a suspicion of nearing
tears ; " at least, so it seemed to a valuable outside
opinion."
"You are alluding to Miss Barnacre, I pre-
sume r
There was such a belligerent note in the
query that Mrs. Aylmer's alarm at the adverse way
in which her battle was going rose to panic.
" Send for Bonnybell ! " she cried, with hysteri-
cal imperativeness. " I must and will see her. If
she is not a fiend — if she has not the heart of a
278 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
stone, she cannot help relenting, when she sees to
what a state she has brought us all."
Thus it came about that two or three minutes
later Miss Ransome, who had been kept in readi-
ness by Camilla's order, to be produced if her
presence were insisted on, appeared on the scene.
As she stole in mouse - quiet, snowdrop - pale,
the recollection of the last occasion on which she
had been summoned to the same room to meet
the same two persons darted into her mind. She
saw herself frisking up to Mrs. Aylmer, confident of
an excellent reception ; and the scene of ignominy
and disgrace for her that had followed upon that
ludicrous accusation of having corrupted stupid
Meg's mind. She was in a better position now ;
arbiter of the destinies of a whole highly respect-
able family, she, Bonnybell, poor Claire's daughter !
A spasm of unforgivable laughter seemed likely for
a moment to choke her ; but the disagreeables of
a situation out of which it would take all her in-
genuity to wriggle herself conjured it.
" We have come to beg you to forgive us ! "
Mrs. Aylmer said, precipitating herself to meet
the object of her entreaties, and speaking with a
trembling eagerness of humility which in its
reversal of their natural attitude towards each
other gave even Bonnybell a shock.
Before entering the room she had been putting
to herself the humorous suggestion, " Shall I
make them walk round the room on their knees
to me, as poor Toby volunteered that they
should .? " That question now received a decided
negative. "It really would not give me any
A WAIFS PROGRESS 279
pleasure ! " The ravages it was impossible not to
verify on the smooth middle-aged fairness of her
would-be mother-in-law's face gave Miss Ransome
anew the measure of the mischief she had done.
" Poor creature ! she looks nearly as bad as Toby
did .! I am afraid that 1 have given her a couple
of crow's-feet that she will never get the better
of ! "
" We do not blame you for a moment ; it
was perfectly natural that you should do it, but
perhaps it was a little hasty to leave us all in a
minute, without a word."
This plea was poured forth with such painful
velocity that its utterer had to stop to draw breath,
and Bonnybell felt that she must speak. She
would far rather have stood silent in her impreg-
nable fortress of injured maiden weakness.
" I supposed that you could not wish to keep
such a — wicked girl^ — any longer under your
roof!"
There was not the slightest tinge of vindictive-
ness in her tone, as indeed she felt none ; the
desire to come with flying colours out of a tight
place, coupled with a very sincere if cool pity for
the victims before her, leaving no place for any
less amiable feeling in her mind.
" But we do not think you a wicked girl ; it
was all a misapprehension, and we quite see that
we ought never to have shown you that — that
disgraceful letter, or taken any notice of it. It was
contrary to my opinion that it was shown you.
No doubt the person whose idea it was, meant
well, and we have got into a way of depending
28o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
on her judgment ; but it will be a long time
before I can forgive her for the harm she has
done."
" She always means well," Catherine inter-
jected, casting a reproachful glance out of tear-
brimmed eyes at her mother for thus throwing
the family oracle to the wolves.
" I suppose that you are alluding to Miss
Barnacre," Bonnybell said mildly, and glad to
escape from the main issue into any side alley of
the subject, " but please do not blame her ; from
her point of view she was perfectly right."
"It is very generous of you to say so " — giving
a final push overboard to the family sage — " and
she will be as ready as we are to beg your pardon.
She shall do it as soon as we get home. I am
come to take you home with us."
There was a quivering asseveration in the
announcement of this intention that tried to
exclude all possibility of question from it, but
Bonnybell only gently shook her head.
" I dare not go back without you ! I dare not
face him ! I do not know what you have done
to him, but — oh no " — hurriedly correcting her
phrase, in fear of its giving oiFence, " I do not
mean that you have done anything ; but — the —
possibility of losing you — not that there is any
danger of it now that everything is explained —
has almost unhinged his reason."
Once again a very profound regret for the
completeness of her own handiwork occupied Miss
Ransome's mind, and for one second the idea of
yielding to the frantic entreaties of the poor mother
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 281
before her, who had got hold of her hands, and
was unconsciously but painfully grinding their
little knuckles together, presented itself. One
" yes " would end this odious scene — odious since
the humiliation of her humiliators gave her none
of the gratification she had faindy anticipated from
it ; and, after all, marriage with Toby would still be,
in a sense, the harbour of refuge she had once
thought it. But before she had taken any false
step, a head much stronger than her heart and a
poignant recollection of the horrors of yesterday
came to her rescue. The anchorage was not
nearly so good as she had believed, and how could
any union be endurable between two persons whose
views of matrimony differed so diametrically as
hers and Toby's } Hers a cool commercial
bargain, sweetened by camaraderie and lightened
by indifference ; his — a sick qualm passed over
her at the recollection, only twenty-four hours old,
of yesterday's agony of balked animalism ; and
the knowledge, relieved by no maiden ignorance,
that the detested experience was only the porch
to the mansion which Toby had prepared for her
to dwell in.
But the instant of hesitation gave the crushed
Catherine time and opportunity to throw in a
phrase of exaggerated humility.
" Would you mind telling us what else we
can do .'' "
Bonnybell gave a slight groan. In her nature
there was no vindictiveness, and the sight and sound
of the absolute abasement of her enemies before her
was for the moment undoubtedly disagreeable to
282 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
her ; though a reflex action of her mind suggested
that by-and-by she might find some matter for
complacency in it. But meanwhile she must find
something to say that would be noble and
magnanimous and, above all, final ; and, what is
more, not overdo it. " I must say something
very beautiful," she reflected, "and where on
earth am I to lay my hands upon it ? "
"What else can you say?" she ended by
sighing out, as if crushed under the weight of so
enormous a suggestion. " Oh, nothing, nothing !
You have said a great deal too much already ;
more — oh, how much more ! — than I am worth."
" This is waste of time," said Camilla,
striking in for the first time ; and something in
the sound of her harsh voice gave the sorely bested
heroine a sense of being backed up which nothing
in the unbiassed words justified. "These ladies
have asked you categorically two questions ; and
you must answer them in the same way. Will
you, or will you not, return with them to the
Dower House, and resume your engagement to
their son and brother ? "
" No, a thousand times no," replied Bonnybell,
dropping upon those pliant knees, on which in
any emergency she was ever ready to fall — " not
while I lie under this dreadful cloud. I would
far sooner die than bring a slur on his honoured
name !" (" Bad and stagey," was her own impartial
inward comment on this flight. " Oh, how thank-
ful I am that Edward did not hear it 1 He has
such good taste. How it would have disgusted
him ! ")
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 283
"That being the case," continued Camilla, in
an arid voice, whose matter-of-fact dryness did
not give the impression of having been much
affected by Bonnybell's magnanimous outburst,
and thereby confirmed its author's own ill opinion
of her achievement — " such being the case, there
is no use in prolonging this painful scene. You
had better leave the room ; that is to say, if you
are quite sure that your answer is final."
" But it cannot be final ! " cried Mrs. Aylmer,
with almost a shriek, losing all self-control, and
pouring out her words in a boiling strain of in-
coherent violence. " I will not hear of its being
final ! You cannot have understood what I was
saying. I must have expressed myself ill. I teU
you that I dare not go back without you. You
do not realize what a state you have brought him
to. I could not have believed it myself if I had
not seen it with my own eyes. If I do not bring
you back he will blow his brains out ! Do you
understand that ? Oh, what am I saying ? I am
only setting you more against me. But just
think what a case I am in ! Only one son, and
he hating and cursing me ! You will have a son
yourself some day " — Bonnybell gave an imper-
ceptible shudder ; maternity played but a small
and unhandsome part in her life's programme —
" and some one will rob you of him, and then
you will feel as I do towards you ! "
She broke off, suffocated, and flinging the
girl's hands from her with a gesture of despair
and rage.
" 1 must go into hysterics," BonnybeU said
2 84 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
to herself, " there is nothing else for it, and I do
feel very miserable and upset. I had better make
as much noise as I can. I shall be the sooner
sent out of the room." She was as good as
her word.
CHAPTER XXVI
In the height of a simoom it seems incredible
that the face of Nature should ever recover
from its distortion and resume its smiles and
dimples, yet a few hours effect this marvellous
restoration. In the case of the Stillington simoom
it took less than a week to remove the more
obvious signs of the devastation it had caused
in its destructive passage. In less than a week
the Aylmers had not only ceased to be the only
subject of conversation, but by tacit consent had
been banished from it as too painful a topic for
even incidental allusion. In less than a week the
distracted Toby, having thought better of — if, in-
deed, he had ever really entertained the idea of
— self-slaughter, had actually set off on that globe-
circling voyage which his cruel fair one had
prescribed to him, and the rest of the Aylmer
family were in mid-process of indignantly bund-
ling out of the Dower House, to await inconve-
niently on the shores of the Riviera the completion
of their rebuilding house.
"They are punishing themselves more than
me," was Mrs. Tancred's sole comment upon the
285
286 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
announcement that her quondam friends could
no longer bear to lie under the obligation of a
roof- tree to her. But Edward, conscious of
the strong hold of habit upon his wife's mind,
conscious also of her small power of making new
friends, and of the tenacity with which she clung
to ancient ties, recognized with pitying sorrow the
cut which so painful and abrupt a severance of an
old and pleasant relation gave her.
Only one sentence from that final interview's
stormy end which Miss Ransome's well planned
and timed hysterics had saved her from witness-
ing ever leaked out to the curious little public
around. It had been addressed by Catherine
Aylmer to Camilla, and must have been repeated
in a species of triumph at its point and fitness,
and have filtered through who knows what
channel of confidential Barnacre or eavesdropping
servants back to the ears of Bonnybell.
"We can only hope that you will not have
personal cause to regret your championship ! "
"What a cat ! " was Miss Ransome's inward
comment upon this innuendo. " I am glad that
she does not know how little difficulty 1 have in
keeping dear Edward at arm's length. But it
is a word to the wise. I must be additionally
careful."
By Christmas everything at Stillington was to
all appearances as it had been. Life ran in its
accustomed grooves, and not even the yearly
hospitalities, largely understood by and still more
largely carried out by Mrs. Tancred, as regarded
the surrounding poor, were allowed to interfere
with the resolutely resumed and ruthlessly ad-
hered-to education of Bonnybell. Her eager
offers to help in the dispensing of her hostess's
gifts, and arranging of her entertainments, were
received with a curt and modified acquiescence.
But a cautiously slidden out suggestion that a
reprieve from study would help her to throw
herself with more heart and soul into the work of
benevolence met with a decided negative. To it
was due the one sigh of regret ever breathed by
Miss Ransome for her broken engagement. " If
I had married Toby, I need never again have
opened a book ! It would have been impossible
to know less than he did, and bad taste to know
more."
But, despite the considerable drawback of
having to waste so much time on the improve-
ment of her mind, the spirits of Miss Ransome
rose, on the removal of the incubus laid upon
them, to a height that often gave her grave un-
easiness as to how to bridle and conceal them —
spirits whose ebullition had to be worked off in
low singings and childish skippings about her own
room, before they could be tamed to the chastened
sorrowfulness and veiled heartbreak which be-
seemed their supposed condition. Even with
the nicest care a spurt of young joyousness would
go nigh to betray her, but, happily, in each case
Edward had been the sole witness, and Miss Ran-
some had never felt quite sure that Edward had
found the evidences of her affliction personally con-
vincing. How soon might she begin to be cheerful
again .? Earnestly she wished that she had some
288 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
one to consult on that head ; and sometimes the
grotesque notion of taking Edward's opinion
darted across her mind ; the hypothetical idea
of what would happen supposing she were to
put to him the question how soon — in case he
were bereaved of Camilla — he would think it
seemly to dress his countenance again in smiles ?
But, after all, it would not be a parallel case, since
Edward never suiFered from high spirits, and the
experiment would probably blow the hospitable
floor that carried her from under her feet. And,
meanwhile, her inconvenient gaiety stood the shock
not only of the rigorously pursued cultivation of
her intelligence — for, after all, it was astonishing
how little one need learn if one put one's mind to
it — but the information conveyed to her, without
any explanation of its reason, that the family's
yearly habit of migrating to London after Christmas
was this year to be intermitted.
There was, therefore, nothing visibly ahead of
her but the monotonous life she was at present
pursuing. Of course, it was assommant as to dull-
ness ; and the only wonder was that she felt its
oppression so little. She supposed that she must
be kept up by the little fillip of Edward's daily
return ; and the — as daily — effort to present her-
self convincingly to his mind as a very nice and
thoroughly truthful young girl ! The enduring
doubt as to what progress — if any — she made in
this praiseworthy task kept her zest for it keen.
As for Edward, if his estimate of his guest
still held any elements of uncertainty, it was not
for want of thought upon the subject. How
could he help thinking of her ? Was not she
the one scarlet thing that stood out saliently from
the iron-grey background of his life ? How could
he help, when on his daily downward journey
from Paddington his evening paper was finished,
and even whilst "Telegrams " and "Stop Press "
were writing themselves on his retina — how could
he help the ever-repeated question asking itself,
" Has she got into any fresh mischief to-day ?
If she has, how can I hinder her telling me lies
about it ? Has she any more glimmer of a sense
of the existence of such things as truth and
honour than when she came to us ? "
For the first week or two after the angry
flitting of the Aylmer family had been accom-
plished, Mr. Tancred had anxiously watched his
wife, partly in an intensifying of the compassion
he always felt for her, partly in a fear that the
irritation of nerves caused by the break with the
inmates of the Dower House might wreak itself
upon Bonnybell, instead of — as he devoutly hoped
it might. In pursuance of a habit of fifteen years —
upon himself. But he found with relief that his
fears on this head were groundless. Camilla, it
is true, continued to snub her pupil with un-
stinted liberality, and ruthlessly pruned away the
little fripperies with which Miss Ransome tried
cautiously to qualify the morose black of her
mourning garb ; but a smile forced its way
oftener than she was aware into her hard eyes
when the girl entered the room ; and she never
failed — whatever her effort to the contrary — to
break into that laugh of hers, so rare, hitherto,
290 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
as to be almost terrifying, over Bonnybell's
games and idiocies with Jock.
But to do Miss Ransome justice, her worst
enemy could not deny that at this period of her
history she was a very agreeable inmate. The
extreme unpleasantness of her late experience, the
fright It had caused her, and the entire absence
of an opportunity for a temptation to new errors,
combined to make her " conduct as the noon-
day clear." It is not the highest qualities which
make men or women facile h vivre ! The tender
conscience, the high ideal, the strong affections,
when brought into friction with the wrongnesses,
the basenesses, the coldnesses of everyday life,
produce rubs to the temper which are avoided by
the cool heart, which does not care enough for
anything to ache ; the pliant temper, which gives
In because nothing matters much ; the absence
of aspiration, which acquiesces pleasantly In the
actual.
Bonnybell was, as her housemates more and
more realized, a shining instance of the value
of small virtues In daily intercourse. She was
immovably good-tempered, Invariably civil, always
on the look-out for opportunities for paying little
attentions, light-hearted even beneath the pressure
of the severe affliction under which she was at
present labouring, yet subdued In her mirth as
in her graceful movements. Even her efforts to
avoid her studies were made with the most
shrinking delicacy, and their frustration met
with the quickest, sweetest acquiescence ; and
lastly, her skill in applying antiseptic to Jock's
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 291
wounds when the latter's lifelong feud with the
second coachman's yellow Irish terrier culminated
in a battle, which, like Waterloo, " with Cannae's
carnage vied," was beyond praise. Now and again,
indeed, but more and more rarely in Camilla's
presence, some all too intimate trait relating to
the habits and haunts of a class never to be
recognized as existing by Mrs. Tancred's school —
some startling theory, fact, or opinion, concerning
population or the relations of the sexes, would
slip out. But these were but tiny blemishes
upon the else spotless white of her life and
conversation.
So January passed, questionably enlivened by
a few stiff shooting-parties, during which the
modestly proffered attentions of Miss Ransome
to the least attractive among the guests were
patent to all eyes, and reaped an immediate
harvest of approbation ; while her one or two
unlucky lapses from jeune-fille-ism in conversation
did not transpire till long afterwards.
January was drawing to its close, when to
the uneventful household at Stillington the post
brought one morning a piece of news which was
received and commented upon according to their
different characters by the three persons who
learnt it. The news in question was communi-
cated by Mrs. Glanville, and announced the fact
that, by the perfectly unexpected accidental death
of the head of his family, an unmarried cousin
less than half his age, her husband had come into
possession of a barony and a rent roll of thirty
thousand a year.
292 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"What a nuisance for the poor chap ! " was
Edward's heartfelt exclamation.
Camilla said, dryly, that she hoped the com-
mand of so much money — since, of course, given
the weakness of Tom's character, the whole dis-
position of it would lie with her — might not lead
Felicity into chimerical schemes, like her Guild
of St. Swithin, the members of which were to
devote half of every wet day to intercession for
their erring sisters in society.
Bonnybell's contribution, though made half
under her breath, was unfortunately audible —
" They really ought to try to manage to set
up an heir now ! "
She was a little off her guard, suddenly
dazzled by the brilliant accession of consequence
and fortune that had come to her former — nay,
as she had reason to know — her present admirer,
and wondering whether or not she had been wise
in so firmly, though sweetly and sadly, refusing
the surreptitious correspondence that poor silly
old Tom had pressed upon her. Her ruminations
were broken in upon by a short —
" You have a happy knack of giving an
indelicate turn to what you say," Camilla said
severely ; " and if you have no more valuable
contribution to the subject to make, I think you
would do well to be silent."
Bonnybell bowed her head, and one shining
tear dropped in her lap. It was due less to the
rebuke than to an inward reflection of what
luck some people had, and how it was thrown
away upon them. Even better than Felicity she
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 293
could have turned old Tom round her finger ;
but to what a different tune would she have set
his gyrations !
