l'amour fait tout excuser, mais il faut être bien s?r qu'il y a de i amour.

miss anna hethbridge loved seymour michael with as great a love as her nature could compass.

when the news of his death reached her, at the profusely laden breakfast-table at jaggery house, clapham common, her first feeling was one of scornful anger towards a providence which could be so careless. life had always been prosperous for her, in a bourgeois, solidly wealthy way, entirely suited to her turn of mind. she had always had servants at her beck and call, whom she could abuse illogically and treat with an utter inconsequence inherent in her nature. she had been the spoilt child of a ponderous, thick-skinned father and a very suburban mother, who, out of her unexpected prosperity, could deny her daughter nothing.

three months after the receipt of the news anna hethbridge went down into hertfordshire, where, in the course of a visit at stagholme rectory, she met and became engaged to the squire of stagholme, james edward agar.

a month later she became the second wife of the simple-minded old country gentleman. it would be hard to say what motives prompted her to this apparently heartless action. some women are heartless—we know that. but anna hethbridge was too impulsive, too excitable, and too much given to pleasure to be devoid of heart. behind her action there must have been some strange, illogical, feminine motive, for there was a deliberation in every move—one of those motives which are quite beyond the masculine comprehension. one notices that when a woman takes action in this incomprehensible way her lady friends are never surprised; they seem to have some subtle sympathy with her. it is only the men who look puzzled, as if the ground beneath their feet were unstable. therefore there must be some influence at work, probably the same influence, under different forms, which urges women to those strange, inconsequent actions by which their lives are rendered miserable. men have not found it out yet.

anna hethbridge was at this time twenty-four years of age, rather pretty, with a vivacity of manner which only seemed frivolous to the more thoughtful of her acquaintances. the idea of her marrying old squire agar within six months of the untimely death of her clever lover, seymour michael, seemed so preposterous that her hostess, good, sentimental mrs. glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact, it was confided to her by miss hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her arrival at the rectory.

“confound it, maria,” exclaimed the rector testily, when the information was passed on to him later in the evening. “why could you not have foreseen such an absurd event?”

poor mrs. glynde looked distressed. she was a thin little woman, with an unsteady head, physically and morally speaking; full of kindness of heart, sentimentality, high-flown principles, and other bygone ladylike commodities. her small, eager face, of a ruddy and weather-worn complexion—as if she had, at some early period of her existence, been left out all night in an east wind—was puckered up with a sense of her own negligence.

she tried hard, poor little woman, to take a deep and christian interest in the welfare of her neighbours; but all the while she was conscious of failure. she knew that even at that moment, when she was sitting in her small arm-chair with clasped, guilty hands, her whole heart and soul were absorbed beyond retrieval in a small bundle of white flannel and pink humanity in a cradle upstairs.

the rector had dropped his weekly review upon his knees and was staring at her angrily.

“i really can't tell,” he continued, “what you can have been thinking about to let such a ridiculous thing come to pass. what are you thinking about now?”

“well, dear,” confessed the little woman shamedly, “i was thinking of baby—of dora.”

“thought so,” he snapped, with a little laugh, returning to his paper with a keen interest. but he did not seem to be following the printed lines.

“i suppose she was all right when you were up just now!” he said carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.

“yes, dear,” the lady replied. “she was asleep.”

and this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some recollection.

this happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully, and mrs. glynde's somewhat old-fashioned christianity was of that school which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of those sparse goods that the gods send us. the stone in her path at this time was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness—a matter which she might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.

presently the rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his chair.

“are you going upstairs, dear?” inquired his tactless spouse.

“um—er. yes! i am just going up to get—a pocket-handkerchief.”

mrs. glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board in the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the rector had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the ordained finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle stood.

it will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, anna hethbridge was in no way hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes—one might almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for long.

the squire was very lonely. his boy jem, aged four, would certainly be the happier for a mother's care. above all, miss hethbridge seemed to want the marriage, and so it came about.

if anna hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she would probably have told an untruth. she was rather given, by the way, to telling untruths. had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her mind.

the real motive was probably a love of excitement; and miss anna hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has married for that same reason.

the wedding was celebrated quietly at the clapham parish church. a humiliating day for the stiff-necked old squire of stagholme; for he was introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought up stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter “h.” the bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness of the ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal appearance of their respective husbands.

altogether it was just possible that squire agar began to realise the extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.

the event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the course of a few days a copy of the times containing the insertion started eastward to meet seymour michael on his way home from india.

anna agar came home to stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had breathed the fatal air of clapham since her birth. this atmosphere is terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.

but the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. at first she maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life—no centre more suited for such an ideal existence than stagholme. for a time she forgot seymour michael; but love is eminently deceitful. it lies in a comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life. sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it—sometimes the time has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which love awakens to find itself changed into hatred.

little jem, her stepson—sturdy, fair, silent—was her first failure.

“come to your mother, dear,” she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one afternoon when there were callers in the room.

“i cannot go to my mother,” replied the youthful james, with his mouth full of cake, “because she is dead.”

there was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the second mrs. agar to press the matter no farther just then. but she was so intent upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection which she persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to stagholme, that she took him to task afterwards. with great care and an utter lack of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of jem in the somewhat crooked ways of her social creed.

“and when,” she added, “i tell you to come to your mother, you must come and kiss me.”

this last item she further impressed upon him by the gift of an orange, and then asked him if he understood.

after scratching his head meditatively for some moments, he looked into her comely face with very steady blue eyes and said:

“i don't think so—not quite.”

“then,” replied his stepmother angrily, “you are a very stupid little boy—and you must go up to the nursery at once.”

this puzzled jem still more, and he walked upstairs reflecting deeply. years afterwards, when he was a man, the sunlight falling on the wall through the skylight over the staircase had the power of bringing back that moment to him—a moment when the world first began to open itself before him and to puzzle him.

it happened that at that precise time when mrs. agar was endeavouring to teach her little stepson the usages of polite society, a small, keen-faced man was standing near the table in the smoking-room in the hotel wagstaff at suez. he was idly turning over the newspapers lying there in the hopes of finding something comparatively recent in date.

presently he came upon a copy of the times, with which he repaired to one of the long chairs on that verandah overlooking the desert which some of us know only too well.

after idly conning the general news he glanced at the births, deaths, and marriages, and there he read of the recent ceremony in the parish church of clapham.

“d——n it!” he muttered, with that racial love of an expletive which makes a jew a profane man.

in addition to a strong feeling of wounded vanity that anna hethbridge should so soon have forgotten him, seymour michael was distinctly disappointed that this heiress should no longer be within his reach. the truth was, that the young lady in india had transferred her valuable affections, with all solid appurtenances attaching thereto, to a young officer in the navy who had been invalided at calcutta.

to men who intend, despite all and at any cost, to get on in the world the first failures are usually very bitter. it is only those who press stolidly forward without expecting much, who profit from a check. seymour michael was just the man to fail by being too acute, too unscrupulous. he was usually in such a hurry to help himself that he never allowed another the very fruitful pleasure of giving.

in india his zeal had led him into one or two small mistakes to which he himself attached no importance, but they were remembered against him. he had cruelly thrown aside anna hethbridge when a richer marriage offered itself. now he had missed both bone and reflection, and he sat with a smile on his dark face, looking out over the dreary desert.