awful barrier, he could not let the matter rest; it had become an obsession with him to prove that cleverness was more than the air of the aristocrat.

Now, when he had succeeded in his long campaign, when he was at the height of his fame, and Valetta, over whom he had triumphed, was practically banished, Black was sincerely sorry. He discovered her address in Bordighera, and decided to make full amends.

So he wrote a letter, a long and very tactful letter, in which he humbled himself, while disclaiming any past intention to bring pain to the Duchess. He admitted, nevertheless, that a foolish and altogether wrong-headed public had, in fact, misrepresented him, and he begged that the Duchess would forgive him, and promised that in the event of such forgiveness being graciously bestowed he would call in every copy of the book Mrs. Scroggins, and never permit the play to be revived.

He posted his letter and waited anxiously for a reply, but no reply came.

He blamed the Continental postal system. He did not think it possible that the letter could have reached its destination, and though it was the height of the season and he would miss Ascot, he decided to go to Bordighera and make his amend in person.

He called at the address he had been given, the morning after his arrival, but he was told by the same English maid

he had traveled with in the omnibus that the Duchess of Tottenham was not at home.

He left a card and called again in the afternoon, with no better luck.

But on the second morning he met Valetta in the Gardens. She was in a bath-chair-her health had not been good lately. Black lifted his hat gracefully, and requested the chair-man to stop.

"Forgive me one moment, Duchess," he began, and continued, with some eloquence, to repeat the matter of his letter. He was quite humble and apologetic to this exiled aristocrat; he made no claim to have achieved any victory; the matter of his apology and the manner of its delivery were unimpeachable.

Valetta sat quite still, a faint smile on her lips, but she did not look at him until he had finished. Then she lifted her head with that gesture which had become so familiar to the great English public, her eyes rested on him for one brief moment, and passed him by.

"Insufferable!" she said, distinctly, addressing the back of the bath-chair-man.

The invalid-chair passed on with dignity and left Cunningham Black in the avenue. He was still bareheaded, and, curiously enough, he was thinking of the bookshop.

He remembered that in the old, old days before he was famous, he had sometimes been cheeky to his father's customers.

I

CHAPTER VII

T was a breezy June afternoon, with the young summer at its freshest and lustiest.

Lord and Lady Newbury were strolling in the garden at Hoddon Grey. The long, low line of the house rose behind them an attractive house and an old one, but with no architectural features to speak of, except a high-pitched, mossy roof, a picturesque series of dormer-windows, and a high gable and small lantern cupola at the farther end, which marked the private chapel. The house was evidently roomy, but built for comfort, not display. The garden, with its spreading slopes and knolls, was simple and oldfashioned, in keeping thereby with the general aspect of the two people who were walking up and down the front lawn together.

Lord William Newbury was a man of sixty-five, tall and slenderly built. His pale hazel eyes, dreamily kind, were the prominent feature of his face; he had very thin, flat cheeks, and his white hair he was walking bareheaded-was blown back from a brow which, like the delicate mouth, was still young, almost boyish. Sweetness, and a rather weak refinement a stranger would probably have summed up his first impressions of Lord William, drawn from his bodily presence, in some such words. But the stranger who did so would have been singularly wide of the mark. His wife beside him looked even frailer and slighter than he. A small and mouselike woman, dressed in gray clothes of the simplest and plainest make and wearing a shady garden hat, her keen black eyes in her shriveled face gave that clear promise of strong character in which her husband's aspect, at first sight, was lacking. But Lady William knew her place. She was the most submissive and the

most docile of wives, and on no other terms would life have been either possible or happy in her husband's company.

They were discussing with some eagerness the approaching arrival of their week-end guests, Lady Coryston and Marcia, the new dean of a neighboring cathedral, an ex-Cabinet Minister, and an Oxford professor. But the talk, however it circled, had a way of returning to Marcia. It was evident that she held the field.

"It is so strange that I have scarcely seen her!" Lady William was saying, in a tone which was not without its note of complaint. "I hope dear Edward has not been too hasty in his choice. As for you, William, I don't believe you would know her again if you were to see her without her mother."