The subject was not afterwards much discussed
in the little circle, nor did it at first appear to
have much bearing on the three lives of which
that restricted circle was composed.
A wily hint from Miss Ransome as to the
propriety of her paying a visit of congratulation
to the late Mrs. Glanville, now Lady Bletchley,
in acknowledgment of former hospitalities, was
not taken up. It might so easily have been
combined with one of those trips to London
which since Christmas had been of bi-weekly
occurrence. They were undertaken under the
strict surveillance of Camilla's maid, and had for
object the receiving of lessons from masters, in
addition to the private teaching at home. As
pleasures they were, in Bonnybell's opinion, better
than nothing, but what a mockery in comparison
of what they might have been !
Generally Edward returned by the same train,
but as he invariably travelled in a smoking-carriage,
and drove himself home in a dog-cart, her oppor-
tunities for those tete-a-tete talks with him, for
which her zest was daily growing, were confined
to a very few minutes' pacing of the Paddington
platform together. There was the Sunday walk,
indeed, which had become a habit, and to which
she looked forward with an eagerness which she
was obliged generally to explain away to herself.
" There is not really the slightest risk ; he has
himself well in hand ; and as for me, the only
294 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
reason why I am fond of him is that he is not
like a man — at least, not like the bestial men I
have known,"
Their course was almost always about the
park, and through the whims and variations of
an English winter Bonnybell, had her senses ever
been much open to the sweet surprises of Nature,
might have learnt how much beauty even January
holds in her hard lap ; what wild fantasies of
ice-flowers on oak and beech, when sudden frost
had surprised their wet boughs ; what pensive
dignity of mist-enfolded coppice and spinney !
She was generally much too busy talking to be
aware of any difference in the effects presented to
her eyes. One is happily not expected to admire
in winter, and so as the north wind did not
succeed in piercing the astrachan fur under her
chin, nor the crisp grass wet too much the thick
boots which Camilla compelled her to wear, she
asked no more of the outside world of Stillington.
At first Edward had tried to open her per-
ceptions to the phenomena around her, attributing
her obtuseness to the defectiveness of her training ;
since the eye, strangely enough, has to be told
what to see, and the ear what to hear, quite as
much as the brain what to admit and assimilate.
But a short time sufficed to show him the use-
lessness of the attempt. Miss Ransome was, and
was likely to remain. Nature-deaf and Nature-
blind ! There was something even pathetic, or
so it seemed to her companion, in her efforts
to do what was expected of her in the way of
appreciation ; and though among what seemed to
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 295
her the shivery drearinesses of the winter snow it
was difficult to guess what one was expected to
admire, yet her quick tact prevented her from
falling into any very gross error. She even,
during a spell of hard weather, got up quite a
successful show of interest in tracking on the
snow the footsteps of some little animal which
puzzled Edward ; and though her suggestion
that perhaps it was a hup garou did not help
him much, none the less was he grateful for
the good fellowship shown by her aid in the
investigation.
At first, by a tacit united agreement, they had
avoided the Dower House, but one day, because
it lay in the direction preferred by Jock, they
found themselves half-accidentally in its neigh-
bourhood. It was on one of the two showery
Sundays that they found themselves looking up
at its gables and dormer-windows from the closed
gates. The dead eyeless look of a house whence
the dwellers have departed was accentuated by
the cold layer of white that hid the beauty of
the old grey slates of its high-pitched roof, and
by the many humps that indicated the whereabouts
of its garden-beds. A small but piercing air
blew in their faces, chill as the liking of the
self-ejected friends, that had been wont to give
so warm a welcome to one of the two persons
who peered silently through the iron-work of
the fine old gates.
"Let us come away," Bonnybell said softly.
" This must make you feel bad."
" And you ? "
296 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
He turned and looked full at her, which he
did not often do, and she felt or imagined a
glint of irony in his eye. It was not a happy
moment, perhaps, for the bringing up of the fable
of her affliction. The snow had had the ex-
hilarating effect it mostly has upon dogs, and had
made Jock forget his years, and sent him plung-
ing through little drifts and scattering the frozen
powder flying about his rejuvenated heels.
Bonnybell had no years to speak of to for-
get, and she had plunged and frolicked too ;
and now stood betrayingly rosy and radiant, sur-
veying the casket of her lost treasure. Something
in the tone as well as the eyes of her companion
in putting his apparently sympathetic question,
sobered her at once.
" You think that I ought not to be so cheer-
ful ? " she asked in a troubled tone.
" I am very glad that you should be."
The answer was not quite up to Edward's
usual standard of amiability ; nor could Bonnybell
divine that it was irritation with himself at the
discovery of how litde he really missed the
Catherine of past Sundays that gave a touch of
ill-nature to his response. She took the faint
snub, as she always took all snubs, in unresenting
silence ; but when they had turned away from the
house, and were walking homewards, she meekly
took up her own defence.
" Do not you think that one is right, for the
sake of the people one lives with, not to show too
plainly when one is unhappy ? "
" Undoubtedly."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 297
" And perhaps, in a way, it is not as great a
blow to me as it might have been to some one
else, because I have no temperament." She made
this singular confidence quite glibly and without
any consciousness of its being unusual. But,
used as he now was to her, it startled Edward
so much that she was able to add thoughtfully,
" Toby has a good deal."
The shyness resulting from the reception of
this obliging revelation was on Mr. Tancred's
side, and it kept him dumb.
" The kind of love I should like to inspire,"
continued Miss Ransome, forgetting to kick the
snow as she had been doing with childish pleasure,
" is the nice quiet sort that would look after me,
and keep disagreeable things and people away from
me, and never expect anything beyond ; but " —
with pensive regret, yet not the slightest hesitation
— " that is just the kind I never get ; what I am
offered is always the other — the horrid sort."
The winter dusk, though nearly due, was,
owing to the snow-shine, a little deferred ; and
it would have been impossible for any one looking
at him not to see that Mr. Tancred was growing
very much out of countenance. He wished he
could stop her, but nothing came to him in time
to arrest the still more embarrassing revelation that
followed.
" I am going to tell you something that will
make you laugh," she said in a tone of frank
and gently mirthful confidence. " Do you know
that when first I knew you, I thought that, of
course, you would be like all the rest ! I was
298 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
afraid to he left alone in the room with you I " She
ended with a glance at him of expectant enjoy-
ment of his enjoyment of the joke.
Exhilaration was not quite the leading char-
acteristic of his half-strangled answer.
" May I ask how soon you were undeceived.''"
CHAPTER XXVII
There was nothing unusual in Camilla's spending
a day of unexplained occupation in London. It
therefore excited no surprise when, on a certain
Saturday at the end of the first week in February,
she departed on one of her silent excursions. It
could not have had for object shopping, an occu-
pation for which Mrs. Tancred cherished a dislike
as vigorous as were most of her feelings and
opinions. If her companions gave a thought to
the subject, it was to decide that her errand must
be one of the many noiseless good deeds which
she hid as if they were crimes. The trumpet
blown before actions, so inspiriting a sound in
Felicity's ears, was harshest discord in her sister-
in-law's.
Camilla returned by dinner-time, but did not
during or after that repast give any of the slight
indications which sometimes escaped her as to the
where or the what of the day's work. She was
rather, though not very noticeably, more silent
than usual. Not till after luncheon on Sunday
did any perceptible change in her habits appear.
To Edward, dreamily pufiing in the smoking-
room, where Bonnybell, despite all her delicate
299
300 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
hints, had never been invited to join him, his wife
appeared. It was the hour when she was wont to
retire to her rehgious exercises ; and the inexor-
able rigidity with which, in the face of any and
every obstacle, she adhered to the rule caused
a look of surprise to dawn on her husband's face
as he took his cigarette out of his mouth, and
rose courteously, as he always did, to receive her.
" You are surprised, and I dare say not par-
ticularly pleased to see me ? " she said, with her
usual crude directness.
" Why that fleer ? " he asked kindly and play-
fully.
" Why indeed ? " she answered. " It is not
the spirit in which I wish to enter upon a subject
that has grave bearings on both our lives."
Her tone made him a little uneasy, though
not so much so as if she had been any one else,
since he knew her habit of viewing all life — even
its slightnesses — from a serious standpoint.
" Whatever it is, let us at least face it under as
comfortable conditions as we can," he answered
with a resigned smile, wheeling the austerest
of his armchairs, and the one therefore best suited
to her liking, nearer the fire for her.
He was surprised at not receiving a rebuke
for the luxuriousness and self-indulgence of the
sentiment, but she only assented mildly —
" Yes, if you do not mind, I will sit down, as
what I have to say must take a certain amount of
time."
There was a pause. Camilla had laid aside her
spectacles — a sign of good augury in her husband's
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 301
experience for her amiability ; and now sat with
her gaze abstractedly fixed on the old sporting and
coaching coloured prints, which the eyes of her
ugly solemn childhood had contemplated. He
waited with an air of patient deference. Once,
long ago, an ill-natured remark had reached his
ears to the effect that his manner to his wife was
charmingly filial, and though the jeer had cut
him to the quick, he had made no consequent
change in it.
In a few minutes Camilla had apparently col-
lected and marshalled her ideas, and began to
speak. The opening took him by surprise.
" I do not think that I have ever been open
to the charge of being a malade imaginaire."
There was a startled touch in his answer.
" I think you have often been a bien portante
imaginaire, and overworked yourself grossly in
consequence."
" I have not felt in quite my usual health for
the last three months. At first I attached no
importance to the fact, recognizing that at fifty-one
cannot expect to have the vigour of twenty-five."
The appearance in conversation of the grand
climacteric was always, as they both knew, a bug-
bear to Edward ; but for once he recognized that
there was no intention of galling him in its intro-
duction. " But of late " — she paused, as if to
choose the words best fitted for a weighty com-
munication ; then went on steadily — " I have had
reason to suspect that something further must be
wrong with me than the failure of power attendant
upon the approach of age."
302 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
At another moment he would have reproached
ler with a phrasing that might have better befitted
[ler had twenty more years been added to the
detestable fifty, which were always being thrown
n his teeth, but now a painful suspense as to
ivhat was coming kept him dumb.
" Such being the case, I thought it wise to
:onsult a specialist upon cases such as I concluded
nine to be. I therefore made an appointment
mth Dr. , which I went up to London
p-esterday to keep."
"And never told me a word about it ! " he
3roke in, with an almost angry upbraiding in his
tone.
" Why should I ? " she answered, looking at
him with a stoical kindness. " Have you the
Dower of life and death in your hands ? I knew "
— an expression of resolute pride settling on and
dignifying her rugged face — " that whatever he
:old me, I should be well able to bear it"
« What did he tell you ? "
The question shot out with an abruptness
nost unlike Edward's doubtful and suggestive
methods, but the tidings sprung upon him had
taken him by the throat.
" He could give no decided opinion ; there
Bras mischief undoubtedly — yes, but whether
malignant or benignant" (a scornful accent on the
last word) — "you know the patter of medical
phraseology ! — it was impossible, at the present
stage of the disease, to decide. I am to visit him
1 second time at the end of two months, when he
may perhaps be better able to judge, though even
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 303
hen my fate may be still uncertain. The malady
aay successfully attack life, it may be compara-
ively harmless ; it may be arrested, it may not ;
ts progress may be slow, may be fast. There,
'■ou know as much as I do 1"
Looking in his face, she could not think
hat it was indifference which kept him still mute
,t the end of her cool and lucid statement.
"I have never been much afraid to die,"
Camilla went on presently, in a voice absolutely
lestitute of all excitement, but with a sort of
everence in it. " Death or life ! If I do not
leceive myself, I am ready to face the one, I
,m willing to face the other." (Across the re-
norseful smart in the husband's heart there
lashed the painful doubt as to which alternative
he willingness applied to.) " The point of the
rial lies to me in the uncertainty. I have always
)een too fond of certainties ; that is, doubtless " —
vith an acquiescent awe in her tone — "why this
)articular form of ordeal has been sent me."
Edward had never been much a master of
v^ords, and out of the tumult of ruefial pain and
lazing surprise which now filled his heart and
irain, none came to his aid. He could only
atch the lean hand nearest him as it hung over
he arm of its owner's chair and press the old-
ashioned rings into the spare flesh in an access
if remorseful sympathy.
She let her fingers lie in his clasp for a
loment, then quickly withdrew them.
"You must not misunderstand me — must
lot jump to the conclusion that there is any
504 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
:ertainty to go upon ; there are not yet sufficient
lata to build upon either way."
There was none of the too-frequent irony and
sarcasm in her tone, and yet he realized with a
lorrible pang that she was warning him not
:o be too hopeful of — not to count too con-
idently upon — a speedy release.
"You have been suffering pain and misery
ill this time, and I have never guessed it !
Zould brutish stupidity go further ? " he ejacu-
ated, finding speech at last, though of a choked
iort.
"No," she answered, her rigid truthfulness
n revolt against the exaggeration of his self-
iccusation. "You have no cause to blame your-
self; there has been nothing noticeably different
n me. There need not be, as far as I can
gather " — she paused a moment — " for some little
while yet ; and T have suffered no pain to speak
Df. If pain comes, I am under no apprehension
af not being well able to endure it."
The steady confidence of Mrs. Tancred's tone
was not needed to assure one who had lived
beside her for fifteen years of her endowments in
the way of dogged endurance. But the certainty
that she would face the reality of death with the
same high courage as she had faced the mockery
af life did not go far to allay the stings and bites
af his remorse. While she had been quietly
bracing herself to meet the grip of a mortal
disease, he had been mooning unobservantly along
beside her, full of vapourish half-guilty dreams
and sickly discontents.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 305
Presently Camilla spoke again. " I do not
hink that I should have mentioned the subject
o you yet awhile — not until I had something
nore definite to tell, if" — a very slight pause
his time — " I had not made up ray mind, after
uU consideration given to the subject during
he hours of last night, that, in view of the
)ossibilities ahead of me — of us, it would be
.dvisable to make some changes — one change, at
east — in the arrangement of my — of our lives."
No sound broke the reverence of his listening
ilence, but he felt as if there were a ton's weight
m the top of his head.
" If this is the beginning of the end — if,
whether by inches or by some quicker action of
he malady, I am to die, I think it would be
)etter that Bonnybell should leave us."
Edward bent his head in acquiescence. He
lad not consciously suspected what his wife was
eading up to, yet when the climax came he
elt that he had known all along that it was
oming. A very sensible addition to the tumul-
uous wretchedness of his feelings lay in the fact
hat he could not disguise from himself that it
ame as a blow.
" I quite understand," he answered. " It is
)erfectly natural that if you have to lead an
nvalid life, you should not wish to have a
tranger living in your house."
" You quite misunderstand me," she retorted,
vith a good infusion of the wonted sharpness in
ler tone. " Bonnybell is no longer a stranger to
:ither you or me, and it is a farce to pretend that
X
io6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
he is ; and I have not the least intention of
eading an invalid life. I hope to do a good deal
)f work yet, to go on working, if possible, nearly
o the end."
He had heartily hailed the surliness of her
roice, as something normal and healthy, but he
eft her free from interruption to explain the idea
vhich he had failed to comprehend. It was a
ninute or two before she did so.
" I think," she said, the pettishness of eye
Lnd tone giving place to a deep solemnity, " that
f these are to be the final months of my life,
' ought to try and keep them as free as possible
"rom unnecessary temptations to irritability and
inger ; from profitless friction to a temper which
:hrough all these years I have failed — as you
tnow, to your cost — to bring under proper
;ontrol."
Courteous as he was by nature and training,
t did not occur to Edward to utter a polite
;ontradiction of a statement whose truth was so
gainfully well known to them both. He only
Tiade a slight gesture that might mean assent.
" My motive, as I have stated it, sounds
wholly selfish ; but it is not so " — her voice sank
slightly — "for you, too, it is better that she
should go."
At that he turned white. " Of what do you
suspect me ? "
" Of what do I suspect you ? " she repeated,
ooking at him with a remorseful kindness. " Of
lothing worse than of wishing to put a litde
;olour into the life I have made so grey for you."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 307
There was none of the satiric bitterness with
vhich she often alluded to the failure in the
natter of happiness of their joint life voyage,
)nly pitying pain ; and only pitying pain, in full
neasure, rang in the remonstrance of his reply.
"Do not you think that you have made it
jreyer by always taking for granted that it must
)e grey r
She assented almost gently. " It is possible,
iince the great initial mistake, I have gone from
)ne error of judgment to another, and I am not
ure" — with an accent of humiliation — "that
hough I did it for the best, though I thought I
aw the path of duty plain before me, that the
ast has not been the gravest of all,"
He did not ask her what that last and crown-
ng lapse from wisdom had been. He made
leither protest nor asseveration, and for a minute
>r two they sat gravely looking at the ashes in
he grate, as if they had been those of her long-
ieparted and his wasted youth. He had taken
ler hand again, and she suffered him to hold it
onger this time. But even while it lay in its
old dryness in his, even while his heart seemed
00 brimful of ruth, of horrified sorrow and
tunned surprise, to have room for any other
ienizens, there stole into it the insidious thought,
■ If Bonnybell is to be turned out, what will
lecome of her ? "
CHAPTER XXVIII
' The sun has gone in. He was shining quite
jrightly half an hour ago," Bonnybell said with a
slight but meaning glance at the clock, and an
iccent of very gentle reproach.
The time for setting out on the weekly
Sunday walk had been overpassed by forty
ninutes, and Miss Ransome was found, when at
ast joined by her tardy companion, fidgeting up
ind down the hall, with a look of upbraiding
Dunctuality. Invariably hitherto it had been she
that had kept him waiting, yet the strange thing
ivas that even now he offered her no apology.
He was too busy thinking what an unconscious
iptitude there was in her words, " The sun has
Tone in."
Edward would have much preferred to have
intermitted the Sunday habit, which had grown
3o sweet, and which must shortly be abandoned
for ever. It seemed an impossible feat in
mental gymnastics to twist and wrench his
thoughts away from the horrible coil of shocked
pain and self-reproach which the last half-hour had
ivound round them, and turn them and his ears
to the litde trifling or doubtful topics on which
308
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 309
alone Bonnybeli's tongue frisked along with such
gay glibness. He had come into the hall with
the intention of asking her to let him off, of
framing some excuse which would give him free-
dom to face the tidings of a hideous probability
in the solitude which could alone steel him to
meet it. But when he saw the girl his intention
melted away. There was such obvious relief
and pleasure in her litde bright face, clearly
following upon annoyance and puzzled misgiving,
that he saw that his defection would cause her
real disappointment — a disappointment, too, for
which he could give her no reason.
It was always difficult to Edward to run
counter to any one's wishes ; and, after all, what
hurry was there for him to realize his wretched-
ness? He would, in Camilla's showing, have
weeks and months to do it in. Camilla — his
poor, valiant, smitten Camilla !
" You need not look so miserable about it,"
came a pretty little reassured voice in his ear ;
" it was only a passing cloud. He will be out
again by the time we reach the bridge, and the
days are so much longer now ; we need not hurry
home."
" Only a passing thud ! " Into how deep an
irony the aptitude of her former sentence had
turned !
They walked almost in silence till the copse
beyond the wooden bridge into the park was
reached. There they paused to mark the progress
made since last Sunday by the still small low
snowdrops beginning to pierce the rain-softened
3IO A WAIF'S PROGRESS
earth. Such advance in the knowledge and
appreciation of Nature had been made by Miss
Ransome that she had actually perceived them
without their being pointed out to her.
" How pretty they are ! " she cried with
perhaps rather more enthusiasm than the humble
blossoms really inspired in her. " I think their
French name is prettier still — perce-neige. They
always remind me of my old French nurse,
Babette ; she used to put them on her daughter's
grave in Mont Martre. The poor girl had been
unlucky, had a baby and died of it ; and Claire
bought her a grave en ■perpkuite. Claire was very
kind in those ways."
The effort to induce Miss Ransome to drop
the use of her mother's Christian name in
their tite-a-tetes had long been pusillanimously
abandoned by Edward, and he now listened with
a dull reflection how harmoniously immoral the
surroundings of poor Bonnybell's infancy and
childhood had been, not even her nurse's daughter
having been able to refrain from having an
illegitimate baby.
"I never could have believed that I could
have grown to love the country so dearly,"
pursued Bonnybell, inwardly wondering at the
unaccountably occupied air of Edward, and deter-
mining to be even more endearingly rural than
usual.
" And yet you would rather be in London,
wouldn't you ? "
It was the first question he had put to her
since their walk began, and she smiled inwardly
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 311
at its superfluousness. Of course she had rather
be In London. Who but a fool wouldn't ? London
or Paris ! Were there any other places where
a sane person who was not fifty, and had not a
young husband whom she wanted to keep an eye
upon, could wish to live ? The only fear was lest
her answer should let pierce through too much
of the internal radiance kindled by the suggestion.
"Are we going up, after all? Has Mrs..
Tancred changed her plans ? "
Edward's answer lagged. He had not meant
to tell his companion of the imminent change in
their lives, yet now he felt that he was going
to do so.
" Why should it be ' we ' .'' " he asked pre-
sently, with an exaggeration of his suggestive and
querying manner. " Would not it do as well if
you were going up .? "
Her face told him that it would not. Half
the light of glad expectation went out of it, and
he was guiltily aware of the first sensation of
pleasure that had touched him since Camilla's
communication.
" Are you only teasing me," she asked, with a
not artificial tremolo in her voice, "or do you
really mean that I am to be sent away, after all ?
I — I — hoped that I had not done anything fresh
lately."
Her fallen countenance, the trembling diffi-
dence of her accents, the cloud that, settling on
her face, contrasted with the sunbeam which had
shot through the leafless twigs to dance there,
made him heartily repent of the undertaking
312 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
on which he had embarked. Why could not he
have left it to Camilla ? Then a knife of self-
reproach turned in the fresh wound in his heart.
Had not he always left everything disagreeable to
Camilla ? Was not it time — the time of which
probably so little would be left to him — to take
some share of the burden he had for fifteen years
been shifting on to those enduring shoulders ?
" Done anything fresh ! " he repeated, trying to
give an accent of lightness to the repetition of her
fear. " Nothing beyond being more delightfully
kind and helpful and spoiling to us with every
week you have given us." (Miss Ransome's brow
did not clear. Edward was not in the habit of
complimenting her, and instinct told her that the
enumeration of her merits had something ominous
in it. He was leaning against a tree-trunk, and
she noticed that there was a false nonchalance in
the way in which he was stirring the dead leaves
with his stick, and that he did not look at her, as
he added a finishing clause to his civilities.) " But
we cannot be so selfish as to hope to keep you
always to ourselves ! "
It was such a bolt out of the blue, that no
wonder if a sort of darkness settled on Bonny-
bell's vision. " I am bound to go to the dogs if
they kick me out, as they are going to do," she
said to herself crudely, "and I shall have no
more Sunday walks," The collocation of two
future events of such unequal consequence had
something ludicrous in it, but for the moment
the misfortunes prophesied counted to her as
about equal.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 313
" It has been wonderfully good of you to put
up with me so long," she said after a pause ; and
even in this crisis of feeling she could not help
thinking how infinitely better the natural tremble
in her voice was than any of the many artificial
ones she had executed. Its success was, as she at
once felt, proportionate to its superiority. Edward
forgot himself just a little.
" Put up with," he repeated, in a key of low
emphasis — "put up with sunshine and wonderful
temper and tact ! Has it been so great a credit
to us to put up with these ? "
Her quick ear caught the plural pronoun, and
set her wondering whether Mr. Tancred was
joining his old wife with him only for the sake of
euphony ? or, if her opinion of the temper and
tact alluded to, and which she had put to the test
so very much more severely than he had ever
done, was as high as his, why this imminent
expulsion ?
His voice, recovered and recontrolled, broke
upon her anxious speculation.
" But because you have been infinitely good
and forbearing to a cranky old couple is no reason
why they should stand in your light ! "
She could not even compass another tremble
now, it would have broken into a sob, and it was
too soon, as the tact he had praised taught her, to
use that ultimate weapon. But something of the
blank cold wonder that was icing her heart sat in
her desolate orphan eyes as they looked in meek
expectancy of her doom at him who had taken
upon himself to pronounce it.
314 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" I am making a stupid bungle," he said,
averting his own eyes. If he did not fix them on
some other object, he should have to close them,
so unendurable to him was the sight of her little
darkened face, unalterably sweet in its expectation
of an imminent blow. " I am going on the sup-
position that you know what I am talking about,
which of course you cannot do. Camilla has not
yet had an opportunity of telling you, but this
morning she received an invitation for you which
she does not think it fair to you to refuse."
No assenting comment.
" Camilla heard this morning from my sister
Felicity, begging us to spare you to her. It
seems that you made yourself so helpful and
indispensable when you stayed with her last
autumn that she has missed you grievously ever
since. She wrote so urgendy — Felicity is one of
those people who always manage to get what they
want — that my wife did not think it right to
refuse her, more especially as she thought it
would be doing you a good turn — giving you
a pleasant change."
His voice died away into an indistinct
murmur. Every word uttered by him had been
strict truth — to offer Untruth to Bonnybell
would have been, as has been already observed,
sending coals to Newcasde. Yet in his .own ears
his statement sounded like a bad, bald lie.
Of its K«-veracity not the slightest doubt tra-
versed the girl's mind. "What a much better
story I could have made up," she said to herself,
with an artist's pity for a croilte. Across the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 315
unaffected quiver of her lips a slight sigh of relief
stole. " There's not a word of truth in it ! As
long as old Tom was alive, Felicity would never
have asked me to stay with her again ; but they
are somehow going to force her to take me."
Miss Ransome's philosophy here began to
return to her aid. " It is better than the streets,
anyhow, and five minutes ago I did not see any
other oudet. But I certainly am sorrier to leave
Edward than a wretched little adventuress like
me ought ever to let herself be about anything."
These reflections did not lend themselves to
utterance, and after all, as he had evidently made
no effort to run counter to Camilla's fiat for her
dismissal, it was as well to make him feel as un-
comfortable as an attitude of submissive but
heartbroken silence could render him. Bonny-
bell's heart was not of those that break, but there
was quite enough of true stuff in the mixed woof
of real and counterfeit which went to make up
her attitude of sacrificial lamb bound to the altar-
horns, to make it inimitably touching.
"The only wonder is that you should have
kept me so long," she murmured at last, with the
most submissive figurative kissing of the hand
that smote her, yet, in the turmoil of her spirits,
forgetting to feign any belief in the supposed
fiction of Felicity's summons. "You will laugh
at me, but I had begun to hope that I was be-
coming a little useful to Mrs. Tancred, that
she was growing to be just a very little fond
of me."
Her slight, desolate smile at the fatuity of
3i6 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
having hoped to reap a small crop of that affec-
tion which to most girls of her age was a banal
matter of course, reduced her hearer to a state of
wretchedness far deeper than her mild aspiration
after vengeance had wished.
" Laugh at you !" he said in a choked voice.
"Laugh at you for believing what falls so far
short of the real truth ! You have been like a
most kind and dear daughter to my wife — to us
both."
This last clause, with its evident eiFort to set
the rickety situation on four strong straight legs,
provoked so acute a mirth in Bonnybell's spirit,
sore as it was, that she had much ado to disguise
it. " The poor dear is so determined to be my
' papa,' and he looks and feels so unlike it ! "
she said to herself. She drew a long, patient
sigh.
" Thank you for saying so ! I am glad that
I am not being sent away in disgrace."
He caught up the phrase with an intonation
of acute distress.
" In disgrace ? How can you misunderstand
me so lamentably as to suggest such an idea ? "
Then, ruth and pity carrying him, like runaway
horses, quite beyond the limits of his self-imposed
commission, " Why, I cannot think how my wife
will get on without you."
At that a tiny smile stole to the drooped corners
of her sad mouth. " He has always suspected me
of telling lies, but my imagination has never run
to such a big one as his ! " Aloud she said, while
the least tinge of malice, which she was unable
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 317
to get rid of, coloured the plaintive innocence of
her speech —
" It is you, then, who have come to the end
of your patience ! you who, like Tom — Lord
Bletchley, I mean — have put down your foot ! "
At the pseudo-naivetd of this reproach Mr.
Tancred's pale face grew suddenly suiFused
with a hot flush, but he looked his interlocutor
full in the eyes as he answered with a steady
dryness —
" I do not think there is any analogy between
the cases."
The response showed her that he was as
perfectly aware as she herself of the reason of
her ejectment from the Glanville household ; and
also that he repudiated any kinship with Tom's
amorous weakness. The — in her experience —
unexampled severity of his tone, coupled with
the consciousness of having made a deplorably
false step, combined to overset her. " It is time
to begin to cry," she said to herself, yielding by
policy to what was a very real breakdown of self-
control, and at once the obedient tears welled into
and blurred the meek lustre of her eyes.
" It is hard that when we are going to part
so soon we should keep misunderstanding each
other ! " she murmured, with just enough and not
too much of a sob. " I never dreamed that you
would think that I could imply that there was
any likeness between such a person as poor Lord
Bletchley and — you ! "
The little subtle pause before the personal
pronoun somehow gave a sense of so enormous
31 8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
a superiority in the person to whom it referred
to his unlucky brother-in-law, that Edward felt
his temporary anger melting back into the
original mass of misery from which it had
sprung. How could she tell what a hornet's
sting her perhaps unintended insinuation had
gained from that news of Camilla's, of which she
could know nothing ? How could she tell that
her flippant shaft had struck a heart and con-
science already writhing with remorse ? In word
and deed Edward had been absolutely faithful
to his wife. But how about thought ? Despite
his Pharisaical attitude, was he in reality so very
much Tom's superior ?
" You have misunderstood me too," he said,
his voice resuming its courteous gentleness.
" No doubt through my fault — my muddled way
of explaining a plan which we thought would be
for your happiness — give you pleasure ! "
The plural pronoun dried her tears, which had
done their mollifying work, and were no longer
either needed or easy.
" I shall be very glad to see the Bletchleys
again," she said, with a resigned acquiescence ;
and unostentatiously passing a small fine hand-
kerchief over her eyes and cheeks. " It is very
good of them — oi anybody — to take me in."
The forlorn orphan note in her voice was the
one he could least bear. Already he was telling
himself that he had been too harsh to her, to this
friendless fragility, shortly to be driven so reluc-
tantly — despite her meek consent, there could be
no doubt about the reluctance — from his door.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 319
His door ! No, had it been his, she would never
have been driven from it !
Then the pendulum swung back again ; the
image of Camilla, with her future of probable
agony and lingering death, resumed its supre-
macy in his mind, and in shocked return to his
allegiance he spoke with a cool matter-of-fact
kindness.
" You will find only Felicity at first. Tom is
gone to Scotland for fishing. You know he is
always glad of an excuse to get out of London."
Had Mr. Tancred been able to see under the
large white lids that drooped over Miss Ran-
some's eyes, he would have noticed in those
eyes a glitter that would have surprised him.
" I thought so," was her inward comment.
" Old Felicity has her head too well screwed
on to ask me there when Tom is at home."
Aloud she said humbly —
" I must try to be a little useful to her."
Bonnybell's words carried a very delicately
sad implication that her efforts to make herself
acceptable in her present surroundings had been
so unsuccessful as to prevent any sanguine hope
of their flourishing better in another soil. Her
inward ruminations proceeded a step farther on
the path they had begun to tread. " Tom cannot
fish for ever ; and then ? " Yet it was not the
vista of future expulsions unfolding before her
mental eyes that made her say to herself, " He
must feel it too, though he tries to carry it off."
There was a silence, not the dull indoor
silence broken only by a buzzing house-fly or
320 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
a falling cinder, but the outdoor February silence
invaded by the beginning melodies of new-wedded
birds.
" I am afraid that I shall never now learn to
distinguish the notes of the birds from each other,
as you had promised to teach me to do," Bonny-
bell said presently, with an exquisite modulation
of chastened regret.
Her hearer had on other Sundays perfectly
taken the measure of her ornithological curiosity,
and was as aware as herself that it was got up
only to gratify his own tastes, and had less than
no existence out of his presence ; yet something
in the resigned yearning of her tone sent a look
into his eyes which presently emboldened her to
say —
" I must try not to think of these kind of
things, mustn't I .? " adding a little later, with a
tentative timidity, " I suppose you go to see Lady
Bletchley now and then ? "
But he had pulled himself together. " It is
not much use looking up Felicity. As you are
aware, female philanthropists are not often to be
found at their own firesides."
Her face fell, but presently regained a beam
of hope. (" Of course, if he has not been in the
habit of going to see her he could not begin now ;
she would smeU a rat at once.")
"Perhaps we may meet in the street acci-
dentally some day," Miss Ransome continued,
with an affecting air of forced cheerfulness, yet
feeling her way as she went along ; " or, after all
your kindness to me, it would be too dreadful to
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 321
think of never seeing you again ! I would try —
to meet — you anywhere — that was convenient
— to you — if you gave me notice in time."
He shook his head resolutely and quickly.
Never had he felt less mirthful ; yet a bitter
amusement crossed his mind at the thought of the
distance which the young creature before him had
traversed since the not distant date, when, accord-
ing to her own avowal, she had been afraid to be
left alone in the room with him 1
CHAPTER XXIX
The transfer had been efFected ; the shuttlecock
had returned to that one of the two batdedores
which had first propelled it.
" It seems as if you had never been away ! "
Lady Bletchley said, clasping Bonnybell to a heart
still draped in complimentary mourning for the
beneficent cousin who had turned her into a
peeress.
" Yes, doesn't it ? " answered the new arrival,
with a warmly responsive embrace.
It was not true. Half a lifetime's experience
seemed to yawn between the present moment and
the one during which she had questioned Felicity
as to Edward^ habits, and suggested Camilla's
rejuvenating herself with dye. But to assent to
whatever proposition her host and hostess might
choose to advance, more particularly in the earlier
hours and days of a stay, was one of the funda-
mental rules of Miss Ransome's code.
" It is very delightful to have you back ! "
— looking at the girl whose hand she still held
with eyes so kind and admiring that Bonnybell
made the comforting reflection, " I have evidently
not gone off ! " "I missed you dreadfully ! It
322
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 323
was very good of me to let them keep you all this
while — two whole months, isn't it ? "
Miss Ransome did not think it necessary to
point out the trifling twist from strict veracity
given to this sentence, but responded in meek
correction of the faultiness of her patroness's
memory.
"Three."
" To be sure ! Three, of course. How sweet
of you to remember the exact time that you have
been away from me ! And how did you leave
them ? "
" I did not see Mr. Tancred," replied Bonny-
bell, with a very slight lagging of the voice, which
tallied with an inward pang of resentment at
Edward's having shirked the farewell on which
she had counted as the bouquet of her fireworks,
by an earlier departure for London than his usual
one. She added, " Mrs. Tancred was much as
usual."
As she spoke Miss Ransome's mind re-
pictured the parting with the iron-grey woman
who had last ejected her ; recalled the valuable
presents ungracefully given, the handsome tip
coupled with harsh advice as to the methods
of spending it, the cold formal farewell ended
unexpectedly by both giver and receiver in a
sudden kiss and " God bless you ! "
'■'■Much as usual!'''' repeated Lady Bletchley,
underlining Bonnybell's colourless description.
" I am glad to hear you say so ! "
" Why ? "
"The last time she was here I thought her
324 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
looking so exceptionally ill ! She is always a
shocking colour ; but that day she looked livid.
Of course, she pooh-poohed my anxiety about
her ; but, do you know, it has occurred to me
once or twice of late that there must be something
rather gravely amiss with her."
Bonnybell looked startled. Mrs, Tancred's
complexion had never presented itself to the girl's
eye or mind, except as a harmonious part of her
general ugliness. That its leaden pallor had any
relation to ill health had never struck her. Some-
thing gravely amiss with Camilla ! Did that mean
that before long she was going to die ? To do
Miss Ransome justice, her first sensation when
this idea presented itself was one of regret. Poor
old Camilla 1 with her doughty championship
against the Aylmers, and her handsome presents,
and her tip, and that shamed and hurried yet
motherly parting kiss ! Poor dear old Camilla !