66

Oh yes, I should. Her mother introduced her to me at the Archbishop's party, and I talked to her a little. A very handsome young woman. I remember thinking her talk rather too theatrical."

"About theaters, you mean," sighed Lady William. "Well, that's the way with all the young people. The fuss people make about actors and actresses is perfectly ridiculous."

"I remember she talked to me enthusiastically about Madame Froment," said Lord William, in a tone of reminiscence. "I asked her whether she knew that Madame Froment had a scandalous story, and was not fit acquaintance for a young girl. And she opened her eyes at me as though I had propounded something absurd. One doesn't inquire about that!' she said, quite indignantly, I assure you, but only whether she can act.' It was curious, and rather disquieting, to see so much decision-self-assertion-in so young a woman."

"Oh, well, Edward will change all

that." Lady William's voice was gently confident. "He assures me that she has excellent principles-a fine character, really-though quite undeveloped. He thinks she will be readily guided by one she loves."

"I hope so, for Edward's sake, for he is very much in love. I trust he is not letting inclination run away with him. So much to all of us-depends on his marriage!"

Lord William, frowning a little, paused a moment in his walk and turned his eyes to the house. Hoddon Grey had only become his personal property some three years before this date; but ever since his boyhood it had been associated for him with hallowed images and recollections. It had been the dower-house of his widowed mother, and after her death his brother, a widower with one crippled son, had owned it for nearly a quarter of a century. Both father and son had belonged to the straitest sect of AngloCatholicism; their tender devotion to each other had touched with beauty the austerity and seclusion of their lives. Yet at times Hoddon Grey had sheltered large gatherings-gatherings of the high Puseyite party in the English Church, both lay and clerical. Pusey himself had preached in the chapel; Liddon, with the Italianate profile-orator and ascetic might have been seen strolling under the trees where Lord and Lady William were strolling now; Manning, hatchet-faced, jealous and self-conscious, had made fugitive appearances there; even the great Newman himself, in his extreme old age, had once rested there on a journey and given his Cardinal's blessing to the sons of one of his former comrades in the Oxford movement.

Every stone in the house, every alley in the garden was sacred in Lord William's eyes. To most men the house they love represents either the dignity and pride of family, or else successful moneymaking and the pleasure of indulged tastes. But to Lord William Newbury the house of Hoddon Grey stood as the symbol of a spiritual campaign in which his forebears, himself, and his son were all equally enrolled-the endless, unrelenting campaign of the Church against the world, the Christian against the unbeliever.

...

His wife broke in upon his reverie. "Are you going to say anything about Lord Coryston's letter, William?"

Lord William started.

"What-to his mother? Certainly not, Albinia!" He straightened his shoulders. "It is my intention to take no notice of it whatever."

"You have not even acknowledged it?” she asked, timidly.

"A line-in the third person." "Edward thinks Lady Coryston most unwise-"

"So she is most unwise!" cried Lord William, warmly. "Coryston has every right to complain of her."

"You think she has done wrong?"

"Certainly. A woman has no right to do such things, whatever her son may be. For a woman to take upon herself the sole direction and disposal of such properties as the Coryston properties is to step outside the bounds of her sex; it is to claim something which a woman ought not to claim - something altogether monstrous and unnatural!"

Lord William's thin features had flushed under a sudden rush of feeling. His wife could not help the sudden thought, "But if we had had an infidel or agnostic son-?"

Aloud she said, "You don't think his being such a Radical-so dreadfully extreme and revolutionary-justifies her?”

"Not at all! That was God's willthe cross she had to bear. She interferes with the course of Providence-presumptuously interferes with it-doing evil that what she conceives to be good may come. A woman must persuade men by gentleness-not govern them by force. If she attempts that, she is usurping what does not-what never can-belong to her."

The churchman had momentarily disappeared in the indignant stickler for male prerogative and the time-honored laws of English inheritance. Lady William acquiesced in silence. She, too, strongly disapproved of Lady Coryston's action toward her eldest son, abominable as Coryston's opinions were. Women, like minorities, must suffer; and she was glad to have her husband's word for it that it is not their business to correct or coerce their eldest sons, on the ground of political opinions, however grievous those opinions may be.