It was only that second thought, which, despite
the praising adage, is often a shabby thing, which
presented the image of what would be the con-
sequence of the extinction of the harsh old kind-
liness that had sheltered and fought for her !
Edward with his handcuffs knocked off ! Edward
able conscientiously to let himself go ! Whither ?
There could be little doubt as to the answer !
"I do not think I noticed any difference,"
she replied slowly, seeing that her interlocutor
was awaiting a response.
" I am very much relieved to hear you say
so," rejoined Lady Bletchley, as easily reassured
as we all are when our hearts are not much
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 325
engaged. "Of course, you, who have been
seeing her daily, are a far better judge than I.
No doubt it was the effect of some passing
fatigue which frightened me. I have been rather
wretched about her, as, apart from the real regard
I have for her, I cannot imagine what would
become of Edward if anything were to happen to
her ! "
Miss Ransome bent her head in sympathetic
acquiescence. " What a ridiculous misrepresenta-
tion ! and how unnecessary ! " she said to herself.
She did not think the least the worse of Lady
Bletchley for telling a lie, but felt a gentle pity
for her for having produced such a poor specimen.
"But come, do not let us talk of sad things
to-day of all days 1 " continued the matron,
allowing her voice to resume a prosperous cheer-
fulness which came very naturally to it, and giving
a final squeeze to Bonnybell's fingers before dis-
missing them.
" No, indeed 1 " — following her companion's
lead with her usual sweet pliability. " And I have
not congratulated you yet 1" — with a pretty hesi-
tating smile and a slight glance at the compli-
mentary mourning.
"What about?" — with a rather transparent
assumption of oblivion of her new honours.
" What about .? " repeated Bonnybell, with a
wise though inwardly amused air of being taken
in by this simple affectation. " But I know how
unworldly you always are ! "
Lady Bletchley accepted this tribute as no
more than her due.
326 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" I will own to you that Tom is unaffectedly
pleased — very sorry for the poor fellow's untimely
fate, of course, but otherwise, very happy about
it all. As for me, I frankly told him that I could
see no great cause for elation in having to change
a very old name for a rather Brummagem title."
Miss Bonnybell listened with the restrained
admiration for such lofty disinterestedness which
she felt was expected of her, and put in at the
eiid—
" You must remember how much more good
you will be able to do. How often you used to
regret that your means were rather limited ! "
" Yes, if one keeps one's mind on that aspect
of the affair — indeed, I do not attempt to deny "
— relapsing into nature and complacency — " that
there are things about it that I like."
There was a short silence, Miss Ransome in
fond fancy scattering old Tom's new millions with
a liberayhand, and Felicity The trend of
the latter's thought appeared presently in a sen-
tence tinged with a natural regret that had no
pose in it.
" The only sad thing about it is that we have
no one to come after us ! "
" Have you tried Schwalbach ? " asked Bonny-
bell, with heartfelt sympathy, and not for the
moment recollecting that she was making her first
lapse iromjeune fille-i%m ; " and have you heard of
the new doctor in Paris ? Lady swears by
him. She must be quite as old as you, and had
been married twenty years, without chick or
child ; but now "
A WAIFS PROGRESS 327
Lady Bletchley reddened. " It is not a subject
I can discuss with you," she said, dryly ; but,
mollified presently by the snubbed deprecation of
the little innocent face opposite her, added, with
an embarrassed laugh, " I see that Camilla has
not, as I had hoped, succeeded in curing you of
that deplorable habit of yours."
Although feverishly eager to regain the ground
lost by her slip. Miss Ransome could not help
a very small smile, evoked by some pungent
memory, yet it was with a mournful accent of
remorse at the insuccess of the recorded admonish-
ments that she said —
" Mrs. Tancred often corrected me ; and I did
try to improve, but I suppose it is because I feel
so happy and at home here that I say just what
comes uppermost."
A little kiss, falling light as thistle-down upon
the weU-cared-for hand nearest her, and accepted in
quite a different spirit from that which had shaken
off those attempted to be executed upon Camilla's
bony knuckles, achieved the sinner's forgiveness.
It was in a comfortable tone of intimacy and pros-
pective enjoyment that Felicity began her cate-
chism as to Miss Ransome's rural experiences, a
catechism which the latter had foreseen, and, as
far as possible, provided for, or rather against.
"Now tell me, did Camilla make any diffi-
culties about letting you go ? Was she much
upset when my letter came ? "
The attitude of Mrs. Tancred's mind towards
her own departure had differed so widely from the
one with which she was thus credited that even
32 8 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
the ready Bonnybell had to hesitate a second or
two before adjusting her answer.
" I hope she missed me a little, but she was
quite determined not to stand in my light."
" H'm ! She thought it was to your advantage
that you should come back to me ? "
" How could she think anything else ? "
Felicity looked flattered, yet a faint shade of
doubt clouded the complacency of her good-
humoured countenance. Former experiences of
her sister-in-law did not quite tally with the ad-
miring estimate thus implied.
" She thought, too, that the life at Stillington
was too quiet for a girl, and that a little London
would be good for me," resumed Bonnybell, per-
ceiving the infant incredulity, and meeting it with
less art than she would have done had more
leisure been given her.
Lady Bletchley lifted her eyebrows. " Com-
mend me to the inconsistency of a woman who
piques herself upon being nothing if not con-
sistent ! Camilla has always given me to under-
stand that I am imperilling my soul by living in
such a sink of iniquity."
The incredulity of Felicity's tone was so de-
cidedly increased that Bonnybell felt she was
making fausse route.
" Perhaps I am mistaken, and that it was Mr.
Tancred who said that London would be good
for me."
Her thoughts went back to the sun-smitten
trunk of the leafless tree, and Edward leaning
against it, looking miserable and trying to smooth
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 329
her fall by the unveraclties with which she her-
self had now awkwardly saddled his eminently
veracious wife.
''Edward? H'm!"
Something in the accent laid by Lady Bletchley
on her brother's name alarmed Miss Ransome.
" Oh, why did I put her on that tack ? She is
wondering whether he was tarred with the same
brush as old Tom. What possessed me to
mention his name ? "
"Edward!" repeated Felicity a second time
and thoughtfully. " So he had an opinion about
it too ! "
" It was exactly the same as Mrs. Tancred's."
" He would have kept it to himself if it had
not been," replied Felicity, with a slighdy sarcastic
laugh. "Well, tell me all about it. How did
you like Edward ? "
" I thought him perfectly charming ; he re-
minded me so much oi you."
The comparison instituted was meant by
Miss Ransome as a compliment of the highest
order, but In most human breasts there lie
depths of self-esteem only accidentally hit upon
by their acquaintances ; and the tone in which
Edward's sister repeated " Of me ! " adding,
with a heightened colour, "Well, at all events,
I always know my own mind," showed that
once again Bonnybell had mistaken the finger-
posts of her road. She hastened to qualify her
statement.
" Of course, your characters are not alike, but
I noticed little turns of expression that brought
330 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
you back to me. I was so glad of anything which
did that."
This adroit and touching exegesis merited
and received a caress, and a fresh start was happily
made.
" Did you see much of him ? "
" Hardly anything. He was in London all
and every day."
This negative scarcely pleased its utterer. It
sounded to her own ears too emphatic, but it
passed current admirably.
" Yes, poor dear, I suppose he thinks he
works quite hard."
The slight tinge of friendly contempt in the
tone and words would have roused another nature
to angry partisanship ; but, as Miss Ransome
wisely and soothingly remarked to herself, paupers
could never afford to be angry or to defend their
friends, and she therefore curved her lips into an
acquiescent smile.
" I suppose he was very nice to you when you
did see him ?"
"Very nice, when he remembered I was there."
The catechiser looked at her curiously. " I
should not think it was easy for any one to
forget that you were there."
" I mean that I did not make much difference
to him^ one way or the other," rejoined Bonnybell,
still carefully labouring to erase some undesir-
able impression. "I was much more in Mrs.
Tancred's way, poor thing ! "
" You were a good deal with her ? " — with a
slight accent of surprise.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 331
" Oh yes, she thought it right to see a good
deal of me. You see, she was educating me. She
thought me so grossly ignorant. Of course I am."
" I am going to educate you too," returned
Felicity, in a tone of slight pique, " in my way,
which, I dare say, is rather a different one from
Camilla's. I assure you I have plenty of work
cut out for you."
"Oh, I am glad," replied Miss Ransome,
fervently, and bringing her hands together with a
pretty childish gesture of elation, and inwardly
congratulating herself upon the trend of the
conversation away from a topic which she could
not feel to be a safe one. But in this she rejoiced
too soon, for after this slight diversion Lady
Bletchley returned to the original theme.
" You got on perfectly with both ? "
" Oh, perfectly."
" You must be very adaptable. But I know
that you are that."
" It is very good of you to think me so.
When shall I begin my work ? "
" No rubs at all ? "
" No-o, none"
" Not even when you said indecent things } "
" If I said them it was because I did not know
that they were indecent " — with the prettiest air
of hurt artlessness.
Felicity ruminated a minute or two, though, as
the upshot showed, not upon the scabreux nature
of her young friend's conversation. It was clear
that her inquisitiveness as to her relations' minage
had got the better of her sense of decorum.
332 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" They are a strange couple, are not they ? "
The confidential character of words and Into-
nation betrayed poor Miss Ransome into a new
slip.
" I suppose," she said, with a curiosity not at
all inferior to that of which she herself was the
object, " that their marriage has never been
anything but a nominal one,"
CHAPTER XXX
Felicity was as good as her word ; nor was
there any delay in setting the restored acolyte to
her destined labours.
" I am afraid you will not find it very gay,"
Lady Bletchley had said, "but what with this
mourning " — glancing at the very diluted ink of
her attire — " and the terrible corvee of getting into
the new house, I really cannot be bothered with
society just now. However " — with a consolatory
shrug — " it cannot well be duller than Stillington,
where I suppose you literally never set eyes upon
any one except the Aylmers."
The entire innocence of purpose evident in
this mention of the family alluded to proved to
a relieved Miss Ransome that her late hosts had
kept the secret of her misdemeanors faithfully.
" By-the-by, I hear they have left the Dower
House," continued the other, carelessly. " What
can poor Edward do with his Sunday afternoons ! "
Upon this topic Bonnybell could have shed
some light, but as the question took an ejacula-
tory shape she did not think it necessary to
answer it.
Although Lady Bletchley had alluded to her
333
334 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
future change of house as a corvie, her haste to
display the proportions of her new mansion —
which deserved that pompous name for better
reasons than the prosaic technical one of possess-
ing a backstairs — to Bonnybell, took precedence
of even her eagerness to set Miss Ransome to
work ; and in enumerating the length of feet
to which the ballroom ran, and giving the gene-
alogies of the cabinets and chimney-pieces, she
forgot to be bored. Her companion's mouth
was filled with praise and thanksgiving, and
her heart with upbraiding wonder at the ways
of Providence. Fancy meanwhile sported among
the alterations and improvements — all in atrocious
taste — which she herself would make, were Tom's
afFection blessedly to take a less amorous tone
and he be moved to adopt and make her his
heiress.
While awaiting this happy consummation she
had to content herself with receiving flattering
comments upon her intelligent sympathy, as con-
trasted with the block-like manner in which Miss
Sloggett — Felicity's secretary — had treated the
wonders of French art and delicate eighteenth-
century luxury displayed before her unapprecia-
tive eyes. In point of fact, the worthy lady,
with a desire as sincere as Bonnybell's to hit
her employer's mood, but a tact less sure, had
expressed only an aspiration in imagined accord-
ance with Lady Bletchley's well-published philan-
thropy, that I^ord Bletchley might be persuaded
to sell all these useless superfluities for the benefit
of the East End.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 335
This naive proposal to return to methods in-
culcated by the Teaching beside the Sea of Galilee
did not meet with the reception it expected, and
Miss Sloggett was shown nothing more. Even
the present exhibition to a much more understand-
ing spectator had to be scamped.
" You are a delightful person to show things
to, and there are any number more treasures for
you to see" — the poor fellow was a well-known
collector — " but the meeting is to be at four, and
I have a good deal to arrange in connection with
it beforehand. You will help me, I know. One
is so cramped for space in Hill Street ! "
The tone of resigned contempt in which the
last clause of her speech was uttered showed that
Felicity's ideas had thus early expanded to the size
of her new surroundings, and Bonnybell gave a
sardonic inward chuckle. But she threw herself
with such ardour and appetite into the arrange-
ments for the function indicated, and showed
such mingled capacity and suavity in her manner
of assigning seats to the company when it arrived,
as to draw upon her from Lady Bletchley further
comparisons of an invidiously favourable character
with the blundering Sloggett.
The meeting was that of a Ladies' Debating
Society, held by turns at the house of each of the
members, and was of a now not uncommon type.
The subject of discussion was " Domestic Servants.
Whether they need culture. If so, how we are to
give it them ? " It opened with the reading of a
fairly practical paper, much interrupted by voluble
members. One large woman with a lisp, and
336 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
apparently enfranchised from the bondage of
corsets, was irrepressible in suggestions — not valu-
able — and autobiographical experiences. A second
joked rather scathingly, A third was sensible and
serious, but dull. The fourth, and worst, a very
foolish vessel, still more autobiographic, telling
at great length of how she almost daily personally
conducted her servants to the British Museum
and the Tower. And when it was objected that
this course must lead to difficulties as to the dis-
charge of their duties, answered threadbarely,
that if you wanted to do good you must make
up your mind to sacrifice your own convenience
to a certain extent, and that she kept a good many
servants. The reader of the paper rejoined
politely, but sarcastically, that perhaps those who
had smaller households would suggest how the
objection was to be met. And thereupon so
many fair ones complied at once — the irrepressible
obesity leading the van — that the chairwoman,
Lady Bletchley, had to ring her bell repeatedly to
call them to order.
" Perhaps some of the members at the lower
end of the room will let us hear what they have
to say on the subject," Felicity suggested, when
at length she was able to make herself audible,
and looking encouragingly at half a dozen silent
women. "Those at this end have taken up so
much time in the discussion that the others have
not had a chance."
But the silent women remained silent, and the
localized garrulity continued to rage fiercely,
turning its boiling stream into the channel of the
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 337
G.F.S. ; the foolish matron who announced the
largeness of her establishment taking up her tale
again, and going into details almost as intimate
as, though less indelicate than, Mrs. Cluppins,
when she appeared as witness for the prosecu-
tion in the trial of Bardell v, Pickwick, of her
domestic economy.
" It takes a good deal out of one," Felicity-
ejaculated, when at the close of the meeting —
which every one present agreed had been a
particularly good and helpful one — she and
Bonnybell retired to Lady Bletchley's private
room, while the drawing-rooms were being
restored to their normal state. " But, as you
see, it is well worth it."
" Indeed I do."
" The society has only been started three
months, and it has already done an untold
amount of good."
" I am sure it has."
" Subjects are threshed out, and people are
woke up to a sense of duties which they had
either forgotten or never realized."
" I am sure they are."
" But " — with a yawn and a stretch of
luxurious relief — " it does take a good deal out
of one ! "
"Has the lady who takes her cook every
day to the British Museum a husband ? " asked
Bonnybell, feeling her way cautiously to a little
gibe.
Felicity laughed. " Yes ; but he can go to
his club. Of course, she is a fool, poor dear ;
338 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
but she is always good for a drawing-room meet-
ing or a cheque."
Miss Ransome was respectfully silent, musing
upon the difFerent roots from which the beauteous
flower of female friendship springs.
" She is a Mrs. Slammer," continued Felicity,
between two luxurious yawns. " She was an
heiress, and her husband had to take her name.
He was a Colonel Ransome, a well-known fortune-
hunter, but quite in society. By-the-by, he may
be a relation of yours. Is he ? "
Bonnybell paused a moment. It was not
likely to heighten her consideration in the eyes of
the world that her kindred had repudiated her ;
but, on the other hand, the fact of Miss Ransome's
friendless state might intensify Felicity's com-
passion for her, and if she told a lie upon the
subject it was certain to be discovered, so she
said with a drooped head — ■
" Our relations would not have anything to
say to us, and of course I could not give CI — my
mother up."
Felicity's heart was not a hard one, and she
rejoined hastily —
" Oh yes, of course ; it was stupid of me to
forget. I remember now what unnatural monsters
we thought them at the time ; but, at all events,
they did me a good turn in giving me you."
This was charming, and BonnybeU would have
been glad to be sure of being able to keep the
thermometer of her friend's affection up to the
point indicated by this little bvirst of effusiveness,
but even the next sentence showed a descent.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 339
" All the same, it might not be a bad plan for
you to cultivate her — she is not a bad-hearted
woman, and has kept him wonderfully straight ;
and, good and indulgent as Tom is to me, I
cannot expect him to be willing always to have
some one en tiers between him and me ; and life
is so uncertain — Camilla's alarmingly so — that
you cannot count upon Stillington."
She paused, a little out of breath, or Bonnybell
fancied so, from the haste with which she had
scampered away from the clause that referred to
Tom.
" There is no greater mistake than going to
meet misfortune," continued Felicity, distracted
by her own reference to Stillington from the
theme originally started ; " but I really dare not
face the question of what would become of Edward
in the case of Camilla's death."
Bonnybell turned her head aside, with a little
wincing movement that stood for emotion, but
that in reality hid the ironic mirth which she
feared must be in some degree making itself
visible on her face at this grossly overcharged
picture of Edward's prospective affliction.
" Of course, they are very deeply attached to
each other," she answered mournfully, " but men
do get over things."
" Get over things ! Deeply attached ! " re-
peated Felicity, derisively. "Edward's manner
to her has always been perfect, his whole relation
to her kept in a key of the most exquisite taste,
and I am sure that he has a very sincere respect
for her ; but, poor dear Camilla " — with a little
340 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
involuntary laugh—" is hardly a person to inspire
a grander passion. No, no ; it is the financial
aspect of the question that keeps me awake at
night."
There was nothing " put on" in the lengthen-
ing oval of Miss Ransome's face at this an-
nouncement.
" Do you mean," she asked slowly, " that Mr.
Tancred would not be so well off if — he were to
lose Mrs. Tancred ? "
"iVb/ so well off?" repeated Felicity, with an
annoyed laugh. " That is putting it very mildly.
Why, if Camilla were to die to-morrow, he would
be left with his paltry younger son's portion, and
with whatever he tnakes " — the accompanying
shrug expressed a minimum — " on the Stock
Exchange."
To put direct questions about other people's
finances had never been permissible by Miss
Ransome's code of manners, yet she asked boldly
and blankly —
" Will not she leave him anything at all ? "
"It is no question of her not leaving him
anything," rejoined Lady Bletchley, impatiently,
" but of his folly in refusing to accept a penny.
At the time of the marriage he absolutely declined
to allow her to make any provision for him, in
the event of her death. It was a Quixotic notion
that, because he did not care about her
quite between ourselves, she married him !
Never shall I forget my stupefaction when I
heard the news. ' That old guy ! ' I said — people
used the word 'guy' more in those days than
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 341
they do now, but I dare say you know what it
means."
" I can guess."
" Since he did not care about her " — picking
up the dropped thread of her sentence — " he
would not be indebted to her for anything but
his board and lodging ; and indeed " (with a
renewal of vexed mirth), " I would not answer
for it that he is not highflown enough to pay her
even for that. I remember telling you once that
Edward had strayed out of the Middle Ages ;
you see now what I meant."
Miss Ransome's knowledge of the period
indicated was not equal to informing her whether
the centuries alluded to were characterized by a
marked aversion from profiting pecuniarily by
unions with elderly heiresses ; but she assented,
adding, with a very grave face —
" Poor Mr. Tancred ! he has indeed every
reason to try to keep Mrs. Tancred alive ! " Then,
feeling dimly that the reflection had not quite a
suitable ring, she hung on it a postscript. " And I
am sure," she said prayerfully, "that I heartily
wish it, for both their sakes."
" I am sure you do," replied Felicity, but she
spoke, or Bonnybell thought so, somewhat slowly,
and looked at her rather hard, adding more glibly,
" So you see that, considering the uncertainty of
everything, it would not be a bad plan to cultivate
the Slammers ; and I shall see that you have
every opportunity for doing so."
Bonnybell thanked her, and wondered inter-
nally whether they would be likely to go to bed
342 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
early. It needed solitude to face such a new
aspect of affairs as the last ten minutes' conversa-
tion had presented to her.
" If Camilla died to-morrow, Edward would
be almost as much of a pauper as I am ! " This
was the fact that could be better faced by Bonny-
bell with her hair hanging down her back in its
nightly twisted cable and the enlargement of a
dressing-gown. The added flights of stairs which
Lady BletcUey would have had to climb made her
visitor feel pretty secure from an invasion by her,
but, to be on the safe side. Miss Ransome locked
her door.
''^ A pauper!" During her eighteen years
Bonnybell had known many persons who freely
gave themselves that name ; but it had never, so
far as she could observe, produced any appreciable
effect upon their mode of life or expenditure.
She dimly felt that Edward's pauperism would be
of a different type. Her imagination tried to
construct a pauper of the upper classes with a
sense of duty to his tailor and wine-merchant.
Would he smoke pipes, and drink gin-and-
water, and wear napless hats, and reach-me-down
overcoats ?
The frame was one into which it was so
impossible to fit the portrait of Mr. Tancred
that she laughed aloud, secure in having a whole
floor to herself " My jaw dropped half a yard
when I heard it," she soliloquized. " I am afraid
that Felicity must have noticed it."
An advance upon the glass and a practise in
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 343
it of elongating her face to different lengths pro-
duced such unsatisfactory results that she soon
left off her efforts to reconstruct her own attitude
under the late thunderbolt. Nor did she disguise
from herself that it was a thunderbolt ! To do
her justice, she had never, since hearing of its
probability, consciously wished for Camilla's death ;
yet there was no doubt that she had seen through
a rosy mist, and at some future epoch, herself in
various attitudes of near relationship- to Edward.
People's love-dreams are shaped consonantly
to their characters ; and Bonnybell's were as arti-
ficial, and sophisticated as herself. She saw herself
whizzing up the Champs Elys6es in an automobile
in May when the chestnuts were out, in a dernier
cri hat, by Edward's side ; sitting in an opera-box
at Covent Garden, blazing in Camilla's diamonds,
reset by a jeweller of the Rue de la Paix by
Edward's side ; at Stillington, during one of their
Saturday-to-Mondays there, smoking the best
cigarettes procurable for money all over the house,
and with no apprehension of any one smelling
them, by Edward's side ; or without cigarettes,
and receiving discreet and moderate endearments,
well and easily kept within such bounds as she
herself prescribed, from Edward.
To her own surprise, it was the last picture
upon which she dwelt longest, and with most
pleasure. And now her house of cards lay in
ruins at her feet, and it took her all her philosophy,
and a little more, to pull herself together, and
extract any cause of congratulation that might be
found among their dibris.
344 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" What a mercy it was that we kept ourselves
well in hand ! I do not think he could have
held out much longer ; and as for me, whatever
confidence one has in one's self, it is well not to
put it to too severe a test. I really believe that
two more Sunday walks, if the sun had shone, and
those birds whose notes I never could distinguish
apart had gone on singing, would have finished
me off ! " After a pause, " I never could have
believed that it would be hard to keep from being
fond of any one."
With that she dropped down in a sitting
position on the hearthrug, and, embracing her
knees with her lily arms and stooping her head
down upon them, wept copiously. She went to
bed later, and her last thought was a truly Chris-
tian one, '• Poor dear old Camilla ! Her death
would not do me the least good in the world,
and I sincerely hope she may live to the age of
Methuselah."
CHAPTER XXXI
Miss Ransome's eyes looked heavy next morning
at breakfast. That her hostess noticed the fact
was made apparent by a remark that followed her
first glance at her guest.
" I suppose you were very sorry to leave
Stillington ? "
" What an ass I was to cry ! " was the un-
spoken response to this question. The spoken
one ran more subtilely —
" As sorry as I could be when I was so exceed-
ingly glad too."
" It seems delightfully natural to see you
here," responded Felicity, with not inferior fond-
ness. "But I must not have you looking pale
because I keep you up listening to my tiresome
worries ; of course, they are multiplied tenfold
since you were here last."
She paused to heave a sigh at the thought of
the burden of her new prosperities, and Bonnybell
gently echoed it at the pensive reflection how
easily her own shoulders would bear the load
were it transferred to them.
" I shall send you out for a walk this morning,"
34S
346 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
continued Lady Bletchley. " You look as If you
wanted air."
Bonnybell's heart leapt at the prospect thus
indicated of a solitude tempered by shops, but
her voice repelled the suggestion.
" And leave you to cope alone with all that
mass of work you told me of last night ? Do I
look very pasty ? I dare say ; I did not sleep very
well ; I suppose because I was too excited at being
back again with you."
This charming explanation was accepted as
probable, and Miss Ransome's conscience eased
by receiving the assurance that she could be
equally useful to her patroness doing commissions
out-of-doors ; that patroness's lady's-maid being
apparently only inferior to her secretary, Miss
Sloggett, in block-like stupidity.
An hour later, therefore, Bonnybell found
herself walking down Bond Street, chaperoned by
the functionary in question, and entrusted with
many nice tasks of matching, pricing, and order-
ing. Shopping had always been inexpressibly dear
to Miss Ransome's towny heart ; and though the
choosing of vicarious finery was a very inferior
pastime to the testing of colours and shapes upon
her own light form and brilliant face ; yet it
would have been difficult to find an anodyne
more effectual than that provided, with no such
intention nor the least knowledge that any pain-
killer was needed, by her protectress.
Bonnybell had set off on her walk in the
lowest spirits possible to one of her nature. She
had not at all adjusted her mind to a future from
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 347
which Edward was eliminated. The insecurity
of her present status, hinging on the more or
less of water in the Scotch river honoured by
Tom's rod ; and the dismal possibility of a
livelihood dearly bought by conducting a Mrs.
Slammer's servants to those elevating museums
and exhibitions in which she herself would never
willingly set foot, called forth reflections not
calculated to exhilarate.
But true philosophy, that " perpetual feast of
nectared sweets," never leaves its sincere votary
long unsupported ; and by the time that she
had realized what starding surprises in shape
and fabric the spring hats revealed, and that half
a score of men had twisted their necks to get a
longer look at her through the side window of
their hansoms. Miss Ransome felt that there was
yet balm in Gilead for her broken spirit. A really
delightful hour and a half followed, spent in
exhilarating intercourse with a couple of very
smart dressmakers, during which she committed
herself on her own account to two toilettes sirieuses,
some trivial costlinesses in the way of " little "
mutinies, fichus, veils, etc., and three really bewilder-
ing toques.
Her purchases made a large hole in Camilla's
handsome tip — that is to say, they would have
done if she had paid for them, but, as she piously
said to herself, "Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof," adding, less piously, that there was
no reason why her future husband should not pay
for them.
Reluctantly, and summoned by duty, she at
348 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
length began to turn her steps homeward, and was
loitering a moment before a florist's — the flowers
that grew in shops were the only ones really ad-
mired by BonnybeU — and inhaling whifFs from
the white lilac boughs and stacks of lilies-of-the-
valley inside, when she was startled by a voice
calling to her from an electric brougham which
had pulled up at the kerbstone.
" Bonnybell ! Bonnybell ! "
Who could be Bonnybell-ing her here in
Piccadilly, whither her maiden feet had now
strayed ? The answer came aU too soon, nor did
it take more than one glance at the face of the
very pronounced " chemical blonde " thrust out
of the automobile's window to tell Miss Ransome
that she was once more face to face with her past
and Flora Tennington.
As on a former meeting, the pleasure in the
encounter was all on one side.
" This is rippin' ! " cried the occupant of the
brougham, who occasionally borrowed a word of
slang from the little young men who frequented
her. " How long have you been up ? and why
have not you been to see me ? "
"I came up only the day before yesterday,"
replied BonnybeU, in a tone which implied that the
lateness of her arrival was the only reason why
she had not already sought out so chosen and
valued a friend. (Dne must not make an enemy
of Flora ; but what a piece of ill-luck !
As she spoke she stepped quickly across the
pavement, to hinder, by greater proximity, the
sharing by other ears of the unavoidable impending
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 349
dialogue ; and tried to put her head so far inside
the carriage window as to hide from passers-by the
identity of her flamboyant friend.
" Where are you staying ? "
" In Hill Street."
" Come back to luncheon with me."
" Oh, how I should love it ! but I am staying
with — people."
" What people .? "
At this query a horrifying vision passed before
Miss Ransome's eyes, of Flora, champagne-headed,
low-necked, whitened and sealing-waxed, sweep-
ing into Felicity's drawing-room and falling on
her own neck under that lady's nose.
" Oh, nobody very interesting ; not your
sort."
A look of cynic humour flashed into the
other's highly decorated eyes.
" I see," she said, dryly ; adding, " But at least
come and take a turn with me. If you sit well
back nobody will see you, and I have a hundred
things to say to you. Come, get in ! "
Bonnybell hesitated, though nothing could be
more distasteful to her than her present position.
At high noon, in open confabulation with a lady
of Flora's appearance and antecedents, exposed
to the probability of recognition, and observed
with respectful surprise by the chaperoning lady's-
maid, who, if she was of the block-like stupidity
attributed to her by her mistress, was likewise of
the highest and touchiest respectability. The
sense of having conveyed to an old friend with
brutal clumsiness that she was ashamed of being
350 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
seen with her annoyed Miss Ransome also, though
in a less degree. She put her face — it seemed
impossible that both were made of the same
materials — very close to Flora's, and whispered —
"There's a dragon with me — an imbecile
of a maid. I dare not send her back without
me."
" Give her five shillings, and tell her to hold
her tongue."
This counsel, though its radical badness and
inartistic quality was fully recognized by its re-
cipient, was yet finally accepted, as being the least
objectionable of the only two alternatives open to
her. Flora, as she knew, would not let her go
without a prolonged exchange of questions and
answers, heard inevitably by the footman holding
the brougham door open, and probably by a
goodly number of Piccadilly fldneurs. Bonnybell
had often before tipped servants to silence, and
even when the tip was not very large or likely
to have successors had seldom found reason to
complain of their fidelity.
As Lady Tennington never cared what she
said, where she said it, or who heard it. Miss
Ransome decided that she had, on the whole,
chosen practically the least perilous of the two
vexatious paths open to her, when she and
her companion were whizzing down the great
thoroughfare.
"So it is all off ! " said Flora, without preamble,
as soon as they were in motion.
"WhatisalloflF?"
" It was all on ; and it is all off."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 351
Miss Ransome was too old a hand, in ex-
perience if not in years, to be trapped into a
confidence by the device of pretending to know
all about it ; so her rejoinder was a fence.
" What was all on, and is all off ? "
"Oh, come, do not pretend innocence ; we
have not too much time. Remember that it was
I who first introduced you to him — turned you
into the conservatory together, the day he came
to your rescue when you were in such an abject
fright at the idea of a tete-h-tete drive home with
poor old Charlie." She chuckled at the recol-
lection ; and, since the only way in which Bonny-
bell showed that she " rose " to this jogging of
her memory was by a slight shiver, continued, " It
came to grief over a letter. Did anything unlucky
turn up ? Did they find out anything ? "
A slight repetition of the shiver produced by
" Charlie's " name ran over Bonnybell. Stillington
might not have effected much in the way of moral
teaching, but it had at least made Flora's scheme
of ethics unfamiliar. And Flora's appearance did
not gain in impressiveness by proximity. She
had evidently lately embarked on a new dye,
which had stained her hair with a brilliant pink
hue. If it was champagne-coloured now, it was
a very bad and headachey champagne !
There was a lovely maiden flush on Bonny-
bell's cheek as she answered very gently —
" There was nothing about me to find out ;
nothing that I could help."
Lady Tennington looked at her with com-
passionate surprise and amusement at the carefuUy
352 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
suppressed indignation lurking under her mild
words.
" I know that ; you always were a very good
little miss ! " she rejoined, laughing ; then, more
seriously, "Yes, you poor little devil, I really
believe that you are speaking truth ; and, of
course, Claire had no business to take you to
those places."
" She never did when she was all right."
The plea was set up with the customary
generosity ; nor did its utterer ever seem aware
that the defence was in itself an indictment.
"Well, how much came out? "
There could be no doubt that Flora did know,
yet Bonnybell's resolution not to go further in
admissions than she was absolutely compelled was
instinctive.
" How did you hear about it ? "
" Oh, how does one hear things ? Servants,
little birds, God knows what! I asked Charlie
whether he knew anything about it, but he only
laughed, and said, whoever the writer was, he
had done Bonnybell a good turn," (It was not
because Flora's pink hair and chalky face were
disagreeable objects that Miss Ransome had
turned away her head.) "Of course, I at once
concluded that he had written it himself. He
really wiU play these little games once too often,
and get himself into trouble." (To most people
it would have seemed difficult for " Charlie " to
effect that object more thoroughly than he had
already done.) " I suppose that it is partly his
way of showing his affection for you, and partly
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 353
that being in such low water himself has made
him spiteful. My prudish friends tell me I ought
to shut my door on him, but I am not fond of
shutting doors upon people, it is not a pleasant
process for either side."
She spoke as one who had known, personally,
the outside of a good many doors.
" You were always so kind."
" Yes, so I was and am " — accepting the
tribute as her undoubted due (there were so
many tributes that never were and never could
be paid to Flora) — "but it is not altogether
that. I do not want to make an enemy of
him ; and, low in the world as he is, he could
yet do me a nasty turn, as he has just done
you. If you take my advice, my dear, you
will keep on terms with him, despite his last
achievement."
Bonnybell heaved a most unaffected sigh. A
feeling of disgusted despair took temporary pos-
session of her sanguine breast. Was she never
to be able to free herself from the environment
of mud and slime into which circumstances, not
herself, had plunged her ? Was she never to
get away from the past and its most hideous
embodiment, Charlie ? He had done her a good
turn this time, but he would repeat his action
when it would not be a good turn. She might
be just about to pull off something really good —
the eyes of the passers-by, both on foot and in
hansoms, had convinced her how much lay in
her power if she had a fair chance — and Charlie
would come in again with his thrust in the dark,
2 A
354 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
another of his anonymous letters would arrive,
and it would all be " blued " !
" Is he in London ? " she asked faintly.
"I do not know. He comes and goes. I
generally see him when he is up. I am afraid,
poor devil, that mine is the only respectable house
left open to him."
A streak of sincere amusement stirred the
younger woman's gloom. Poor, dear Flora !
she must be forgetting to whom she is talking.
Perhaps Flora remembered, for she left the
topic.
" You know that I have left Tennington .'' "
" Yes, I was so sorry."
" It is more than I was," replied Flora, dryly.
" I never had such a run of bad cards in my life
as I had there, and I always detest the country."
" How can any one who is in their senses like
living there ? " agreed BonnybeU, fervently, de-
riving the first advantage she had yet reaped from
the lost Edward in the ability to lay aside for ever
her rural enthusiasms.
" I shall take a cottage on the river in the
summer, and you must come and stay with me,
and we will get hold of some of the old set — oh
no, not Charlie, of course — some of the right
sort.
It was not easy to Miss Ransome, though she
accomplished it — since it pleased Flora, and tied
her to nothing — to give an answer to the effect
that Heaven seemed to open to her at this pros-
pect. Flora needed some amends for the plain
indications she herself had been obliged to give
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 355
her, that the world's market-places were not the
spots where conferences with her were most to be
relished ; and, moreover, acquiescence in distant
made it easier to evade nearer projects of re-
union.
'* Cannot you dine quietly with me to-night
or some other night ? We will get somebody to
feed us at the Carlton and take us to hear Suzette
at the Empire. I believe she has brought over
her Paris ripertoire quite unmutilated ! "
Bonnybell veiled the terror inspired by this
proposition by a little grimace of regret that had
something of truth in it. If Lady Tennington
could be made invisible and Lady Bletchley's ears
stopped, their protigie would have thoroughly
enjoyed listening once again, with the perfect
comprehension she did herself the justice to
know that she could bring to them, to Suzette's
astonishing audacities. Suzette was canaille be-
fore everything ; but what a genius !
" Oh, what a treat it would have been for me !
ahd how dear of you to think of it ! But it is —
as pleasant things generally are for me, nowadays
— quite out of the question. I am to spend a
' Happy Evening.' "
" I hope that you would do that with
me !
" It is not quite the same class of happiness.
It is a factory girls' ' Happy Evening.' "
Both laughed, and Bonnybell made a second
and better grimace.
"Miss Sloggett is going to show them her
magic lantern."
356 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Miss Sloggett ! What a name ! Who is
Miss Sloggett ? "
"Oh, she is an old ass who does secretary
and door-mat to — to — the friend I am staying
with."
After all, there were " points " in being able,
for a whole hour, not to be " a nice girl." Flora
was a good sort, for she did not press her invita-
tion, and without being asked — perhaps because
she had not failed to perceive Bonnybell's latent
effort to conceal her hostess's name — set her down
at the corner of HiU Street, magnanimously re-
fraining from any attempt to pry into what was
so clearly meant to be hidden from her, though
the motive for concealment could scarcely be a
flattering one.
It was with a trembling hand that Bonnybell
rang the bell — a project for compassing the pos-
session of a latch-key flitting through her head —
but she was quiue pour la peur. Though the
church clock in South Audley Street had pointed
to five minutes past .two. Felicity had not missed
her. She was soon — with a mind relieved at
least from that portion of its load — ^giving a
report, with excisions something like those prac-
tised on Russian newspapers, of her morning's
employment, and adorning it with touches, so
nicely adapted to Felicity's humour, that the
latter ended by expressing an ecstatic wonder
as to how she had ever managed to bear so long
the absence from her side of such a seasoner and
sweetener of her own toilsome existence. Her
regret extended even to being unable — owing
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 357
to another engagement — to be present at the
" Happy Evening," to which Bonnybell and
Miss Sloggett proceeded in the brougham without
her.
Bonnybell would have liked to be silent during
the drive, ruminating over the additions made to
her difficulties by the morning's meeting, and the
news it brought her. But poor Sloggett's spirits
were in a very tender condition, and asked for
delicate handling. A nascent jealousy of herself,
which amused Miss Ransome, coupled with
deep misgivings as to her own capacity for the
evening's task, combined to overset the poor
secretary.
" I trust there will be no contretemps ! I
trust it will all go well ; but I have not much
confidence in myself. I am only a beginner. I
hope it will be all right."
" What does it matter if it is not } It will
only be the more amusing." It was the sort of
ointment with which she was wont to anoint her
own hurts, but it was clear that such was not the
balm for Miss Sloggett's wounds.
" Oh, but Lady Bletchley would be so much
annoyed at any contretemps^
" Why need she ever hear of it ? "
A shocked look in the face of the more
conscientious understudy brought Bonnybell back
at once to the sense of having deviated slightly
but certainly from the path of niceness. "It
must have been that whiiF of Flora which
demoralized me," she said to herself, but she
hastened to mend the breach.
358 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" I made the suggestion," she said, with
uncommon sweetness, "because I would not for
the world add anything to Lady Bletchley's
trials" (it is just as well to pretend that I
believe in that peach-fed old Felicity's imaginary
troubles), " and also because I do not want you
to suffer."
The sympathy in eye and tone was — or to
Miss Sloggett it seemed so — unactably sincere.
" It is very good of you to care," she
murmured, still half-doubtfiilly ; but there was
a slight mist before her eyes.
The poor secretary's misgivings were amply
justified by the result. Not only was she, as
she had tremblingly confessed, new to the task
of exhibition, but the " plant " was deplorably
inadequate, the magic lantern much too large
for the sheet. Before it, in its first innocent
blankness, sat the girls, prepared to comment,
with their terrible town frankness, in giggling
rows upon the magic lantern and its manager.
The latter prefaced each picture with a little
explanatory speech, the first tinged with regretful
deprecation.
" I am afraid that, owing to the smallness of
the sheet, I shall not be able to show you the
whole picture at once. I wiU, however, show
you as much as I can of ' The Father of the
Prodigal Son.' "
In fulfilment of this promise, the character
alluded to flashed upon tiie sheet, with a very
crowded and uncomfortable appearance, and —
with no legs.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 359
There was a nervous sense of not entire
success in the accents with which the subsequent
pictures were heralded.
" You all know the story of ' The Prodigal
Son,' don't you, girls ? how, ' while he was yet
a great way off,' his father met him? He did
not wait for the poor prodigal to come to him ;
he ran to meet him with outstretched arms ! "
The picture followed ; but the effect was
somewhat marred by the fact that it revealed the
father sitting motionless indoors with his head in
his hands.
It was in vain that the luckless show-woman
hastily explained that she had made a mistake,
and that her elucidation referred to the slide
that was to follow, not to the present one. To
an accompaniment of squeals of laughter and
flowers of cockney wit, the exhibition igno-
miniously ended.
It was a very crushed Miss Sloggett whose
failing heart Bonnybell good-naturedly tried to
uplift on the , homeward drive, and a sense of
amusement presently pervaded her own rather
drooped spirits at the perception that, after all, the
poor secretary was ready to take a leaf out of
Miss Ransome's book.
" I think," she said, hesitatingly, " that, con-
sidering how much Lady Bletchley has of various
kinds to occupy and distress her just at present,
it would, perhaps, be as well not to go into details
over the evening."
Never was it the least difficult to Bonnybell
to promise or perform connivance in any form of
36o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
deceit, and she kindly and warmly acquiesced.
She had not the slightest wish to harm poor
Sloggett. Was not there, after all, a good deal
of analogy between their fates ? (" I am a pretty
Sloggett, and she is an ugly Bonnybell, but we
both live by our wits.")
CHAPTER XXXII
The spring drew on disagreeably, according to its
vernal wont. But if the thermometer did not tell
that winter was on the wane, the lengthening days
did so, and the flower-baskets in the streets told
the town-dweller what sheets of anemone and
narcissus were spreading over the pleasant fields
of France, and scenting the sea round Scilly.
As to the temperature, what did that matter in
London ? Warmed by every one else's fire as
well as your own, you had pity enough and to
spare for shiverers in the odious country, but not
much need for compassion yourself.
Such were a part of Miss Ransome's reflec-
tions on the loth of March. So far they were
comfortable ones ; but they shared the theatre of
her mind with many less complacent — with many
deep misgivings. Tom had not yet re-appeared
on the scene, having transferred himself and his
fishing-tackle to a wild part of Ireland ; but his
re-entrance could hardly be much longer delayed.
That it was imminent Bonnybell gathered by the
increased frequency of Felicity's lamentations over
the necessity for their ever parting. That it was
not a necessity never seemed to occur to her, even
361
362 A WAIFS PROGRESS
in mid-Jeremiad ; even when Bonnybell, with a
touch too light to brush the bloom from a butter-
fly's wing, threw In an infinitely far-off hint to
that effect. The satisfaction which she therefore
derived from being continually told that she was
Lady Bletchley's right hand was a very mutilated
one. No sign of flinching on the part of that
heroic lady fi-om the intention of cutting off that
right hand was perceptible to eyes that daily and
hourly grew more strainingly anxious to discover
it. To make herself indispensable, that was her
one chance. It had always been the leading
principle of her actions since her enforced return ;
but she was also by nature eminently obliging
and serviable. Nor did she slack her efforts, even
when each day added something to her conviction
that they were going to be useless. " I shall
be dismissed on the day before Tom's return,"
she said to herself, with lugubrious shrewdness*
" Felicity will not turn me out earlier, for her
own sake, and also because she is rather com-
punctious about me. That is why she is thrusting
me down Mrs. Slammer's throat."
No sign of help showed on the horizon from
the direction of StiUington. The intercourse
between the two families seemed slighter than
ever, and it had never been close. And even if
they^ — if Camilla — had been willing to re-house
her, she was almost sure that she did not wish to
go back. After what she had learnt, it would be
stupid to put herself in the way of growing fonder
of Edward than she already was. The degree
and pertinacity of her regard for him often
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 363
annoyed her. No, she had no wish to go back
to Stillington, and yet — what a noise those tire-
some birds must be making in the wood by now !
To be Lady Bletchley's right hand was no sine-
cure ; but though the humanitarian interest could
scarcely be said to be strongly developed in Miss
Ransome, she took up her share of the burden of
Felicity's good works — increased tenfold by the
latter's rise in life — with a will, reflecting philo-
sophically that it was quite as well not to have
much time to think, since she had nothing satis-
factory to think about, and finding or making many
little oases of worldly pleasure amid the sands
of philanthropy. Lady Bletchley had announced
that she was not going out ; but abstention from
society, as understood by her, was compatible
with seeing a large number and variety of people.
BonnybeU had received ample confirmation
of the verdict pronounced by the Bond Street
hansoms on the first day of her arrival. She had
met many young men, gilded and ungilt, in
Felicity's drawing-room, a large number of whom
had been obviously willing to endear themselves
to her. It was a more respectful form of love
than she had been used to in the old days ; but
her wary eye had detected a want of seriousness
in the intentions of the majority, and even among
the business-like minority not one was found, after
careful sifting of their positions and prospects,
worth running the risk of provoking another of
Charlie's anonymous revelations. "I must not
let myself go cheap because I am in low water
just now," she said, to herself, with no sense
364 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
of special cynicism in the reflection. "I can
well afFord to wait. I shall probably even
improve, and " — with a sigh — " I think I dis-
like the idea of marriage, if possible, more than
ever !
Charlie ! Yes, Charlie was in London. She
had caught sight of him one day in a little street off
the Strand — Charlie was not fond of frequented
thoroughfares — whither Felicity had sent her to
look up a case of sweating, and, to the surprise of
the chaperoning maid, had darted into a tobacco-
nist's shop to hide herself from him. She hoped
that he had not seen her ; but with Charlie one
never knew. Oh, if she could make some one —
some one really eligible — love her enough to dare
to tell him about M 's and the other places,
she might defy Charlie — snap her fingers at him !
But the test mentally applied to every one of her
aspirants broke down hopelessly.
It was the loth of March on which the blow
fell. The room was the same room in which
poor Miss Ransome had been made aware of
Edward's disqualifications. It seemed to gloomy
after-reflections as if its one purpose in life was to
be the setting for disagreeable communications.
Though business was its predominant note,
luxury was not altogether banished from Felicity's
sitting-room, and It was in a very well stuffed
armchair, if that could be any source of comfort
to her, that the " right hand " received its ampu-
tation. It was not often that Felicity allowed
herself time to sit down, but she also was in
an armchair, taking a brief respite from labour
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 365
between the trying of Court gowns and laying
the foundation-stone of a Home for Infant
Inebriates.
Felicity was overdoing herself with the
thoroughness of a fine lady " doubled " by a social
reformer. But at the present moment something
besides fatigue sat on her troubled countenance.
And Bonnybell recognized, through having seen it
before on another face, the signal for ejection. It
was too late to avert it, yet none the less was
there a cheerful daughterly sympathy in her pretty
voice as she said —
" What a pity that you cannot put off the
Infant Inebriates to another day ! I know how
specially interested you are in them, poor little
things, even more than you are" — with an accent
of affectionate reverence — " in all good works ;
but you do look so tired ! "
" I am tired," replied the other. " I am
always tired now. As soon as the bazaar is well
over — by-the-by, the Duchess has never yet
answered as to the date — I shall take a rest cure.
Dr. says it is indispensable ; that I am
living on my nerves."
The first blast of the Trump of Doom had
sounded. The second was not slow to follow.
" I shall be more tired still when I have to do
without you." The voice was tender and com-
plaining, but there was also a sort of confusion —
a mauvaise honte in it. Ejectment was on the
edge of the lamenting lips.
Bonnybell was silent. (At all events, I will
not make it easier for her.)
366 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Tom has written to say that he will be back
on Tuesday."
Miss Ransome's was, after all, a brave spirit.
There was an interval of scarcely five seconds
before she was answering playfully, in quite a
gallant voice —
"And he naturally wishes his house to be
cleared of rubbish before his return."
The confusion on Felicity's face deepened.
As an actress she had neither facility nor dis-
tinction.
" You have always an amusing way of putting
things, but of course you do not mean it ! You
know as well as I do that Tom is the last person
in the world to think anybody ' rubbish ; ' and he
is the soul of hospitality, but^he has been away
a long time, and perhaps — at first — he would
expect to have me to himself I "
Bonnybell made a litde gesture of assent.
She would be able to speak in a moment or two.
One thought of pious thankfulness meanwhile
darted across her dismay. Thank Heaven ! she
had not paid any of her bills, and Camilla's tips
lay intact in her despatch-box.
" "What day would you like me to go ? " she
asked presently, with a mild but purposed bald-
ness, in pursuance of her intention of not, as
she would have phrased it, letting Felicity down
easily. " Perhaps, by working very hard, I might
get the bazaar lists finished by to-morrow."
Under the apparent generosity of the sentence
there lurked a little snake of pardonable malice.
Miss Ransome was well aware that the function
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 367
alluded to, "The Fancy Fair for All England
CatalepticSj" to be held under Distinguished
Patronage in the Albert Hall in mid-May, one
of the Vice-Presidencies of which had been ac-
cepted by Lady Bletchley before her new honours,
with aU their attendant labours, had fallen upon
her, was rapidly developing into an incubus and a
nightmare. Bonnybell was also aware that the
loss of her own aid would be an irreparable one ;
but there was perhaps more subtlety than kind-
liness in reminding her patroness of the fact at
the moment. The success was all she could have
wished.
" What day I wish you to go ? You can have
very little idea what you have been to me to put
such a question."
Miss Ransome received the reproach, made
with every evidence of a wounded feeling tending
towards hysterics, in unwonted silence. She did
not feel inclined to caress Felicity, and for once
she might follow a natural bent, since clearly
nothing was to be gained by endearments. She
was thinking that though Felicity had repudiated
the idea of any likeness existing between herself
and her brother, there was — though he was far the
more delicate artist of the two — a certain resem-
blance between their attitude as " Chuckers Out."
There was a hurt disappointment at not receiving
an answering burst of affection in return for her
output of fond reproach in Lady Bletchley' s tone
when she resumed —
" As to the lists, there is no hurry ; for though
you will not be actually in the house, you will be
368 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
able to help me almost as much as if you were.
You will not be far off."
" I do not quite know where I shall be." A
moment later, in uncomplaining after-thought —
" If you could spare me for an hour this afternoon,
I might inquire about lodgings ; they would be
better for me than an hotel, don't you think —
and — cheaper ? "
At this suggestion a hot flush overspread
Felicity's fagged face.
" Lodgings ! a hotel ! " she repeated. " I do
not know what you are talking about. Is it
possible that you suppose I am going to plant
you on the pavement, because I am most reluc-
tantly compelled to abridge your visit ? Would
that be like me ? "
The extreme out-of-countenanceness — if such
a clumsy word may be framed — of her patroness,
and a consciousness of how well-founded in sound
reason was her own removal from Lord Bletchley's
hearth-stone before his return to it, produced a
half-magnanimous, half-malicious pity in Bonny-
bell, and gave her back her priceless gift of
feigning.
" Because you have been incomparably good to
me for many weeks gives me no claim upon you
for further kindness." Such un-upbraiding acqui-
escence in unmerited chastisement spoke in tone
and words that Felicity's rejoinder came chokingly.
" There is no question of kindness ; between
people who love each other there can be no
question of kindness ; but come " — pulling her-
self together — "we must not let ourselves be
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 369
silly, and make mountains out of molehills ; we
shall still be able to see a great deal of each other.
It is not more than five minutes' walk from the
Slammers' house here."
" The Slammers ? "
" Yes ; how stupid of me ! " — hurrying on.
" I forgot that I had not explained to you that I
have arranged with Mrs. Slammer for you to
pay her a good long visit."
" Mrs. Slammer ! "
" Yes " — still more rapidly. " You know that
she is a sort of connection of yours ; and she
has none of that unamiable feeling about — about
the past which you told me your relations in
general had shown, and she is rather lonely, poor
woman. Entre nous, I do not think the marriage
is a great success ; she has taken an immense
fancy to you, and she needs a — a " — " secretary "
was on the edge of Lady Bletchley's tongue, but
a memory of Bonnybell's hopelessly fancy spelling
arrested it — " a nice girl to be a sort of daughter
to her. I — I could not think of anything better
for the moment. I do not see why it may not
work pretty well ; Colonel Slammer is a great
deal away from home."
Even the ndivetS of the last implication failed
to stir the least sense of merriment in Miss Ran-
some. With lips parted by horror and dismay,
she sat staring stupidly at the author of the
atrocious project thus revealed, while the near
future unrolled itself before her mental vision
in all its squalid terror ; a future of abetting a
second-rate fool in her chimerical efforts for the
2 B
370 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
elevation of minds to whose raising or lowering
Miss Ransome was and would remain absolutely
indifferent ; a future of conducting unwilling
maid-servants by bus and tram and subterranean
grimynesses to museums and libraries, which it
was impossible that they could dislike more than
she. The prospect was monstrous, unfaceable,
and for a moment or two the idea of evading it
by taking refuge with Flora, abandoning the
struggle to be or seem " nice," and returning to
the old life, presented itself as the most endurable
alternative. The old life and Charlie? No,
Charlie was more to be shunned than any museum !
That would not do. . . .
It feU out, with an irony whose pungency
Miss Ransome felt to the fuU, that the close of
the day on which a second shipwreck had over-
taken her light bark was dedicated to the last
" Happy Evening " of the season. Through
previous functions of the kind her gay insouciance
and adaptability had carried her triumphantly.
She had been a great success among the girls ;
had borne their affectionate horseplay with light,
good humour, and had received with gratitude,
tempered with regret that they should be so
audible to her coadjutor, the expressions of their
candidly uttered preference of her to Miss Sloggett.
To-day she had no coadjutor, the secretary being
confined to bed by one of those large outspoken
colds which always made Lady Bletchley angry.
As Bonnybell drove along eastwards her heart
felt depressed almost beyond the power of re-
bound. This was to be her life ; this process of
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 371
being bandied about from one set of unwilling
benefactors to another, at every change sinking
deeper into distasteful drudgery. This was all the
good she was to gain from being extraordinarily
pretty, and always ready to agree with everybody.
If the figure of Charlie had not stood like a beacon
warning her oiF, she would have gone back to the
old life, to the petits diners at improper restaurants ;
to the loose talk and equivocal love-making.
Whether it were due to the want of spring
in her own spirits, or simply to the agency of an
unkind fate, the fact remained that the girls were
more unruly than usual, and more difficult to
amuse. It being Friday, dancing was not among
the pastimes allowed, yet Miss Ransome must
have been at her wits' end before proposing
the game of Consequences to which— as a last
resource, when the clamour was getting beyond
her control — she resorted.
" Had they ever played Consequences ? "
One girl answered, " Ow yes, miss, I 'ave
onst."
Pencils and papers were produced, and the
game began. Bonnybell herself was to read out
the papers at the end.
The results were disastrously successful, as far
as the entertainment of the players was con-
cerned, but also in some cases unspeakable. The
luckless initiator of the game was reduced to
having to pretend an inability to r^ad the hand-
writings submitted to her, floundering in efforts to
suppress and substitute. What they were doing
was invariably " kissing." " He gave her a kiss.
372 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
and she gave him a black eye." "They met, as
often as not, in a ditch." " He said to her,
' Give me a kiss,' and she said to him, * Gow
'ome.' " The " consequences " were No
one could call Bonnybell squeamish, yet the con-
sequences bathed her in blushes.
A grimly amused sense of a likeness to poor
Sloggett in the ill-success of her evening's labours
streaked the ink of Miss Ransome's reflections
on her homeward way.
The butler, who opened the door to her,
gave her the information that her ladyship had
returned, and would like to speak to Miss
Ransome in her bedroom.
Felicity was in bed, but sitting up, with
writing materials before her, though looking stiU
more fagged than earlier in the day, and a good
deal flushed. She dismissed Bonnybell' s expres-
sions of surprised concern very slightly.
"Yes, the hall was hot. I felt rather faint,
and had to come out before the end, but the
meeting went oflF admirably. The delegates were
delighted with their reception. What I wanted
to say to you to-night, in case I might forget it
to-morrow morning — not that that is likely — ^is
that you must impress upon Mrs. Slammer that
she cannot expect your help at her stall at the
Cataleptics. JYou must explain to her that you
have been engaged to me since last autumn — ever
since last November."
CHAPTER XXXIII
After all, if she had but known, it would not
make much difFerence to Lady Bletchley what or
what manner of assistants Mrs. Slammer would
have at her stall at the Fancy Fair for All
England Cataleptics, which was to be held under
Distinguished Patronage in the Albert Hall at
mid-May, since at that date she herself had already
been two months dead. The sequence of events
which led to that catastrophe was a now not
uncommon one. A vital energy weakened by
over-exertion, a chill, a consultation, a successful
operation — in medical parlance, a successful
operation is often one in which the patient dies
next day, instead of immediately under the sur-
geon's knife — followed two days later by a
paragraph in all the morning papers : " We
regret to announce the death, which took place
at an early hour yesterday morning, from appen-
dicitis, at her residence in Hill Street, of Lady
Bletchley. The deceased lady, better known as
Mrs. Glanville — her husband. Lord Bletchley,
having succeeded to the title by the death of the
fourth Lord only in January last — was a well-
known figure in social and philanthropic circles,
373
374 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
where her loss will be long and deeply deplored.
She was " Then followed a lengthy list of
societies, associations, organizations, of hospitals,
institutions, and institutes, in connection with
which Lady Bletchley had cut a more or less
prominent figure.
Bonnybell read the flaming obituary notices
carefully to the end, and then laid down the
papers — her eyes felt tired — with a sigh. " Poor
dear thing, how she would have enjoyed them ! "
Miss Ransome still felt rather stunned from
the effects of the tragic haste with wjiich the
dreadful events of the last two or three days had
followed on each other's heels — from the moment
when she had left Felicity sitting up, flushed, in
bed, adjuring her not to play her false in the
matter of the bazaar. There had, indeed, been
haste, strange haste, on the dead woman's part to
leave a world so full of a double relish and savour
since her accession to fortune ; such haste that she
had not even waited to say a farewell word to the
husband whose anxiety to " have her " to himself
had been the motive for Bonnybell's ejection.
Tom had not returned in time to see his wife
alive. Though she had now been twenty-four
hours dead, he had not yet returned. Camilla
and Edward were in the house. They had come
at once. How widely all the many ways in which
Bonnybell had figured to herself the manner of
her next meeting with Edward had differed from
the real one ! Camilla ? No, there was no
change in Camilla. If anything, she looked
perhaps a shade less haggard than when Miss
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 375
Ransome had parted from her. Camilla's face
was one that matched a house of mourning. It
needed no dressing to harmonize with gloom.
On looking back, Miss Ransome seemed dimly
to remember that she herself had been voluntarily
embraced with an only half-smothered kindness,
but at the time of the Tancreds' arrival, when poor
Felicity's fate still hung in the balance, her own
mind was in such a state of strained tension and
grisly surprise that impressions came but blurred
to it.
Now that the power of observation was coming
back to her, the extreme wretchedness of Edward's
air struck her with a sense of excess. Of course,
the whole aiFair was terrible in its suddenness ;
but Edward had never seemed to be very fond of
his sister. Miss Ransome's knowledge of human
nature was not yet deep enough to teach her that
the death of a person to whom one has owed
and not given love sometimes brings with it a
bitterer pang than that of one to whom has been
given our poor best of tenderness.
Now that the thing was impossible, Edward
was telling himself what an innocent pretence it
would have been to have feigned a little interest
in his sister's unpractical schemes, a little admira-
tion for her sincere, if wasted, humanity. The
lesson that life dins into our ears with sucK
ceaseless iteration that it seems impossible that
any of us could ever fail to hear it is, To make
haste to be kind I Edward felt that he had not
made haste, and that now the opportunity had for
ever escaped him.
376 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
For a whole day and night Felicity had been
dead, and Tom had not yet returned. The tele-
grams sent after had missed him, owing to a change
in his quarters from one remote fishing village
to another. More and more urgent ones had
been sent in every direction, and to every one who
might possibly be in communication with him, but
so far he had not appeared. There could be no
doubt that he woiild arrive to-day. After all
Felicity's precautions against their meeting, it
would be Bonnybell that would receive him, and
not she. Nothing ever affected Miss Ransome
very deeply, but at this reflection a profounder
sense than ever before of the grim quality of
Fate's sense of humour penetrated her.
She was sitting idle, in the room which had
been the scene of so many of her mornings'
labours for Felicity. Evidence of the dead
woman's interrupted toils lay strewn all over the
large brass-bound writing-table, bulging out of
pigeon-holes in the bureau, occupying in their
varied multiplicity even a part of the carpet.
Poor Felicity ! how astonishing it was of her to
die ! A quite sincere compassion, and even a
small contraction of the heart, slid off into painful
speculation as -to how yesterday's catastrophe
would affect the speculator's future ? Would the
Slammer plan still hold good ? Perhaps, now
that there was no longer a socially influential
Lady Bletchley to oblige, it would be allowed by
its entertainer to damp off. And if it did not — if
it became action, how much more dismal a future
it involved than it had done, even in its original
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 377
dreary conception ! Had poor Felicity lived, she
would always have been a resource, a refuge,
an antidote ! She would have been always joy-
fully grateful for as much of her society as Miss
Ransome could spare ; as much, that is, as
would have been consistent with keeping her well
separated from Tom. 'Tom !
Bonnybell's thoughts came to a full stop upon
the name. Irony, irony 1 Who was there to
prevent her meeting Tom now .'' Poor Felicity !
She was going to meet him that very minute,
meet him tete-k-tSte ! His footfall was inaudible
upon the thickly carpeted stairs ; but the turning
of the door-handle gave her an instant of pre-
paration. It was as well that she had expected,
since otherwise she would scarcely have recognized
him ! Where was the rubicund, pink-clean,
amorously smiling Tom of her recollection ?
Could this livid, staring-haired, unshorn stranger,
whose eyes were wild with misery, and mouth
twitched with pain, be indeed he ?
The first moment that their looks crossed,
Bonnybell saw that the sight of her gave him a
shock of surprise. Poor Felicity ! It flashed
through the girl's mind in a moment that Tom's
wife had hidden from him all along the fact of
her being a guest in his house. The look of
surprise vanished, as it had come, instantaneously.
It was clear that in his whole being there was no
room for any feeling but one. (Perhaps, after all.
Felicity had spoken the truth ! Perhaps, after
all, he would have liked to have her to himself ! )
" So I am too late ? "
378 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" Yes."
« When ? "
" Yesterday morning, at twenty minutes to
eight."
*' Did she leave any message for me ? "
" She was unconscious."
At that answer it seemed as if there could be
nothing more of any consequence to him on
earth. He asked no further questions, but sat
down heavily on a chair — a business-like, green-
leather-seated one — which had so often held the
form of Felicity as she dictated her circulars,
notices, and leaflets.
Bonnybell stood -beside him, a slender, silent
image of sympathy.. How very much sorrier he
was than she had expected ! What sort of thi^jgs
ought she to say to him ? A vague idea of
having heard that people sinking into a stunned
state from grief ought to be roused crossed her
mind. How was he to be roused ?
" As long as she was conscious she was always
talking of you."
At that he broke into loud weeping. " If I
could have heard her speak just once again— just
to teU me that she forgave me ! "
" I am sure that she did not think there was
anything to forgive."
" Oh, but there was — plenty^'
He was so evidently going over in acute
remorse his past peccadilloes, that Bonnybell fell
silent again, divided between a repelled pity —
his noisy grief reminded her of Toby, never a
pleasing memory — and an uncomfortable wonder
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 379
whether, in his present frame of mind, she herself
might not be a somewhat unwelcome object to
him ? How curiously tender some men's con-
sciences were ! After all, what had poor old
Tom to reproach himself with ? — some sly and
invariably baffled attempts at caresses, and a few
silly letters !
" She said over and over again to me how
kind and indulgent you always were to her ! "
" Kind, indulgent !" he repeated, from between
his hard sobs. " Was that the way she put it ?
Good God ! but it was just like her ! There
never was such an angel of goodness and gentle-
ness and forbearance ! Married five and twenty
years — we should have kept our silver wedding
this year — and I never had a cross word from her
all that time ! "
" I know you had not."
It was not in the least true. Many were
the pungent snubs that, on her first visit. Miss
Ransome had heard administered by Felicity to
her mate, and many the nettled retorts with which
he had answered. But she saw that he believed
in the perfect truth of his statement, and that it
gave him a sort of relief from his misery to raise
his lost wife to the clouds and depress himself to
the pit.
" Just look round," he went on, turning his
streaming and reddened eyes about the room
upon the evidences of Felicity's labours. " This
was her life — ^always working for others ; never
giving a thought to herself; working herself to
death for other people ; but all on the quiet !
38o A WAIF'S PROGRESS
You never would have known it from her ! Never
a word of boasting ; just doing it for the love of
the thing, not wanting any credit or glory for
herself!"
He paused, not because his Cornucopia of
praises was empty, but because tears strangled
him. Bonnybell listened in covert wonder. Was
it possible that he believed all that ? Could not
he have found something a little nearer the truth
to say of her ?
" And there was I all the time, in my beastly
selfishness, thinking of nothing but my own
amusements ; shirking everything disagreeable ;
laying everything on her shoulders ; never
profiting in the least by her example ; disregard-
ing her advice ; wasting my time in doing
things that I knew she disapproved of ! "
The picture was to the ftall as overcharged as
the companion portrait had been, but it was not
yet highly coloured enough to suit the painter's
fancy ; and since it gave a little relief to the
poor man's remorse, Bonnybell took care not to
interrupt him.
" I often hurt her feelings by the things I
did, even making much of other people under
her very eyes ! She never took the least notice,
or gave me one word of reproach ; but I am sure
it hurt her, though she must have known how
little I cared about them, about anybody, or any-
thing, in comparison of her ! "
In the bewildered agony of his mind, poor
Tom had evidently clean forgotten how prominent
a place in the group alluded to the lady before
A WAIK'S FKOURESS 381
him had taken ; but she herself was somewhat
acutely conscious of it, and since she had always
been able to laugh at her own expense, a dread-
ful sense of amusement tinged the distress and
awkwardness of the situation,
" She was a wonderfully handsome woman to
her last day, wasn't she ? I never went into a
room with her that she was not the best-looking
woman there ; but you have no conception what
she was when I married her ; her beauty was
q uite — quite — unearthly. ' '
" I can well believe it ! "
Truth had once again returned to the bottom
of her well. Felicity's somewhat buxom charms
had never struck Bonnybell as of so overpowering
a character either in the present or the past. But
if ever there was a pardonable fiction it lay in her
acquiescence in his flights of remorseful fancy.
For another half-hour he went on piling up
encomiums, some partially merited, some grossly
undeserved, upon his departed wife, and heighten-
ing the whiteness of her portrait by additional
strokes of lampblack added to his own, until at
last he stopped, exhausted, there being no more
glory left in memory or imagination to pile upon
her, nor any further disgrace with which to daub
himself. But the exercise had done him good.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Felicity's obsequies had been celebrated with
due pomp, and — fate still continuing in her ironic
vein — Lady Bletchley's first visit to the most
imposing of her new country houses^there were
half a dozen of them — was made under circum-
stances which precluded all enjoyment of its
beauties.
As Miss Ransome noted the throng of dele-
gates and journalists who crowded round Felicity's
grave, and glanced at the inscriptions on gigantic
wreaths sent by societies and institutions, she
repeated to herself with less of cynicism than sin-
cere compassion, " Poor thing, how she would
have enjoyed it ! "
And now the mourners were back again in
Hill Street, and feeling the dull relief that ensues
after an ended ordeal.
Edward, who had been with the widower, had
just received and obeyed a summons to Camilla.
He found her lying on the sofa in her dressing-
room. She was doing it thoroughly, as she did
everything ; that is to say, she lay perfectly flat,
with her head resting on a cushion ; but her
382
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 383
attitude managed to express a protest which pro-
claimed that its adoption was due solely to doctor's
orders, and as little as possible to any inclination
towards self-indulgence.
" How is he now ? "
" Oh, he'll be all right."
"Is he calmer ? "
" Yes, now and then. He has just been telling
me of a new man whom his keeper has heard of
to get pheasants' eggs from."
Mrs. Tancred looked at her husband with
penetrating surprise. She had never known
Edward intolerant before ; yet there was not
much warmth of compassion in his tone. To one
of Edward's nature, noise and grief were im-
possible companions, and his brother-in-law's un-
controlled demonstration at the graveside had, as
Camilla was aware, been almost intolerable to her
husband.
" Sorrow affects people in different ways,"
she said, with a rebuke which was gently meant,
though it sounded, as her mildest utterances
always did, severe and didactic.
" Yes, I know ; but he made such an
exhibition of himself."
There was a moment's silence.
" You will be glad to get back to Stillington ?"
« Yes."
Another pause.
" We must take Bonnybell with us."
At that he gave — not a stage start, but one
of those almost invisible movements for which
stage starts are meant to stand.
384 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
" We cannot, of course, leave her here."
There was no form of ejaculation or assent
in the whole range of language strong enough
to express Mr. Tancred's acquiescence in this
impossibility, so he said only —
" No."
" I have not yet talked to her about her
plans ; if she has made any — and I doubt her
having gone even so far — they are probably
perfectly irrational and chimerical."
" I dare say."
" I do not even know — the intercourse
between us has been so slack of late — whether —
under your sister's auspices — she has made any
friends that could be useful or helpful to her."
Any one but Camilla would at such a moment
have prefixed a " poor " to Felicity's name ; but
Mrs. Tancred would have scorned to employ the
adjective to any him or her simply because they
were dead. To her it seemed a very doubtful
ground for compassion.
Edward shook his head. .
" Under the circumstances, I think there is
no doubt that it is our duty to have her back, at
all events, for a while."
This time the hearer gave at first no sign of
either acquiescence or dissent ; then he spoke —
not easily.
" But you f how about you f "
" How about me ? " she repeated. " You know
that for the present my malady seems to be at a
standstill ; whether owing or not to the treatment
I have been undergoing I cannot tell ; personally
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 385
I believe it to be only what I suppose would be
called a reprieve^ and that the operation, which
lately seemed imminent, is only deferred for a
more or less brief period. Anyhow, the fact
remains, that I have no longer an excuse for
avoiding duties disagreeable or otherwise ; and I
believe the case we are discussing comes under
one or other of those heads."
There could be no doubt in the husband's
mind under which head the return of Miss Ran-
some was mentally classed by his wife, though
she magnanimously refrained from specifying it.
" It is like you to propose it," he answered
slowly ; but more laggingly still, " I cannot see
why you should embitter your life for the sake of
a person who, after all, has no real claim upon
you."
. Camilla looked at him with a calm compassion,
accurately gauging what an utterance in such
absolute discord with his own clearly divined
inclinations had cost him.
" My life is not so easily embittered," she
rejoined quietly, " and I have never wished or
expected personal enjoyment to have a very
prominent part in my programme — you need not
feel any disquiet on that head — and besides " — her
usual rigid truthfulness combining with a wish to
meet her companion's self-sacrificing utterance in
a like spirit to produce the concluding, "and
besides, there is much about the girl as an inmate
that is not disagreeable to me."
If he had followed his impulses, he would
have broken out into emphatic expressions of
2 c
386 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
gratitude ; but realizing just in time what a fright-
ful lapse from taste and seemliness it would
involve to accept as a personal kindness done to
himself the contemplated step, he refrained.
" It shall be, of course, as you wish," he said,
and so left the room.
He left the house too, the confinement of walls
and roof seeming unbearable. He must have open
air and solitude in which to bring himself face to
face with the new prospect, at which in his wife's
presence he had trusted himself to give only a
glance. What right had he to think it so fair ?
He must call mightily upon Reason and Honour
to cudgel him, if necessary, out of so mad and
ruinous a belief. But they might cudgel him as
they would — and they did belabour him soundly
during the next hour — nothing could hinder him
from looking at the Great Scheme of Things from
a different standpoint to that with which he had
regarded it as he remorsefully followed his too-
little-loved sister's hearse ! Since those moments
of woolly despair what had happened to better
his lot or brighten his prospects ? What had
happened, but that a young girl of vicious origin
and upbringing, standing upon a hopelessly low
plane of thought and action, a young girl who had
brought discomfort and scandal into his home,
alienated his friends, and poisoned his wife's peace,
was to be given the opportunity of pursuing and
completing her work of disintegration ! What
but this had happened to make " the March sun
shine like May," to turn the dry easterly blast
into a zephyr .? Reason and Honour combined
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 387
to answer emphatically, *' Nothing, less than
nothing ! " but another voice out-shouted them,
dumbing them with its insistent joyous assevera-
tion, " Everything ! " This voice was so im-
possible to silence, that at last he was reduced to
listening to it, to asking it what it had to say for
itself; and it began lengthily to explain. There
were, certainly, disadvantages inseparable from the
girl's resumption of her place at his fireside —
he tried to school himself into treating her in his
innermost thoughts merely as " the girl " — but
there would be good to be extracted from it
too, if it was taken in the right way. Never
could she hope to be under such wholesome and
^lev^ting an influence as his wife's ; and he him-
self might do something too, if he took the
relation in the right way. Everything depended
oji taking it in the right way ! He would begin
at once — the very next time that they met — to set
it upon a safe basis ; to give the keynote of their
future intercourse, and, with her extraordinary
quickness and brightness, she would at once catch
the right tone and keep it. God knows he had
tried to do his best for her ; to give her some
notion of honour and truth, and decent living ;
and he had made some progress. She lied still,
but she said fewer indecent things ; and she tried
with such sweet docility to see his point of view,
when she managed to grasp what it was.
Thank God, he had nothing to reproach him-
self with, nothing, that is, that was visible or
audible to any human eye or ear ; but some-
times the ground had seemed to be crumbling
388 A .WAIFS PROGRESS
into sand under his feet. Henceforth the foun-
dation on which he and she were together to stand
was to be of granite ; and if, by-and-by, he
were to succeed — he and his wife together — in
leading her on and up, till her mind and moral
nature more nearly matched her exquisite body,
what an entrancing litde friend she would make
for them both ! how she would soothe and
brighten their waning years !
To be quite on the safe side, he framed to him-
self the fiction that Camilla and he were coeval.
That there should be any delay in embarking
on this halcyon plan seemed unendurable, and he
began at once to reflect upon the earliest train by
which he and his augmented party might return
to Stillington on the morrow.
It was in the highest degree unseemly to
suspect Tom, at such an infant stage of his loud
sorrow and early widowhood ; but Edward knew
his brother-in-law well enough to be quite sure
that the lapse of a very few days would see him
— if Bonnybell wore an apron — drying his eyes
upon a corner of it. So Mr. Tancred wondered
whether his wife would think the 8.50 train too
early.
Meanwhile, the cause of Mr. Tancred's self-
schoolings was in no danger of incurring a remorse
like his for being too cheerful. She was alone
in a sitting-room, which had been occupied by her
during the last two or three days, because, since
it looked to the back, its blinds had not needed
to be pulled down, and she was sitting in an
attitude of, for once, entirely unstudied dejection.
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 389
Since no one was likely to intrude upon her,
she might be and look just as miserable or
as little miserable as she felt inclined. The
quantum of grief expressed by her whole person
was enough to have satisfied even the claims of
Tom's gluttonous demands upon his friends for a
sorrow as vociferous as his own.
For once Miss Ransome's philosophy was
quite out of gear, and her spirits had descended
below the soles of her feet, and abode there. She
had cried a good deal, though not in public — a
thing which she always disliked. Private weeping
could serve no purpose of cajoling, persuading, or
mollifying, and was likely to be damaging to that
stock in trade of which her eyes formed so valu-
able an item ; and she had hated the funeral.
It had reminded her of poor Claire's, though,
except in the main fact, no other functions could
ever have differed more widely ; and for " Claire "
in her small, cool heart, there always lingered a
remnant of rueful pity, though it never ran to the
length of wishing to have her back again.
Tom's deportment and appearance at the
ceremony had been as repulsive to her as to his
brother-in-law. Why^ in Heaven's name, if he
were so overwhelmed with grief at the loss of a
wife, his tenderness to whom while in life had
been eked out by so many fond by-plays with
others, could not he control it as an English
gentleman of his class and breeding was bound
to do ? Why, in the face of that large and
reverent gathering, need he have roared like a
bull and blubbered like a whipped schoolboy ?
390 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
And why, oh, why need Edward and he have
stood side by side, so as to bring into monstrous
prominence the contrast between them ? Not
even grief had succeeded in paling Tom, and
the image of his rubicund face defaced by tears,
of his bulky outline and shining bared head
beside the silent pale dignity of Edward's sorrow,
filled Bonnybell with physical disgust.
Her thoughts moved on a little from the
funeral to a scene that followed the return from
it. " Poor old woman, she really did not do
it badly, considering how litde practice she has
had in pretending. I could have given her a few
hints, but it really was a very creditable perform-
ance ; and in a way I think it was a disappoint-
ment to her to forego continuing my education.
Never again can she hope to have a pupil who
set off by, and meant to go on, knowing as litde
as I ! "
Upon the hitherto unlightened gloom of her
spirits there played a little ray of cynic mirth,
but the gust of a heavy sigh blew it out. " But
what a relief too ! I saw a sort of shining come
into her poor old eyes — they are not nearly so
hard and horny as they were when first I knew
them — and when she at last took in that I was in
earnest, that the Slammers' invitation was not
one of my tasteful embroideries, how hard she
ti-ied not to beam too flagrantly ! "
A pause, and then a still heavier sigh than
the last. " I was right, undoubtedly I was right.
It would have been madness. It may be all very
weU for people who have a high level, and think
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 391
they can keep up to it — it would still remain
to be proved if they could — but as for me, I
never had any level to speak of, and I do not
possess that confidence in myself which I once
had. I believe I am quite capable of committing
a sottise if I put myself in the way of it ; and at
this time of the year I suppose all those horrid
birds in the copse would be love-making, and it
might have been catching."
As she spoke, the door gently opened ; and,
since the sitting-room was a general one there
was nothing strange in the fact, the object of her
thoughts came in.
" I was looking for you."
" Were you ? "
" My wife will have told you that we hope,
unless you have any objection to the plan, to take
you back to Stillington with us to-morrow, and
I have come to ask you if the 8.50 from Pad'-
dington would be too early for you."
He had got the right key, hospitable and
courteous, erring perhaps a little on the side of
excess in the way of formality, but that was a
fault on the safe side.
Before he spoke, Bonnybell had known that
he had not yet heard, and that it would be her
task to tell him. She saw also, with a slight tinge
of bitter amusement, his anxiety not to let their
point of departure for the long ordeal ahead of
them be one of too great intimacy. (" Reassure
yourself, my poor Edward ; you may set your
mind at rest.")
The lack of her usual civil promptness in
392 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
acknowledging a courtesy caused him a slight
surprise, but it was so far not coupled with any
misgiving. It did not need any of that self-esteem
in which Edward was so singularly lacking to
feel sure that his hearer could have no alterna-
tive plan which she would think preferable to the
one now offered her, so he added, still with that
soupgon of formality —
" I ought to apologize for suggesting such an
unreasonable hour."
Consciousness of his endeavour to keep her
at arm's length gave her the strength to show
him the needlessness of his precautions, though
her mode of opening the subject was misleading.
" You always thought me rather a sluggard,"
she said softly ; " do you remember ? "
But no " do you remembers " were to enter
into his programme, and though more against
the grain than he liked to own, he cut this one
short.
"I never could understand why there is a
virtue per se in getting up early."
" No," she answered, acquiescing sweetly in the
lopping off the head of her bud of reminiscence ;
"there are enough real virtues and vices, aren't
there, without loading us with mock ones ? "
He had led the talk to a safe abstraction,
yet already he felt the strain.
" It is settled, then .-' " — taking for granted
with unconscious arbitrariness what she had not
said— "8.50."
To his intense surprise and alarm her answer
was to rise from the depths of her chair — what a
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 393
little slip of a thing she looked in her new mourn-
ing ! Launce's description of his sister, " White
as a lily and small as a wand," darted across
Edward's mind— and drawing near him, she laid
her hand upon his coat-sleeve. Evidently the
keeping at arm's length would be a harder task
than he had promised himself.
"No, it is not settled," she said; "nothing
about it is settled except that you have made
one poor creature even more everlastingly your
debtor than she was before by proposing it."
He looked back at her aghast, yet only half
believing, unconscious of what at any other
moment he would have been tinglingly aware,
the clasp of her fingers on his arm. He knew
her to be so complete a liar, that the mere fact
of her announcing that she did not purpose to
return to Stillington was, as likely as not, to
mean that she had every intention of doing so.
Was this refusal one of her infinite wiles to
lure him into cajoling and caressing her into
compliance .''
"Am I to understand that you have made
other plans ? " His voice was frosty ; too frosty,
perhaps, or it seemed so to himself, for he added
more in his own manner, "I beg your pardon
for what may sound like an impertinent intrusion,
but you have taken me by surprise."
The chill in his tone had loosened her clasp
upon his sleeve, and they stood near but apart
from one another.
" I am going to stay with the Slammers."
" The Slammers ? "
394 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
There was such hopeless bewilderment in his
repetition of the name that she felt the need of
enlightening him.
" I am stupid to-day ; probably you have
never heard of them. I was forgetting how little
you know of the life here of late."
"You need not remind me that I was a
neglectful brother," he answered, in a key of
such profound regret that she took refuge from
her dangerous pity of him in explanation.
" They are, in a way, connections of mine — at
least, he is'; his name was Ransome before he
married her. He was, like the rest of the family,
not a very shining light, I believe, but now he
has ranged himself, I suppose, and she is very
philanthropic and platformy and religious,"
He received the blow in total silence, being
not one of those who cry out when they are
hurt. When at last he spoke, it was with a
measured impartiality, which sounded to himself
grossly overdone.
" I suppose that you are the best judge of
what makes for your happiness."
" One ought not to think of one's own happi-
ness," she answered, in her "nicest" manner;
then with a flash of self-ridicule for serving up so
coarsely dressed a dish of " goodness " to one
who knew her much too well to swallow it, she
added with a laugh, whose hysteric quality, if
half affected, was also half natural — " at least, so
Mrs. Slammer tells her husband when she whips
oiF her cordon bleu half an hour before dinner to
see the Monument."
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 395
Her mental comment on her own speech —
for she was not one with whom thought and
word ever flowed parallel — ran thus : " What
atrocious taste to be making bad jests to poor
Felicity's brother on the day of the funeral ! but
if I am not flippant, God knows what I may
say or do ! "
He stood before her absolutely still, not
moving a muscle at her dull pleasantry.
" Have you thought it well over ? Are you
quite sure that it would not be better for you
to come back with us to Stillington to-morrow ? "
Once again the calm aloofness of his tone
sounded overdone to Edward's ear, but it did
not for a moment take in his hearer. (" Poor
fellow, how hard he is trying to be good ! I
suppose it is a beautiful sight, and I must not
be outdone.") There was the gentlest rebuke
in her sorrowful little voice as she answered —
"I know that you are not likely to be joking
to-day ; but when you ask that you seem to be
mocking me."
" Then why do you refuse ? "
She dropped her eyes to the carpet, and gave
him the opportunity of verifying that the large
white lids were a little swollen and discoloured
with weeping. He had to count thirty clock-
beats before her answer came. ("If I give in
now, I am done for," she was saying to herself.
"At the present moment I feel as if Edward
would make up for everything ; as if nothing in
the world would be of any value without him,
but / know all the while that I do not really think
396 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
so") She raised her eyes slowly, as if tears made
them difficult to lift.
" It would be better for me ; but would it be
better for Camilla ? "
In the tension of the moment neither of
them noticed Bonnybell's unwonted use of Mrs.
Tancred's Christian name. (She must have been
mistaken in thinking that Edward looked white
as he stood by his sister's grave. If he was
white then, what was he now .'')
"Do not misunderstand me," she went on,
almost under her breath, but quite distinctly ;
"what I mean to say is that I do not see how
things are changed since I was sent away because
she was too ill to have the worry and anxiety
of me."
If Bonnybell's eyes had found it hard to raise
themselves, Edward's lips found it harder still to
frame the few words of his response.
" She is in stronger health than she was then."
" For the moment, yes ; but it may be only
a reprieve. She told me herself that she looked
upon it only as a reprieve."
In the eagerness and real emotion with which
she was putting forth her apology, Miss Ransome
forgot for the moment to postulate the supposable
regret which she had always believed to be non-
existent in the mind of the husband at the
probability of his wife's death ; yet for a moment
that oversight gave the husband an acute revulsion
of feeling.
" God grant she may be wrong ! " he said
with a low fervency which, as his hearer felt,
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 397
could not have been put on. She saw her error,
and hastened to repair it.
" I was going to say you cannot wish it more
than I do 1 " — with a slight low laugh at the
exaggeration of her own expression — "but I do
wish it with all my heart ! I should be a monster
of ingratitude if I did not."
It was very nearly true. Since Camilla's death
could in no wise profit her, and the memory of
her solid kindliness was fresh and vivid, Miss
Ransome did wish, with as much sincerity as she
was capable of, that Camilla should live, and not
die, if she thought such a life as hers worth
having.
After that there was not much more to be
said, and in a few moments he left her. Neither
by the 8.50 nor by any other train was she to
return to his hearth's side. As he reached the
door she called softly after him ; since she was
quite safe now she might give herself that slight
indulgence —
"Give my love to the birds. I hope that
your next pupil will be quicker in learning your
lessons about them."
He answered, "I shall never have another
pupil ; " and it was to his credit that this was the
nearest he ever went to a declaration.
CHAPTER XXXV
A YEAR and a day had passed since Lady
Bletchley's obsequies. (The word is what she
would herself have liked to hear applied to them.)
All the presidencies, vice-presidencies, member-
ships of committees and goveriiing bodies which
she had so stirringly filled, had been apportioned
among half a dozen less active-minded holders ;
and though the newspapers of the day had pro-
nounced her loss to be an irreparable one, to
the naked eye it seemed already repaired. On
the other hand, her memory probably lurked
unsuspected in the breasts of recipients of her
least trumpeted benefactions. The winter had
been mild, and the season promised to be a
forward one.
"Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean,
A quickening life from the earth's heart had burst ;
As it has ever done with change and motion.
From the great Morning of the world when first
God dawned on chaos."
And above the sheeted primroses in the Stillington
woods the birds' calls and rondels rang out in
intemperate gladness. That was outside ; within,
398
A WAIFS PROGRESS 399
a white woman lay on a bed — a white woman
lately escaped from the surgeon's knife, escaped
with life from the surgeon's hands.
Camilla, in the late months of growing suffer-
ing, had made every disposition for death ; had
" set her house " in order — not that it ever
needed that — and had turned her stern face with
silent valour towards the unpierceable darkness
of the grave. And Death would have none of
her ! Not only had the operation she had under-
gone been performed successfully, in a different
sense from poor Felicity's, but it had revealed
the comparatively harmless character of the
malady that had rendered it necessary. Camilla
was to live, and not die.
By the bedside a man knelt, holding her wan
hands. She was whispering to him.
" Can you forgive me ? "
" Forgive you ? For what ? "
" For not having died 1 Not — having — set
you — free."
He bowed his head on her hands ; and she
felt his tears upon them. Then he lifted his
face.
" Forgive you ! Forgive the one person in
the world who loves me for having the charity
not to leave me ! "
Though Mrs. Tancred's convalescence was a
rapid one, she was not for some days allowed
to see her correspondence, nor read any of the
numerous letters of sympathy and congratulation
addressed to her husband. Amongst the first
400 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
put into her hands by the latter was one which
ran as follows. It was dated on the eve of the
operation.
"212, Green Street,
" London, W.
" My DEAR Mr. Tancred,
" I have heard of the dreadful anxiety
you are in about dearest Mrs. Tancred, and
must send you a line to tell you how deeply,
deeply I simpathize with you ! " (The first i in
simpathize had looked to the writer a little odd,
but not enough so to cause alteration of the
vowel.) " If you could let me know how she
gets over it, I should be so, so grateful to you !
I hope you will not think me impertinent for
writing to you, but I am so miserable about
you both !
" Your deeply grieved
"BONNYBELL."
"P.S. — I should not tell you at such a
moment, only that I cannot bear you to hear from
any one else, that Lord Bletchley has persuaded
me to marry him. I did not at all wish to at
first — you know that I always rather hated the
idea of marrying — but I cannot stay on here, as
complic^ations have arisen."
Miss Ransome had meant to have run that
doubtful k to earth in the dictionary, but in the
ardour of composition had forgotten this necessary
precaution. " Of course, Edward will understand
that Colonel Slammer has been making love to
A WAIF'S PROGRESS 401
me ! " At this point the writer had laid down her
pen, and rested her pensive head upon a left hand
from which some very fine diamonds shot their
reconciling sparkle, " It seems brutal to tell him
just at this moment, of all others, but I know that
it is the truest kindness. He is so good-hearted
that he will feel the blow less while he is sooth-
ing poor dear Camilla's last moments." She
glanced at her betrothal ring. "I know I shall
be glad by-and-by ; but it does seem rather dearly
bought just now." With a sigh she resumed
her pen —
" We are both rather alone in the world, and
I am sure he will be kind to me. We shall be
much more like father and daughter than husband
and wife."
Camilla laid down the letter. "It seems
rather soon," she said ; and that was the only
comment which the remarriage of their connection
with their prot^gie ever evoked between husband
and wife.
At the time it was being uttered Bonnybell
was sitting on a sofa in the Slammer drawing-
room beside her fianci. A barrier of sofa-
cushions had — accidentally as it appeared to Tom
— risen between them. Across, but unable to
level them, the lover leaned and beamed.
" And you are quite sure that you never were
in love with any one else before ? "
" Never ! "
" Not with Toby Aylmer ? "
« How likely ! "
2 D
402 A WAIF'S PROGRESS
"Nor" — a hesitation and an altered tone —
" nor — with — Edward Tancred ? "
" If you are going to ask me ridiculous and
improper questions, I shall be obliged to give up
talking to you."
FINIS
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